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Ga. State starts new program in tough economyNCAA Football Betting Lines08/20/2010 - ATLANTA (AP) -In his previous head coaching jobs, there were plenty of things for Bill Curry to worry about. Who's going to play quarterback? How does the defense look? Will these Alabama fans ever fully accept me? There were other issues that never crossed his mind. Do we have enough helmets and chin straps? What are we going to use for a locker room? Where are we going to practice? But those are just the sort of things Curry has fretted over in what will certainly be the final coaching job of his career and arguably the most daunting one yet. In less than two weeks, Curry will lead the Georgia State Panthers onto the field for their very first game, the culmination of a two-year journey that exposed the exhilarating highs and excruciating lows of starting a college football program from scratch. ``It's been a real adventure and I've loved every minute of the challenge,'' the 67-year-old Curry said, pausing briefly and adding with a wry grin, ``Well, almost every minute.'' OK, so he didn't really love it when he learned that his first semblance of a team - recruits and walk-ons who spent a formative year doing nothing but practicing and scrimmaging against themselves - didn't actually have a field. So Curry and one of his assistants, George Pugh, hopped in a car and started riding around Atlanta, looking for any patch of grass and goalposts within a 40-minute radius of Georgia State's downtown campus. ``We found a bunch of them. Then we had to find out who ran them,'' Curry recalled. ``There was an awful lot of time and effort spent on those kind of things, and that's just one example.'' It will all seem worth it on the night of Sept. 2, when the Panthers, an independent in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, play their first game against Shorter, an NAIA school. From humble beginnings, they'll run onto a relatively grand stage - the 70,000-seat Georgia Dome, home field of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, site of the Southeastern Conference championship game, venue for two Super Bowls and an Olympics. ``This is the reason why I came here,'' said Mark Hogan, who was Georgia State's very first player. ``I didn't come here to practice all year like we did last year, but that was part of it. That was preparation for this. It was well worth it. Now we're here, and we're about to play some real football.'' Georgia State is one of six institutions launching programs this year, a diverse group that runs the gamut from South Alabama, which plans to make a full transition to the top level of Division I in 2013, to Notre Dame, uh, College, a former women-only school in Ohio that will compete in NAIA. Plenty of others are on the way. According to the National Football Foundation, another 11 schools plan to have football teams up and running by 2013, including one right up Interstate 85 that is of similar size and urban location to Georgia State - the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. For their own roadmap, the Panthers may want to look toward the sunshine state. South Florida started its program in 1997, holding the first team meeting under a shade tree and meeting in trailers until some actual facilities could be built. Within a decade, the Bulls had risen to No. 2 in The Associated Press rankings. They are now members of the Big East Conference and have appeared in five straight bowl games. Georgia State isn't dreaming that big - at least not yet, anyway. The Panthers will play a hodgepodge of teams over the next two years (this year's schedule begins with Shorter and ends with defending national champion Alabama) before moving into the Colonial Athletic Association, which competes in the division formerly known as I-AA. Of course, everyone keeps asking: Will there ever be a day when Georgia State is competing at the same level as that school over in Athens (Southeastern Conference power Georgia) or the one right down the street (defending Atlantic Coast Conference champion Georgia Tech)? ``When we're basically selling our full allotment of tickets in the Georgia Dome, then it'll be time to start thinking about that,'' Georgia State president Mark Becker said. ``But right now, we've got to get a team on the field. We've got to build a competitive program at the I-AA level. If we do those things successfully, and the fan base fills in, then we can talk about those things. Now is not the time.'' The Panthers already have the makings of a competitive squad, thanks to several high-profile transfers. Joseph Gilbert, a starting offensive lineman at Georgia Tech the last two years, now plays for the Panthers. So does Star Jackson, a backup quarterback on Alabama's national title team. ``It's definitely going to be a change, but I'm excited about it,'' Gilbert said. ``We have a chance to start something new here. For however long Georgia State has a football program, we're always going to be the first.'' For Gilbert, the decision to transfer stemmed largely from academics: He had already graduated from Georgia Tech but failed to get into the school's graduate program. Georgia State offered him a chance to further his studies in accounting. For Jackson, it all came down to playing time. He didn't want to spend another year on the sideline watching Greg McElroy, who's firmly established as Alabama's quarterback on the