Throwback Thursday – The First Fall, 1981

The once neat three-page document titled "The 1981 Georgia Southern College Football roster" listed the usuals, height, weight, age and hometown. Additional information, like a position, was written in, sometimes scratched out, and handwritten with new details, ink interchanged often between a fountain pen and blue and black ballpoints. 

"The following athletes had completed physicals and were scheduled to appear at practice," was typed under the title and date.

That statement, at the time, was both formal and informal, as the roster proclaimed a certainty, but in reality, neither the coaches nor the candidates were exactly sure what to expect. 

Coach Erskine "Erk" Russell , two full-time assistants and several graduate assistants had put the word out across campus that there would be open tryouts for this new Georgia Southern Football team. With the college on a quarter schedule, and classes beginning in that third week of September of 1981, the students were just arriving back for school.

The football locker room and weight room facility renovations were nearly complete, the areas designated for practice on the north side of campus were as ready as they were going to be after a summer's drought.  

Now, the team just needed players.

The coaches figured they would have at least 100, a "workable" number. More showed, in shorts and tennis shoes, excited to be a part of the first football team in four decades. The hopeful Eagles were stacked end to end on the tennis courts and that first practice was underway with conditioning, agility tests and timed sprints.

Freshman David Shields, who would start at split end that fall, blistered his competition with the fastest 40-yard dash time, clocking in at 4.56. A month later, he would catch the first pass from quarterback and roommate Rob Allen, in the Eagles' first intrasquad scrimmage.

On the day of that first practice, Russell commented, "this is a real good bunch. They are enthusiastic and I saw some good things out there on the first day." Reflecting back, Russell would quip that they "were greeted by the most enthusiastic non-athletes I have ever seen in my life."

Regardless of the talent level assembled, after months on the banquet and speaking circuit, he was back in his element and said he "felt great being back with the kids."

And kids they were -- almost all were freshmen, with a few sophomores sprinkled in. There was a junior or two, including Pat Douglas, who followed Coach Russell to Statesboro and was the original "runt" Russell described in his "Runts try harder" slogan.

When contact practices started, clouds of black dirt needed time to settle after a play. When spectators could see the Eagles, they looked like they were playing in an all-star game, not for their amazing ability, but with their hand-me-down helmets and practice jerseys in an array of mismatched colors. Russell, Roger Inman and then-Athletic Director Bucky Wagner made the rounds of several Southeastern Conference schools earlier in the year with Si Waters' horse trailer, picking up as much used equipment as they could carry.

Despite the lack of all luxuries, it was still football.

Every day Coach Russell set an example for his team – jogging on his way to the practice fields and passing his players by, he reminded them, that this day was "another day in which to excel." He would already be doing calisthenics as the Eagles crossed over the gnat-infested drainage ditch he dubbed "Beautiful Eagle Creek."

The reward for practice is playing time and the Eagles, under the tutelage of Russell Monday through Friday, would play in an intrasquad scrimmage in Dublin's Shamrock Bowl on Halloween with three games that fall. Those three contests showed the mettle of this first team, with wins over a tough Ft. Benning Doughboys squad and Jacksonville's Magnum Force. Georgia Southern's "walkons" gave the Florida State junior varsity team all it could handle, until falling in the final 90 seconds.

When those young men walked off the field after the Jacksonville Magnum Force game, they had accomplished something to which no one else could lay claim. On a humid, September day months before, they stepped on the tennis courts for the first day of Georgia Southern Football practice in 1981. What they started with Coach Russell, formed a bond that continues to this day.

Information culled from many sources including sports information documents from Mark McClellan, comments from David Shields, Jr., Allen Braswell, and Roger Inman, and the book, "Erk, Football, Fans & Friends," by Erskine Russell with Ric Mandes.