Even seven years in, there probably are many folks who still don’t realize Georgia State has a football program, let alone that it recently fired its head coach, Trent Miles. But the number of applications flowing to Charlie Cobb’s desk, or at least his email, suggests some view the downtown, concrete campus as a potential Oz on the smallish college football landscape.
He is seeing interest from head coaches, assistant coaches and, as a source of amusement, people who’ve never coached a game in their life.
“There’s a guy who thinks because he watched ‘Hard Knocks’ on HBO that we need to hire him as an outside-the-box hire,” said Cobb, two years into the job as Georgia State’s athletic director. “He said he can bring in several celebrities who can help us in coaches and in recruiting. The beauty of the Internet: Everybody can send you an email.”
Hard Knocks guy: probably not getting the job.
But yes, we know there's interest. And we know that, at least from a pouring-the-foundation standpoint, State has made incremental progress, from its birth as an FCS independent under Bill Curry in 2010 to its way-too-soon leap to FBS under Trent Miles.
Here’s what we don’t know: Do enough people who aren’t sending applications care?
I write this not as someone who wants to see football fail at Georgia State. Programs can be successful outside of the “Power Five” global alliance of the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12. There have been several successful smaller FBS programs in urban settings that Cobb can reference as blueprints to follow, including Cincinnati, South Florida, Memphis and Temple.
The Panthers are in the midst of a 2-8 season and nobody's watching, this a year after surprisingly making it to a bowl game. But they will move into the stadium formerly known as Turner Field next year, with plans for a new practice facility, athletic offices and campus expansion into that area. So they have a significant marketing component for recruits, fans and, yes, coaches.
But does that translate into proof that enough will thirst for the product?
Cobb concedes his next coach must be “a big picture hire.”
Translation: The coach, whether by name, actions or visibility, needs to excite the masses, in addition to building a successful on-field product.
“I haven’t run into anybody on campus in the two years I’ve been here who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to have football,” said Cobb, as he sat in a meeting room outside of his office. “But I think there’s a lot of people who, frankly, are waiting to jump onto the bandwagon to make it run.”
He came here from Appalachian State, he said, because he “likes the challenge of building.”
He believes that's partly what drew Ron Hunter to the basketball program from IUPUI. Hunter has done a terrific job building hoops but basketball is a different — and much smaller — animal than football.
Cobb would prefer hiring somebody with coaching experience but he seems more concerned about getting a candidate ties to the Atlanta area, or at least Georgia, for recruiting reasons. He also doesn’t want to bring in a coach who views State as a mere stepping stone in his career. (That may be difficult. Most college coaches are often looking for the next best thing.)
“We’ll never be Georgia in your lifetime, my lifetime or anything like that,” he said. “But we can be Georgia State. We can redefine what our campus is. Part of that definition can be, ‘Let’s reschedule that wedding on the weekend in the fall because everybody is a big football fan.’ It can be done.”
Cobb played football at North Carolina State. He worked in stadium operations at the Georgia Dome and for the Atlanta Sports Council before returning to N.C. State to enter college athletics. He points to his two previous campus jobs as places where football teams once played to half-empty stadiums but is now popular. He has a picture of an Appalachian State home game in 2008, the year after the Mountaineers upset Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“We had over 34,000 people. There’s a guy up in a deer stand watching the game. But that didn’t happen overnight. It happened because the program got better with coaches who recruited good kids and the campus embraced what was going on.”
He wants to move quick on a hire. His target date: Dec. 15. That will give the new coach time to build a staff and make recruiting connections.
This is about more than building and winning but Cobb is on point when he says, “You have to be relevant for people to care.”
We can debate which will be the bigger challenge.
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