⚡ CFB Dashboard

Let’s hop in the way-back machine again, but this time we’ll go a little further back than our last stop. Let’s go back to 1992. In 1992, an event occurred that would ultimately change the course of Georgia State and lay the foundation for Georgia State athletics—without anyone realizing it at the time. That event was the Board of Regents naming Carl Patton president of Georgia State. The rest of this story comes from a conversation with my neighbor, who worked in the university’s marketing department at the time. According to her, Patton brought the university’s leadership team together and said something along these lines: “Downtown Atlanta is a mess and needs to be revitalized. Georgia State can be an engine for urban revitalization in Atlanta. If Georgia State can prove to the city that it can use state money to buy, refurbish, and build facilities, it will change downtown Atlanta forever—and it will change Georgia State forever.” Whether those were his exact words or not, the vision was clear. The second part of that vision did involve the Olympics. Patton saw the 1996 Olympics as an opportunity to rebrand Georgia State as a traditional downtown research university. During this period, Pounce was introduced as the mascot, the blue flame logo became part of the university’s identity, and the foundation for Georgia State’s modern branding began to take shape. And it worked. The early proof of concept came with projects like the Fairlie-Poplar District, the Aderhold Learning Center, and, most importantly, the conversion of the Olympic Village into student housing after the Games. These successes helped establish Georgia State as a growing urban university, even while operating in the shadow of the politically stronger Georgia Tech. With that said, Carl Patton’s vision and leadership permanently changed the trajectory and perception of both Atlanta and Georgia State. It changed the culture and laid a foundation for students, alumni, staff and hopefully one day Atlanta to identify themselves as Panthers. In many ways, he linked the futures of the city and the university together forever. Ironically, however, his vision also helped create the conditions for something he never wanted: football. By expanding Georgia State’s footprint, building credibility with city leaders, and proving that the university could drive redevelopment, Patton set in motion a chain of events that eventually made football possible. But to build an athletics department, Georgia State first has to build a 24/7/365 campus that serves many of the same functions as a traditional campus. The challenge is that Georgia State sits in the middle of downtown Atlanta. You can’t build a campus in downtown Atlanta without helping build Atlanta itself. That’s an endeavor Georgia State can’t—and isn’t—doing alone.