By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

Trio honored

Three schools are represented by this week’s Macon Touchdown Club players of the week.

Mount de Sales’ Dexter Williams is the back of the week, the Cavs quarterback passing for 192 yards and rushing for another 155 yards with two touchdowns in the win over Greene County.

Northeast’s Cameron Hill is the lineman of the week, the linebacker racking up 10 solo tackles, two for loss, six assists and a fumble recovery in the loss to Central.

ACE kicker Mason Maddox is the special teams player of the week, the freshman going 4 for 5 on PATs with a 34-yard field goal and a clutch punt in the win over Fullington.

Part of the weekly routine at the Macon Touchdown Club is to auction off some tickets to a prime in-state college football game, usually Georgia or Georgia Tech, to raise funds for its scholarship foundation.

This time, the tickets were for Clemson’s visit to Georgia Tech.

Guest speaker Chad Lunsford listened to the negotiations.

“I wasn’t about to pay $80,” Lunsford said. “Because I didn’t want to see Clemson again.”

Lunsford, who donated the speaker’s check back to club host Methodist home for Children and Youth, and the Eagles gave then-No. 2 Clemson some early struggles before the Tigers started to pull away for a 38-7 win last Saturday.

“When you start talking about going and playing a power-5 team … the thing that I’m very proud of (with) our guys, obviously the score was not what we want, a loss is not what we want, but they went into the game expecting to win,” Lunsford said. “They went in there with a fight.

“If you watch it, 54 minutes of that football game was a fight. Our defense was able to keep them scoreless in the first quarter, and then they had a big second quarter, but (GSU) caused three turnovers, and Clemson had not had a turnover all year.”

Georgia Southern has been something of a rollercoaster the past decade or so, ever since Mike Sewak – now a top assistant at Georgia Tech with former Georgia Southern head coach Paul Johnson – was fired after a first-round FCS playoff loss in 2005.

Brian VanGorder cause all sorts of commotion during his 3-8 season in 2006, before leaving for South Carolina (for about six weeks), Atlanta, Auburn, the New York Jets, Notre Dame, and now at Louisville, after a year as a defensive analyst for Georgia and Oklahoma State.

Chris Hatcher restored the program’s traditions snubbed by VanGorder and mended fences, but was let go after three seasons, an 18-15 record and no playoff trips. Jeff Monken got things going again with four winning seasons and three playoff trips.

The Eagles were ineligible for the postseason while moving up from FCS to FBS, in Monken’s final season and Willie Fritz’s first. Fritz had the Eagles immediately competitive in the Sun Belt, but took off for Tulane after two nine-win seasons.

On came Tyson Summers, who went 5-7 his first year and was fired after an 0-6 start last year and assorted staffing and administrative issue.

Lunsford was back on the staff under Summers, having previously worked for Monken, and got the interim job last October and the permanent job a month later.

The Georgia Southern under Monken is the Georgia Southern that Eagle followers knew: hard-working, option football, physical, and successful. Lunsford is trying to get that back.

While the Eagles did go from a basic blue helmet to a basic white helmet a few years ago, Lunsford said it’s safe to assume that Georgia Southern won’t be adding fashion statements to the equation.

“We talk about tradition, we talk about history,” he said. “To me, there’s no better uniform than the one we wear, the blue and white. We will do one alternate uniform a year, and that ends up being (for) recruiting purposes and all that type of stuff.

“We talk about it all the time when recruits come on campus. We don’t need all the shiny stuff, we don’t need a ‘uniform of the day’ like maybe an Oregon or something like that. That’s not what our place is about. Our place is about blue-collar work ethic.”

The Eagles are 2-1, having matched last year’s win total, which didn’t come until the final month of the season. Having stumbled for a few seasons, they haven’t gotten much attention as a Sun Belt contender.

This year, that label goes to Arkansas State, Appalachian State, and Troy. But the Eagles get a chance to jump into that race after a week off, hosting Arkansas State on Sept. 29.

They’ll get a chance to get healthy after taking on a national championship contender, and continue working on bring Georgia Southern’s memorable past back to the present, which is more than just the wins.

Lunsford remembers when he finally got a full staff in place and he could start in earnest getting the future under way.

“We talked an awful lot about being the Georgia Southern man,” he said. “Our main mantra this year is, ‘win.’ Win obviously means win football games, but for us, it means what’s important now. A lot of our guys, they still kinda hung on to last year, they hung on to bad things.

“We had to talk an awful lot about , hey, let’s learn from our past, but don’t live in our past, let’s work toward our future, but let’s don’t get so far ahead we can’t get done what we want to get done.’”

Maintaining a blue-collar work ethic, from which the program was built back in the 1980s by Erk Russell, remained a priority. There are still the yellow buses the team rides in across campus to the stadium, which now seats more than 25,000.

There have been upgrades throughout the program, all necessary, but the Eagles won’t be fancy or sheltered.

“There are so many people that love being a part of it,” he said. “The great thing about Georgia Southern is that when you do invest into it, when you do put your all into it, you’re welcome.

“That’s one thing I wanted to make sure happened when I became the head football coach, was anybody that was supporting our program, make ‘em feel welcome, make sure that they understood that, ‘Hey, practice is open, the building’s open, come see us, come hang out with us.’”