By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          The last time Brian Bohannon spoke at the Macon Touchdown Club was in 2013.

          He had taken the Kennesaw State job, one in which he was starting everything from scratch. There wasn’t a football or helmet or staff.

          “They don’t have a football,” Bohannon said. “They didn’t have a helmet. They don’t have shoulder pads.”

          Enrollment has grown from 25,000 then to about 41,000 now.

          Bohannon had quite the success story to tell Monday night in the club’s final gathering of the season. He was born in Macon, his dad coaching at Willingham with legend Billy Henderson.

          His parents were set up on a “date,” on a Macon football field. Bohannon couldn’t recall the name, but it was likely at old Porter Stadium, where the Hilton Garden Inn at Mercer now sits.

          That was after his dad played for another state legend from Central Georgia, Dan Pitts at Mary Persons.

          He played at Georgia around the time Vince Dooley was retiring and Ray Goff took over. Most of his career has been with Paul Johnson at Georgia Southern, Navy, and Georgia Tech.

          The Owls have several players from Central Georgia: RB Kyle Glover of Dodge County, DB Je’Cory Burks of Perry, RB Preston Daniels of Washington County, DB Donte Justice of Baldwin, OL Sean Brown of Tattnall, DLMarquez Baxter of Southwest, and DL Jayden Barron of Upson-Lee

          Kennesaw State was a longtime conference rival with Mercer in the Atlantic Sun. Mercer’s first modern-day season was 2013, and it left the A-Sun for the Southern Conference for the 2014-15 sports year.

          KSU remains in the A-Sun in all sports except football. The Owls are a football member of the Big South.

          The Owls and Bears were A-Sun rivals in all sports, and remain so, to a point, when they compete in basketball and baseball, more than other sports.

          They have not, however, played football yet.

          “We’ve been trying to schedule them since the day I stepped on campus,” Bohannon said.

          Bohannon said his players decided they didn’t want to play any fall “money” games in 2020.

          “They said, ‘Coach, we came here to win championships, we didn’t come here to play South Florida or whomever,’” Bohannon said. “I probably couldn’t have been more proud of that moment, because you know what most teams want to do. ‘Let’s go play the FBS games.’

          “All I did was give them information. They decided what we’d do.”