The $1 million challenge
I have been writing this long, protracted piece on Georgia Southern football for the last two weeks—not the best way to launch a new blog about the totality of pop culture and its relevance in the world—and as I got to the final piece, I wondered just what I was going to say. Through the first four segments, the goal has been to play a bit of Devil's Advocate, which was fairly easy since I was a staunch supporter of my school remaining snug in the comforts of I-AA/FCS. As the time drew close to make a final argument—a definitive statement for why I think that now is the time for Georgia Southern to look toward a move to college football's highest level—the blank page just gaped back at me. Blank. Raise One… Million… Dollars.
Then, a conversation about music found in the comments section of this post and an archival copy of a correspondence between Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons ("The Sports Guy") lit the way.
The point is actually pretty simple:
Music is a highly subjective art form, because what people think of as good or great or defining music is almost always defined by where the individual making the statement was when they first heard the songs, albums and bands they are talking about. For me, Ryan Adams' Gold is near the absolute top of my "CDs to take to a desert island." A lot of critics would agree with me, believing that either that disc or Heartbreaker represented an incredible collision where Adams was at the peak of his songwriting prowess and he was being produced by Ethan (son of Glenn) Johns, the man seemingly most suited to translate Adams. Survey 25 critics who love Gold and you can get about 15 different takes on what makes the album remarkable (plus five critics who cribbed off someone else, four who just spouted out "criticspeak" and a guy from Rolling Stone who used a thesaurus to sound smarter, but really just laid out the same verbiage as the others). On the other hand, ask 25 fans why they loved Gold and you are likely to hear 25 intimate recollections about why those two CDs found a deeply personal place in those 25 lives. One day I might share why Adams' work from Faithless Street (as the frontman for Whiskeytown) to Gold provided a big portion of the soundtrack for my late 20s. The point is that my position is subjective and I embrace the subjectivity of it. The only unifying aspect of a musical experience's quality is that X numbers of people have the same fundamental response: they like it, they put it in their car CD player and they listen to it again and again.
Of course, Klosterman says it better: "When I say Vitalogy is 'irrefutably' the best Pearl Jam album, I'm really just saying that fact is irrefutable to me. But I am only speaking about my own reality. If I say a band is good, it only means that I think they're good; if I say a band is bad, it only means that I think they're bad. All my criticism is autobiography."
When I said that Cobain was overrated and Clapton lacked passion, those were my opinions, too. They were based on observations I've made about music and culture as they relate to my point of view. I also freely acknowledge that Elvis Costello might just be too musically eclectic for me to enjoy—my bad, not Elvis's.
This brings us back to Georgia Southern football, believe it or not.
Out of the approximately 15,000 or so fans that attend an average home football game, Southern Connection lists just fewer than 600 fans who love Eagle sports enough to sign up and yak about it over the Internet. SouthernFACTS.org said on May 8th that they had 900 verifiable supporters signed on in support of a move to FBS/I-A. Even if there were no crossover between those two groups, those 1,500 fans represent about 10 percent of the average GSU home crowd. Those 1,500 folks have one thing in common—they all love Georgia Southern sports. Beyond that, if you compared the musical preferences of these 1,500 folk you might find as many commonalities as in their opinions about Georgia Southern football. For all the reasons they have to love the Eagles, fans and boosters all have different imaginations, dispositions and agendas.
So in creating a final piece about where GSU needs to go from here, I wondered if there was anything that could unify everyone: those in favor of FCS, those longing for FBS, the Wilco fans, the White Stripe fans, the Justin Timberlake fans, the GSU administration, the guys who have been thrown off of the TSC message boards for being pestering assholes—you know, everyone.
Surprisingly, I think I've done it. The solution was as simple as going back to the pride argument.
If you want Georgia Southern to move up into a bigger, stronger and more expensive division—put your money and/or your tangible efforts where your mouth is. That doesn't mean giving money to Southern Boosters and just waiting to see what happens. Get together with friends. Donate in blocks of $25,000 or greater. Find 100 other season ticket holders that think like you do and pay for your season ticket renewals through a single check and let your individual season ticket purchases lapse. The school still gets the money and can claim the same number of season ticket sales, but those tickets are issued to "Fans in support of FBS at Georgia Southern." One big voice.
And don't stand pat by maintaining your current donating levels. Give more through these groups. Show the administration that growth is possible. Recruit new season ticket buyers and get 200 tickets instead of 100, with 100 of those being new purchases. Spend time building new fan blogs and web sites. Spread the word.
