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Friday, April 20, 2007
Football a poor fit for Georgia State
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Georgia State has commissioned Dan Reeves to help decide whether or not the school should start a football program. It’s a nice concept, and retaining Reeves, who knows football and Atlanta, makes complete sense. And by rights a university that serves 26,000 students should be able to sustain the most expensive sport.
This, however, is Georgia State.
This is the school that drew a non-crowd of 362 to a men’s basketball game on Valentine’s Day. This is the school that just posted an average home attendance of 1,173 in what stands as its flagship sport. This is the school that would play football games in the Georgia Dome, which seats 71,250.
This is one tough sell.
Mary McElroy is Georgia State’s athletics director, and she’s smart and ambitious. She’s also pragmatic. As Reeves goes forward, she’s neither pushing nor pulling. “Painstakingly neutral,” is how McElroy describes her stance. “I’m not ashamed to say that. I would be fine with football; I would be fine without it.”
She believes there’s a “decent” chance the school will move to sponsor the sport. Certain moneyed alums like the idea very much, and Reeves told reporters the prospects look “very likely.” The earliest McElroy could imagine Georgia State playing an actual game would be in 2010. And how long after that might it be before Panthers football could be branded a success?
Georgia State is a commuter school in a big city based in a state that already boasts massive football programs. An examination of similar programs offers a best-case scenario, and also a worst.
South Florida, located in Tampa, played its first game in 1997; last season it averaged 30,222 fans at Raymond James Stadium and finished 9-4, beating West Virginia and winning a bowl game en route. Central Florida, situated in Orlando, played its first game in 1979; last season it averaged 31,569 fans at the Citrus Bowl. The Knights will christen a 45,000-seat stadium this fall — they’re coached by George O’Leary, who’s 12-24 at UCF and who has never met a construction project he didn’t embrace — and Texas will serve as the first visitor.
South Florida is doing quite well. Central Florida, which has graced one bowl in its existence, is hanging in there. UAB, which played its first game in 1991, still lacks traction. (It just hired the former Georgia assistant Neil Callaway as head coach.) The Blazers, who play at Legion Field, averaged 23,139 fans for home games last season. UAB hasn’t done terribly on the field — its 3-9 record in 2006 was its nadir — but the program remains an afterthought in a state consumed by the ongoing saga of Alabama against Auburn.
The same dynamic would apply here. Doesn’t everybody in this state, GSU students and alums included, already have a favorite football team? Could a new program compete with existing loyalty? (Yes, Georgia Southern carved out a niche, but the Eagles don’t share a major marketplace.) Said McElroy, who admits she roots for Navy, where she earned her degree, and Tech, where she worked: “It may be that those people chose Georgia or Georgia Tech because we haven’t had a football team.”
Maybe. But the notion that the Georgia State constituency, which didn’t fully embrace basketball even when Lefty Driesell was winning significant games, would be energized by a start-up Division I-AA program seems fairly fanciful. What if GSU is confronted by the indignity of playing home games before 65,000 empty Dome seats?
“If it starts and it doesn’t work, nothing says this will be here in perpetuity,” McElroy said. “If it’s going south, we drop it. … But you won’t know how many people will come if you don’t do it. And I know people will say, ‘How can you have football if you can’t get 4,000 fans to come to a basketball game?’ Part of the reason was the product.”
It should be noted that Georgia State isn’t the only local school casting an eye. Kennesaw State is, too. “We’d be the only program in Marietta,” said Stan Dysart, who’s the chairman of Kennesaw State’s football feasibility committee and who’s also (full disclosure) my orthopedist. “The disadvantage Georgia State has is that there’s already a big-time program downtown.”
That said, Dysart believes Georgia State should give it a go. And McElroy has been “surprised there’s not more negativity — I’ve heard from maybe 20 people who are against it. It doesn’t seem there’s a whole lot of resistance. … The recruiting base is here. The interest seems to be here. But commitment is a lot different than asking about somebody’s interest.”
It is. And every lead balloon — the Edsel, New Coke, the 2007 Phillies — looked spiffy on the drawing board. “I want to set us up for success,” McElroy said, “not failure.”
Good luck with that.
Permalink | Comments (30) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Fundamentals give Europeans an edge
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Year after year, Johnny can’t shoot, dribble, pass or defend, but he is perfecting all of those gyrations he sees on your average ESPN highlight.
Thus the following: Johnny is being phased out of the NBA, and Andrea, Eduardo, Menad, Radoslav, Mehmet, Sarunas, Zarko, Raja, Vladimir, and Thabo are being phased in.
Good. What this record explosion of international players into the league will do is force Johnny to become as fundamentally sound as many of those international players. Just so you know, many of those international players are as fundamentally sound as Johnny once was before those gyrations became the rage between the Pacific and the Atlantic.
“No question. I mean, there isn’t a doubt that American players will go back to the fundamentals, because if they don’t, they won’t have a job,” said Dominique Wilkins, the king of gyrations as the Human Highlight Film throughout his NBA playing career. Even so, Wilkins combined style with substance.
That’s unlike today, when Johnny doesn’t get it, but Fabricio does. Added Wilkins, who also played in the European League, “Most international players have that in-between game. They can shoot the jumper. They can put it on the floor. They can do little things to help your team win. They get better and better. A lot of times, just being an athlete alone just doesn’t get it done.”
Wilkins was referring to the NBA, where he is a Hawks executive these days. He wasn’t referring to colleges, high schools and youth leagues around the United States, where you actually can “get it done” in hoops by just being an athlete. Such an emphasis on talent combined with flash has contributed to American players spending their youth listening to opportunistic AAU coaches. That’s opposed to the dwindling few stressing the Larry Brown philosophy of playing The Right Way.
We needn’t go further than this year’s version of the And 1 Mixtape Tour. On the And 1 Web site, it boldly states, “This summer, we are returning to the streets to put on the greatest display of creativity ever to hit the blacktop.”
Translated: This tour is nothing more than glorified street ball.
Speaking of which, you also have those highly popular And 1 Streetball video games. They are available everywhere to teach American youngsters how to play The Wrong Way.
Conversely, international players are groomed to become fundamental machines as preteens, and they often evolve into professionals in their countries soon after reaching puberty. So, if you’re a personnel guy for an NBA team, and if you’re more interested in winning than looking pretty, you do the following: You drive past all of those folks yakking and spinning in the air for circus dunks on the playgrounds, you hop on a plane, you fly across the oceans, and then you come back with a Yao Ming or a Manu Ginobili.
No wonder these numbers are ridiculously staggering: Twenty years ago, when Wilkins was with the Hawks in a league that featured a slew of fundamentally sound American players, ranging from Michael Jordan to Larry Bird to Magic Johnson, there were only 14 international players on opening day rosters.
There were 84 this season. In fact, when the playoffs begin today, there will be 59 international players on the collective rosters, an increase of 34 percent from just last year’s playoffs.
“You see those statistics, but at the same time, as long as this league has been around, you have to realize that it always goes through these adjustment periods,” Wilkins said. “You’ve got to be able to adapt as players coming up. [American] guys like Joe Johnson, like Kobe Bryant, like Dwyane Wade, like LeBron James. All of these guys have made adjustments to today’s game, and that’s why they’re so much better than everybody else.”
Well, not better than Dirk Nowitzki, the likely NBA most valuable player this season, and he is from Wurzburg.
That’s Germany, not Iowa.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
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