The wait is over

A countdown that started 863 days ago will finally reach zero on Thursday, Sep. 2nd, and Georgia State University will do something that it has never done in its 97-year history: play football.

For over two years, those two words have been on the minds of hundreds of people charged with the task of introducing Georgia State to the world of college gridiron, especially the players.

"The good news is that we have a football team that loves to play football," head coach Bill Curry said.

"And the sport of football, if you don't love to play it, will destroy you. It's just that simple."

The love for the sport of football might have been bittersweet for those players who have been practicing since August 2009 without getting to showcase the result of their grueling preparation.

"It's been so hard to practice and not play any games," linebacker Jake Muasau said. "We just want to get on that field and make a statement."

Muasau and his teammates will finally get a chance to make that statement when they open the inaugural season against Shorter College, and Georgia State as a university will never be the same.

The significance of this event may not be fully grasped or appreciated for years to come, but there is little doubt that at this point no other undertaking in the school's history has impacted Georgia State quite like joining the world of college football.

In a country where football is the undisputed king on all levels of sport, Georgia State has made a splash like no other college start-up. The eight-part video series on ESPN.com, which chronicled the building of the Panther football program, culminated in Georgia State making the cover of the 2010 ESPN the Magazine College Football Preview edition.

"The expectations are going to go through the roof," Curry said to his players as they posed for the photo shoot.

Curry understands the magnitude of the moment, even if some of the players may not.

To put it in perspective, the last school from Georgia to make the cover of ESPN the Magazine was the University of Georgia in 2008, when their football team was ranked No. 1 in the country to start that season.

But for Georgia State, the media publicity did not stop with ESPN. The Panthers graced the cover of Atlanta Magazine, the Atlanta INtown newspaper and even the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s sports section alongside the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech, the trio dubbed "The Big Three."

Then there are the Atlanta radio stations. From 680 the Fan to 790 the Zone, the Panthers have been local media darlings throughout the summer.

But perhaps the most notable publicity for the young program came from the Q100 radio station, when Bert Weiss from the popular morning program, "The Bert Show" endorsed the Georgia State Panthers as his new college football team. Two days later, Curry made a guest appearance on the Bert Show and just as he has done many times before, Curry won the hearts and minds of both cast members and listeners.

While all this media attention may appear to have happened overnight, it has in fact been a calculated product of long months of work by many people in the administration, led by Georgia State University President Mark Becker, Director of Athletics Cheryl Levick and of course, Curry.

"[Becker] is a very competitive guy," Curry said during his interview with the Bert Show. "He loves football."

Becker's competitiveness was evident during his tenure at the University of South Carolina, where he fulfilled a request to make the Gamecocks marching band the loudest in the Southeastern Conference.

His most notable move for Georgia State athletics came with the hiring of Levick in March of 2009.

In her 17-month tenure at Georgia State, Levick has already transformed the athletic department like no other athletic director in school's history.

"She's demanding," Curry said about Levick in a recent interview with the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. "I've never known a great leader that wasn't."

During the school's largest athletic undertaking, Levick's leadership was essential, as she oversaw every aspect of the process from marketing to academic compliance to ticket sales, and the results speak for themselves.

"When I got here, our annual [athletic] fund for the previous year was thirty three thousand dollars in unrestricted money, and this past fiscal year we closed at three hundred and three thousand," said Kevin Miller, the Assistant Athletic Director for Development.

The near thousand percent increase in annual funds is a testament to the long hours logged by numerous people in the athletic department, especially Miller and Ford Williams, the Associate Director of Development.

Under the supervision of Todd Reeser, the Senior Athletic Director of Development, Miller and Williams organized an outbound call center where Georgia State interns reached out to over a thousand alumni and former donors every day.

"We started with a base of about hundred basketball season ticket holders," said Miller with a grin on his face.

Miller has a lot to smile about these days, as Georgia State has sold over 4,200 football season tickets. In total, over 8,000 tickets have been sold for the inaugural game, and that figure does not include the roughly 1,000 complimentary tickets reserved for the athletics staff and family members of the players and the band.

The last, and perhaps the biggest, piece of the attendance puzzle are the students, who will be provided free shuttle services three hours before the game at the corner of Collins St. and Decatur St., as well as outside of the Panther's Den on Piedmont Rd.