Here's a little factoid: when I wrote the 2004 articles about the I-A/I-AA debate and spoke to Southern Boosters, I got the eerie sense that the folks up there had a pretty solid grasp of how much money it would take to move the program up the ladder to I-A (okay, they said as much). They mightn't have had "feasibility study" specific numbers, but I'll bet they were a short wedge shot from the pin. Anyone who doesn't believe the administration at Georgia Southern has a solidly in-focus picture of the resource commitment needed to move up a notch might need to reexamine their appreciation for the Power of Cumbersome Bureaucracy.
It will take loads of dollars to move Georgia Southern to FBS, and it will take money in the bank and the promise of more money to come if anyone is to convince a stubborn administration that abandoning a profitable athletic department for the uncertain waters of Mid-major I-A football is a good idea. Making that statement 200 season tickets (or $25K) at a time is the only sure way to get anyone's attention. Money talks and bullshit walks.
Those folks dead-set on Georgia Southern remaining a big fish in the smaller FCS pond need to make similar strides in fund-raising—only instead of abandoning their individual donations in favor of an en masse contribution, these like-minded folks should keep their individual names on the rolls and then create a second collective, singular donation of additional money clearly labeled as a donation in favor of remaining in the FCS. After all, if the reasoning for staying at the current level is that GSU's position at the top of the smaller division is worth more to the school than a secondary position in a higher division, there needs to be money to keep the Eagles at the top of I-AA/FCS. Why not have a FBS-caliber athletic program ruling the roost with an iron fist year after year. The Eagles could be more hated than the Yankees, albeit by a much smaller demographic of college football fans.
The fact is that the only people who don't have a leg to stand on are the ones who aren't doing a damn thing or who have begun to withhold money from the school to "make a point." These losers are defeatists who lack the creativity to find more appropriate means of protest or the social skills to assemble a group of like-minded folk to make a positive group statement like the one I've mentioned above. The Georgia Southern athletic program isn't run by John Q. Fan or Sam Baker or Bruce Grube or Southern Boosters. Georgia Southern athletics is run by dead presidents. I will publicly ridicule anyone who doesn't believe that if 5,000 fans banded together and donated $6 million over three years (that's $400 per person a year for three years) under the name "Fans for FBS" or "Eagles for Staying Put" the agenda advanced by that plurality (not even a majority) of GSU fans wouldn't jump to the forefront of GSU athletics' "look into this" list.
Anyone believing GSU simply has to announce a move to FBS and money will pour in smoked more dope than I did in college. Put a million bucks on the table and say it was given "to advance the GSU program towards a goal of FBS membership" (use your PR skills to let the plebes know the money was given for that purpose) and (1) the school has to take your point seriously and (2) some like-minded "Whales" are likely to take notice and really get the ball rolling. It takes far fewer of them to raise $6 million.
Sure, Baker is a control freak. You could say a lot worse about him (and some of you have). In the face of $6 million really, really big ones, though… let's just say the man can be bought.
Set the bar lower, though. We can all acknowledge that (1) everyone on the TSC message boards and SouthernFACTS.org truly cares about GSU athletics (specifically football) and (2) people who don't donate money and/or constructive time* to the advancement of GSU athletics aren't worth the baud rate it takes them to communicate online.
*Students and those with income restraints show constructive support by attending games and cajoling parents and friends into buying tickets or tagging along. Or by wearing GSU gear proudly, even out of state. Or by stopping by Southern Boosters and asking if there are volunteer opportunities.
So here is the challenge:
Find a way to earmark your fundraising effort as either "Pro-FCS" or "Pro-FBS." How you get everyone to coordinate this donation in one lump isn't my problem. I did my part writing a big-ass blog outlining my position and introducing the idea. Just raise one million new dollars (no cutting from current giving—that cheapens the statement). First to the goal gets bragging rights (and, I'll bet, the ear of the administration). At $50 a head, the first group to find one big Paulson Stadium crowd (20,000) on their side wins. I'm waiting with my $50. Even a press corps as disinterested in GSU as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wouldn't be able to pass up a story about a stadium's worth of people giving a million clams just to make a statement about where they thought a storied football program should go next.
The losers should even donate whatever they gather in the loss. Then the Eagles win, hands down—not even Secret Sam would be able to escape the accountability that went with such a large single donation.
The next step, individually or collectively, should be pretty clear if anyone actually takes the $1 million challenge. The start, though, would be tremendous. It would tell GSU athletics—administration, fans, athletes, coaches—that no matter where they stand, the fans are ready to help. Even when they don't agree on the specifics, the fans care about the generality: Georgia Southern sports is important, for whatever reason.
That would be better than Heartbreaker, actually.
PS: Obviously, there are still some large holes about this pro-FBS stance here, as well as a single thread to tie all this together. Dammit, I'm going to write one more "Cliffs Notes" post about all of this. Look for it around Thursday or sometime after Memorial Day.
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