The Best Bowl Team That Never Was
Louisiana-Lafayette, Arkansas State and South Alabama will all wear the Sun Belt patch on their jerseys this bowl season, but there's one thing that Georgia Southern has over the trio that can never be taken away.
The 2014 Sun Belt title.
In their first season in FBS, the Eagles cruised through the conference, finishing the season 9-3 overall and 8-0 against Sun Belt foes to claim the outright conference title.
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First-year head coach Willie Fritz took a program that had become synonymous with the triple-option and turned it into a more run-based, zone-read team.
It looked a little different than Georgia Southern teams of the past, but the result was the same. The Eagles led the FBS in rushing with 379.92 yards per game and 7.11 yards per attempt, and they did it against competition that was tougher than what the team used to face in the Southern Conference.
"We knew it would be tougher competition," quarterback Kevin Ellison told Bleacher Report. "But we look forward to that competition every single Saturday. We are thankful that we were able to go into FBS and the Sun Belt, be able to compete and come out with the Sun Belt championship."
Ellison rushed for 1,082 yards and 12 touchdowns, running back Matt Breida rushed for 1,485 and 17 scores and fellow running back Alfred Ramsby rushed for 691 yards and 12 touchdowns, as the program took a step away from the old-school, triple-option days and into a new era of Eagles football.
"We want to build a powerhouse here," Fritz said. "I've said this from Day 1, we want to have the same kind of success here at Georgia Southern at the FBS that they're used to having at the FCS level. It's the all-time winningest FCS program in the history of the NCAA with six national championships. Everybody has heard of Boise State, and the reason everybody has heard of them is because of their football program. We feel like we can do that here."
That new era, though, requires baby steps.
Since they are in their first year in the FBS and still considered a transitional program by the NCAA's rules, the Eagles were not eligible to compete in a bowl game unless a waiver was granted by the NCAA.
When Appalachian Sate beat Louisiana-Lafayette on Nov. 22, it gave Georgia Southern at least a share of the Sun Belt title. At that time, athletic director Tom Kleinlein began the process of petitioning the NCAA for a waiver that would allow the Eagles to play in a bowl game, despite their transitional status.
| Aug. 30 | at N.C. State | L 23-24 |
| Sept. 6 | vs. Savannah State | W 83-9 |
| Sept. 13 | at Georgia Tech | L 38-42 |
| Sept. 20 | at South Alabama | W 28-6 |
| Sept. 25 | vs. Appalachian State | W 34-14 |
| Oct. 4 | at New Mexico State | W 36-28 |
| Oct. 11 | vs. Idaho | W 47-24 |
| Oct. 25 | at Georgia State | W 69-31 |
| Oct. 30 | vs. Troy | W 42-10 |
| Nov. 8 | at Texas State | W 28-25 |
| Nov. 15 | at Navy | L 19-52 |
| Nov. 29 | vs. Louisiana-Monroe | W 22-16 |
"As a conference champion who, at the time, has the potential of going undefeated, I'm going to ask the NCAA why they wouldn't consider [the waiver process] for a team that was undefeated and a conference champion, when they would make an exception for a team that didn't win six games and would make an exception when there aren't enough bowl-eligible teams," Kleinlein said.
Georgia Southern was denied a waiver request by the NCAA late in the season. The school appealed that decision but had that appeal denied shortly after beating Louisiana-Monroe 22-16 on Nov. 29 to claim the conference title outright and finish off an unblemished conference season.
The late-season fight for a bowl game played out in media reports in late November, but it didn't have any impact on the players, who had one goal in mind.
"Our coaches really tried to tell us to not think about the bowl game," senior linebacker Edwin Jackson said. "Let's go on, finish the regular season and leave with a mark and leave with something that nobody can take away from us. We crossed our fingers [for a bowl], and people really believed in us. That's what I got from Eagle Nation."
The reason for the denial was simple. Georgia Southern isn't technically a member of the FBS yet and would take a spot away from a more deserving team.
"Deserving team? Who's more deserving than an undefeated conference champion from the Sun Belt?" Kleinlein said. "We did not take one of those bowl spots away, us being undefeated took one of those bowl spots away."
Georgia Southern is in college football no man's land, and the only way out is patience.
"It became very clear [during the appeal process] that this was a membership deal," Kleinlein said. "Us being part of the club, so to speak. When you talk to the NCAA in terms of membership, in their world, that's a very black and white, non-negotiable world."
That world's existence really shouldn't apply to Georgia Southern, though.
Part of the reason the two-year transition rule exists is to prevent teams from loading up on transfers from the higher classification before making the leap themselves, because those players would circumvent the rule that prevents players from being eligible when they transfer within FBS institutions.
Georgia Southern had a few transfers, but none that moved for the purpose of skirting the rules and playing FBS football without sitting out a year.
"We didn't have a bunch of players transfer in and build our roster up and then make an announcement," Kleinlein said. "We didn't do any of that, so we didn't have a competitive advantage when it comes to the transfer rules."
In fact, one Georgia Southern player—reserve quarterback Favian Upshaw—had to sit out a year because of the FBS transfer rule, even though he chose to transfer to the program from Florida International before Georgia Southern even announced it was moving to the FBS.
On top of the rule existing in part for a reason that wasn't really applicable to Georgia Southern, the final element of the appeal process couldn't be pursued due to ongoing changes in the NCAA's governance structure.
"Under the new structure, the next level of appeal was to the administrative cabinet," Kleinlein said. "But that doesn't exist anymore."
As a result, Kleinlein was unable to get in front of a real live group of people and state his case.
"There was no mechanism to get in front of that group of people and talk it out," he said. "You can write it and you can submit it and you can do that stuff, but when you want to make an appeal, you want to talk to people."
Instead of showing off just how good the program is in front of a national audience against a big-time opponent in a bowl game, the Eagles' resume will have to stand as is.
That's just fine, though. The lack of a bowl game doesn't take the shine off what was a tremendous season for Georgia Southern.
"Being here for five years, the biggest thing I've taken away from this journey is patience," Jackson said. "My senior class last year, they weren't able to go. They passed it to the next generation. We're undefeated in the Sun Belt, but we can't go to a bowl game. Next year, we can, and I'm passing it on to the next generation. We beat the Sun Belt in our first year. You're going to beat it next year and you're going to a bowl. It's all about patience."
Georgia Southern announced its FBS presence with authority. On top of their run to the Sun Belt title, the Eagles had tight losses on the road against N.C. State and eventual ACC coastal champion Georgia Tech.
"Being undefeated conference champs, we were hoping they'd look at that and grant us our waiver," Fritz said. "Unfortunately, they didn't and we have to move on from there. That's just part of it. They can't take away that undefeated conference championship."
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a co-host of the CFB Hangover on Bleacher Report Radio (Sundays, 9-11 a.m. ET) on Sirius 93, XM 208.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of cfbstats.com, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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