Nick Bray stood on the floor of Lakefront Arena. Confetti fell from the rafters, framing him as he stood and watched Georgia State’s players climb onto the podium and accept the Sun Belt championship trophy.
Wearing a gray GSU hat, Bray couldn’t stop smiling. He has used up a lot of emotion, screamed himself hoarse more times than he can count, and spent many a long night sleeping on cold concrete outside the Sports Arena before home games in support of the men’s basketball team.
Bray wasn’t just watching the moment on Sunday, he was feeling it.
“When I got here 5-6 years ago there was nobody,” he said. “This is like a dream.”
Bray hasn’t supported the Panthers as long as others, but he has been one of the most vocal and passionate since enrolling in 2009 and becoming the de facto leader of a student section that became one of the most loud (and obnoxious) in the Sun Belt.
Georgia State officials are hoping to use the team’s upcoming game against Baylor in the NCAA tournament as a way to create thousands of new Nick Brays. They can be students like Bray who recently enrolled and are looking for something to identify with, which is what happened when Bray attended a basketball game during the 2008-09 season.
They can be some of the more than 120,000 alumni who live in the metro Atlanta area, who also have yet to identify with any of Georgia State’s teams.
Or it can just be the random person who liked what they saw during the Sun Belt final, or may like what they see against Baylor.
So Thursday may just be one game, played during the early afternoon and out of the prime-time TV spotlight, but it’s a chance for Georgia State to take an athletic history that is 52 years of mostly forgettable memories and turn it into a 21/2-hour window of exposure that can last lifetimes.
“We have a chance to be the school to represent all of Atlanta,” athletic director Charlie Cobb said. “Anytime you have something positive to sell it helps.”
The university is already seeing the benefits.
Instead of the usual lone media representative from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at Monday’s practice, most of the city’s news outlets were there, many of whom rarely set foot inside the Sports Arena this season. The athletics department stopped keeping track of interview requests from the rest of the world Monday morning when the number surpassed 40.
It’s much different than coach Ron Hunter’s oft-told story about walking around downtown Atlanta his first day on the job in 2011 and few people he spoke with even knew that Georgia State had a basketball team.
“This is a game-changer for the university,” Hunter said.
Georgia State’s athletics department set new records for its social-media efforts in the aftermath of Sunday’s victory over Georgia Southern in the Sun Belt tournament championship. It had its all-time highest engagement for Facebook on Sunday for individual posts, including likes, shares and comments.
The video of the team watching the NCAA tournament selection show had a reach of 46,464 and was watched 36,335 times as of Monday, the single-highest engagement athletics has had.
More than 120 calls were placed to the ticket office on Monday for NCAA tournament tickets, with more than 290 of the team’s 350 tickets sold by 10:30 a.m Tuesday.
The development office received two significant renewal pledges, one for $15,000 and another for $10,000. Neither office typically receives a dozen calls per day and rarely do they receive calls from people who want to donate.
These are the exposures and interest that Georgia State will try to take advantage of to increase fundraising and membership numbers in its Panther Athletic Club, which has 975 members as of Jan. 1 and hopes to reach 2,000 by 2017.
The tournament appearance may not have come at a better time for those efforts.
The athletics department is in the midst of fund-raising efforts for several initiatives, with a focus on a drive to fund the $5.7 million in scholarship costs the athletics department must play the university annually.
There are also plans to construct a sports and academic performance center adjacent to the Sports Arena.
There is also a hope to renovate the Sports Arena, which is a recreation center converted into a basketball arena.
Lastly, there’s the $300 million Turner Field proposal that would give football, soccer, baseball and other sports a new home in the area occupied by the Braves. University President Mark Becker said the school has the money for that. But there will surely be other unexpected costs.
“To enhance our facilities, we need to grow our annual base, which means we need more people in the Panther Athletic Club,” senior associate athletic director Rob Clark said. “With a sustainable growth, we will be ready should Turner come to pass.”
Cobb stresses that Georgia State’s efforts won’t be confined to the next few days. March Madness will stretch until April. Though it was painful, the video of coach Ron Hunter hurting himself in the celebration will be watched over and over in the coming weeks. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?
The athletics department had already planned a spring caravan to engage with some of the thousands of mostly AWOL alumni in metro Atlanta at eight stops in April. With the appearance in the tournament, they expect the participation numbers to increase.
It’s like what R.J. Hunter said he told Kevin Ware after Sunday’s win: “We just did something that we won’t even know how big it is.”
Bray no longer leads the student section. He has switched sides in the Arena, moving to where the alumni sit. He has traded in the old-school red Georgia State basketball jersey that made him easily identifiable in a crowd for a more grown-up polo.
But this NCAA tournament could be the start of much more for what Georgia State hopes will become a growing fanbase.
“Everyone is going to see us on TV (in the NCAA tournament),” Bray said. “They are going to know Georgia State. It’s only going to do great things.”
