(07-28-2015 12:18 PM)Ole Sleepy Wrote:  

(07-28-2015 11:18 AM)TroyFootball05 Wrote:  

(07-28-2015 10:40 AM)sidslidkid Wrote:  

(07-28-2015 10:29 AM)DrGonzo Wrote:  It's an in-state school game and we have higher attendance and a bigger national brand than Georgia Southern.

And no, you don't have a bigger national brand than Georgia Southern. How are you measuring this?

Appalachian State has a bigger national brand than Georgia Southern. I would argue much bigger. The win over #5 Michigan vaulted them way past Georgia Southern. Everyone still remembers that as the biggest upset in college football history.

That win lead to the discussion of their three national championships in a row (might have been two at the time). Lots of people followed them to see if they could win another one. That conversation never happened when Georgia Southern beat Florida. People remember, but it just wasn't that big of a deal.

They were what North Dakota State is now. No one ever thought of Georgia Southern in that manner. Georgia Southern won two in a row in 1999 and 2000, but it was at a time when less people cared about 1-AA football, and there was no signature win to make people say "wow".

Most people don't know Adrian Peterson played for Georgia Southern, just like most people don't know DeMarcus Ware and Osi Umenyiora played for Troy. "No way he played for Georgia Southern, look it up" is the response I get when I tell people where Peterson played.

(07-28-2015 11:08 AM)Scrotumus Wrote:  ...last year's running the conference table and all the press and TV exposure GS got...

Running the conference table means absolutely nothing to the average fan. They don't even know who's in the Sun Belt, so why would they care. Their knowledge of the Sun Belt is about 1/10th of most of our knowledge of the MAC.

Georgia Southern hasn't gotten anymore press than Louisiana or Arkansas State or Troy has during their title runs and bowl seasons. We see press clippings and we think everyone reads them, all the time. That's just not the case.

I'm sorry, but with those two statements you have lost all credibility with me concerning FCS and Georgia Southern. We DOMINATED 1-AA when it was a much bigger deal than it is now. 4 NC's within 6 years when 1-AA games could be seen on ESPN every so often. GS was a much bigger deal in the 80's than the mid to late 90's. We were universally known as the kings of 1-AA during that original stretch.

The title game was on CBS back in the day... just saying.

But the painful truth is that right now, this instant, and given the attention span of the average fan and certainly of the media, GS is a bigger deal based on the defeat of UF and their success last year. As I stated before, that can change in one day if App beats Clemson, but right now, GS is a hotter brand than App.