heels of a perfect season. By transferring to a FCS school, Jackson didn't have to sit out a year. ``Greg was doing a great job,'' he said. ``I just felt like I wanted to get on the field. I wanted to play right now.'' Curry has landed other transfers as well - one from Auburn, another from Georgia Tech, others from more modest football schools - many of them enticed by the idea of playing in a major city at a high-profile venue such as the Georgia Dome. That was the sort of built-in advantage the Panthers were counting on when they decided to start a football team. ``We are very enthused about our personnel,'' said Curry, who coached at Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky but hasn't been on the sideline since 1996. ``Some of them are guys we recruited from a lot of different places. And some of them just flat-out fell from the sky. We are so grateful for the transfers who came our way.'' What Georgia State will have to overcome is a general apathy that has always existed toward the school's largely mediocre athletic program - especially in a city with plenty of sports options, including four major league teams, three minor-league franchises and way-more-established Georgia and Georgia Tech. For most of its history, this has been nothing more than a commuter school. It's been a place that educated tens of thousands of students who did nothing more than drive in from the suburbs, attend classes and head right back home, leaving behind a soulless grouping of nondescript buildings that was derided as the ``Concrete Campus.'' While the makeup of the school is shifting toward students who now live on or near campus in recently built dormitories, it's still been a challenge to get them excited about their own teams. Just last season, the men's basketball squad - until now, the most prominent on campus - averaged just 1,385 fans per game. The football team will certainly surpass that, having sold more than 3,000 season tickets. Then again, that will look like a mere speck in the massive Georgia Dome, even with the Panthers only using the lower bowl. Also, the Panthers couldn't have picked a worse time to start a program. The economic downturn has made it much tougher to raise funds, which have lagged behind projections and forced the school to phase in the completion of its new football training complex. While the football team moved onto a new practice field in the spring - sandwiched next to railroad tracks and a MARTA rapid-transit line, it epitomizes as much as anything the school's urban setting - the adjoining facilities are still a work in progress. Only part of the building is set to open this season. ``The most unpleasant part has been the economy,'' Curry said. ``That's affected everything we've tried to do, like it has affected everything in world. We certainly couldn't wallow around in self pity because everyone else was suffering the same way.'' In the meantime, the Panthers have found ways to make it all work. The locker and weight rooms are located in the school's basketball arena. Meetings are held in whatever classrooms happen to be available around campus. For someone such as Gilbert, who was playing in the Orange Bowl seven months ago, it's been quite a change. ``The biggest thing is the walking,'' he said. ``We have meetings in one building. The locker room is in another. We go eat in a building over there. That's been a big adjustment, I'm not going to lie. I got a bit lazy while I was at Tech. ``But it's no big deal. I needed the exercise.''Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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2007 online football betting PreviewMy fellow Americans, as tempting as it may be to don the coat and HD-ready tie in order to deliver this State of the Game address before the cameras, I know better. As Brad Paisley sings on his latest album, "I'm so much cooler online." The ideas for this annual essay to kick off the MySportsbook.com college football betting preview flowed like frat-house beer, which is to say they were cheap and spilled all over the floor. The 2007 season will be better than 2007, if only because there will be more of it. A year ago, the NCAA Football Rules Committee made two rule changes in the interest of speeding up the game. These changes went over like Kobe burgers at a vegan banquet. To its credit, the rules committee rectified its mistakes. This season the clock once again will start when a kickoff is received, rather than when it is kicked, and the clock will not start so quickly on a change of possession. However, kickoffs have been moved back five yards, to the 30, which will force more returns. (Thus forcing the clock to run. Clever, huh?) Special teams might decide a lot of games, because coaching strategy will come straight out of another new Paisley lyric (almost), I'd like to check you for kicks. Paisley sings with a twang, which is why he's appropriate for this college football season. The sun coming up over the 2007 college football betting lines season rises from the south. It's a Southern football world. As the Southeastern Conference begins its 75th year, the power shift is noticeable. Eight-figure budgets, glamorous settings -- and that's just for the head coaches. The SEC has four coaches who have won national championships -- the greatest aggregation of coaching know-how since Eddie Robinson dined alone. Steve Spurrier, Phil Fulmer, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer