By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Georgia Southern hasn’t won a conference title since 2014, which now seems like a more than a decade with the recent changes in college football.

          From then to now, a little more than nine seasons, Georgia Southern has gone 50-56. That’s quite a chance for a program that went 98-25 in its first nine full seasons as a program in a conference.

          Clay Helton’s working on it, amid as much change in the game in the last decade as in the first 30 years of GSU football.

          “I’ve got the biggest, prettiest post of Coach (Erk) Russell, staring dead at me with that mean look, with that ripped shirt saying ‘One more time,” Helton said last week during his regular visit to the Macon Touchdown Club. “It just reminds me that it’s a place of toughness, it’s a place of discipline, and it’s a place of accountability.

          “We’ve got to take that next step and win championships and conference titles.”

          The Eagles are 3-2 in Helton’s third season, after a pair of 6-7 years.

          Helton has promised multiple times that he will attend the Touchdown Club every year he’s invited while at Georgia Southern.

          “It re-inspires me every time I come here,” he said. “Because when I come here, I get to see legendary coaches like Coach (Edgar) Hatcher, I get to see Coach (Joe) Dupree and Coach (Paul) Carroll that are mentoring men that are fixing to be in our realm, in college football.

          “This has been going on since 1946. Any time you have a 78-year run, the longest in the great state of Georgia, that’s a special group.”

          Southwest coach Dupree and Stratford coach Carroll both played at Georgia Southern in the early 1990s. Carroll is still first on the all-time list at GSU in tackles, with 375 from 1991-94. single-season tackles (127 in 1994).

          Helton came to Georgia Southern after getting fired at Southern Cal, quite a different world. Because of his big-school background, relative youth at age 52, and the speculated desire to get back to the Power 4 level after the way his last stint went, his days at Georgia Southern earn speculation.

          Will he take the first bigger job that is offered? Well, it may not necessarily be his call.

          “She’s always said, ‘Baby, I want to stay here for the rest of my life,’” Helton said. “I ask her why. ‘I love the people, first. I love the sense of community, I love the pace, I love the peace, and I absolutely love the passion that they have for football in this state.’

          “And we’ve witnessed it … how much passion there is for the college football game, and high school football.”

          Helton had just beaten Dell McGee, a former teammate of his, at Georgia State, a needed win amid a tough non-conference schedule that includes Boise State, Nevada, and Mississippi.

          “If you haven't seen Ashton Jeanty, watch him,” Helton said. “He is phenomenal, he’s got to be one of the top four players in the country right now, I’d be shocked if he if he doesn't go to New York.

          “We still haven't tackled him today, so he'd still be running if we if they allowed him.”

          Up next this week is Marshall (ESPNU) and then James Madison, both at Paulson Stadium. And Helton will take a team heavy with Georgia high school alums into those games.

          “We came in to our program and said we are going to sign high school football players,” Helton said. “In the last two years, we've signed 61 high school football players and began to develop them. And now we look going into our third season and where those kids are at, it's the reason that I think we will contend for a conference title this year. Of those 61 high school football players, 47 are from the state of Georgia and then the rest are from the surrounding states.

          “We're going to follow the blueprint Coach Russell did. He took great talent from the state of Georgia, he developed them he made them tough, he made them disciplined, and they went out and won championships.”