have given lie to the idea that a conference championship game is too daunting a hurdle on the road to No. 1. In six of the past 10 seasons, the national champions played and won a conference championship game -- three of the six (Tennessee, 1998; LSU, 2003; Florida, 2007) from the SEC. 2007 College Football Betting PreviewThere will be more of the same this season, if the preseason prognostications are correct. Six SEC teams are in the preseason coaches' poll, more than from any other conference. Only one conference has talent so deep that a team with 15 returning starters, including the best quarterback in the league, from an eight-win season is considered an afterthought. That may speak more to Kentucky's losing legacy than to the wisdom of the predictions, but there you have it. And seriously, keep an eye on Wildcats QB Andre' Woodson. The reach of the South extends all the way to No. 1. Take a look at the team that is a consensus pick to win the national championship. The quarterback is from Shreveport. The best wide receiver is from Nashville. The top recruit is from New Orleans. So what's the campus doing in Los Angeles? Hey, it is the University of Southern California. USC lost two Pacific-10 Conference games a year ago, the first time that had happened in five seasons, and university officials withstood the urge to form blue-ribbon panels to unearth the cause of such a disaster. Instead, the Trojans gathered themselves and routed Michigan, 32-18, in the Rose Bowl. USC's losses at Oregon State and at UCLA last year should have given pause to those who question the Pac-10's football prowess (such as, without naming names, L.M. from Baton Rouge). The league only got deeper this season; Dennis Erickson is taking over an Arizona State team that never quite got out of its own way under his predecessor, Dirk Koetter. Erickson will resume his quest to become the first coach to win a national championship at two schools. Both he and Spurrier, now in his third season at South Carolina, returned to college football at schools with lower profiles than where they won their titles. That isn't the case for the third coach looking for the national championship double. You may have missed this, but NASA reported the astronauts on the space shuttle last spring made contact with what can only be described as beings from another galaxy. The leader of the aliens said, "We come in peace," followed by, "So how do you think Nick Saban will do at Alabama?" The public is reacting to the new Crimson Tide coach as if he is the Barry Bonds of college football -- beloved at home for what his fans believe he is going to do, hated on the road for his intimidating attitude and for what his detractors believe he did (bend NCAA recruiting rules). I made this comparison from the dais at a charity dinner in Mobile, Ala., last month, and the chill that washed over me didn't come from the air conditioning. Saban will attempt to prove that he can remake in Tuscaloosa what he built in Baton Rouge, much like another member of the national championship fraternity. Bobby Bowden is attempting to remake at Florida State what he built at, um, Florida State. Bowden rebuilt his offensive staff, bringing in four new coaches led by Saban's former offensive coordinator, Jimbo Fisher, to jump-start an offense that has been dead for a couple of years. Las Vegas Sports LinesThe Atlantic Coast Conference is expected to show new signs of life, too. That is said with no disrespect toward last season's champion, Wake Forest, which provided one of the best story lines of 2007. The Demon Deacons begin this season in their customary position, overshadowed by the Virginia Techs, Miamis and Florida States. It's not that Wake will find it difficult to duplicate its success in 2007 as much as the feeling that success engendered. Surprising success is the narcotic of sport. It never feels quite so euphoric the next time. Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese has figured this out. He refers to 2007, when a league looked down upon by fans and foes alike took three undefeated teams into November, as "Cinderella." The fairy tale may be over, but the Big East has four genuine Heisman Trophy candidates in Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm, West Virginia tailback Steve Slaton and quarterback Pat White, and Rutgers tailback Ray Rice. Rutgers, as did Wake Forest and, of course, Boise State, proved last season that the have-nots in college football occasionally have quite a lot. The Broncos' rousing 43-42 overtime victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl has raised the profile of all schools in conferences that don't get automatic BCS bids. This season, TCU and Hawaii are the preseason favorites to burst through the BCS doors and earn an at-large bid. The Warriors return 14 starters from an 11-3 team, including quarterback Colt Brennan. Brennan not only broke the single-season record with 58 touchdown passes in 2007, but he also led Division I-A in passing efficiency (186.0). The senior is expected to contend for the Heisman Trophy, and neither his success nor the rise of his team should come as any surprise in the 2007 season. After all, Hawaii is the southernmost team in the country. To visit this sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting needs. Mysportsbook.com online sportsbook accepts Visa and Mastercard credit cards. |
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