Georgia State's ragtag football team has big dreams

ATLANTA - Jim Wallace thought his football career ended with his last high school game seven autumns ago. Then the old passion stirred unexpectedly last week after a class at Georgia State University. A bunch of big guys hollered and thrust season tickets at him in the main plaza. <br> <br> A football team? At Georgia State? Wallace didn&#39;t want tickets. He wanted to get on the field. His school spirit zoomed with the prospect of getting more from GSU than an English degree. <br> <br> ``I just want to hit somebody in the mouth and get away with it,&#39;&#39; said a grinning Wallace, who at 6-feet-3 and 290 pounds played lineman for Stockbridge High School. <br> <br> His recruitment took 15 minutes. He got handwritten directions to the practice field and instructions to bring $125 (payment plan available) for pads, helmet and uniform. <br> <br> ``G-State Football&#39;&#39; is a ragtag bunch of about 60 players with a tiny budget and a big dream. This sport, they believe, can bring traditional Southern spirit to a historically disconnected student body in downtown Atlanta. <br> <br> It&#39;s a club sport. Unlike the Panthers&#39; 14 varsity sports, football doesn&#39;t get financial backing from the university. There are no scholarships for the players and no paychecks for the coaches. With help from some football-mad alumni, the club is scraping up players, finding unusually experienced volunteer coaches and selling $5 tickets for its first season. That season begins Sunday at the University of South Alabama, with the first home game Sept. 15 against UNC-Greensboro at Adams Memorial Stadium. <br> <br> ``Football is a big thing in the South, and so I feel that as Georgia State moves away from being a commuter school, this team could jell students together,&#39;&#39; said Kelon Blackshear, 20, a tackle from Atlanta. <br> <br> Reflecting the school&#39;s diversity, players come from Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Korea, Nigeria. A few, like 6-5, 285-pound Saleh Sallal, a native of Syria, never played football before. ``The technique is totally different than rugby,&#39;&#39; he noted. <br> <br> A few played at Furman, Fort Valley State and West Georgia. Junior Saam Ghiaasiaan turned down an offer from UT-Chattanooga. Others never had a chance beyond high school, partly because of the state&#39;s deep talent. <br> <br> Center Preston Stancil played for South Gwinnett. He was injured his senior year. The guy he snapped to was David Greene, now the University of Georgia&#39;s quarterback. <br> <br> ``Everything I ever hoped and dreamed was college football,&#39;&#39; Stancil said. ``All I ever heard about was UGA and Tech. At a university our size, it gets under your skin. ... We don&#39;t want to just come to school and go home. We want to put our university on the map.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> In the GSU weight room, Stancil found other guys with similar stories. At a meeting to drum up support for GSU&#39;s basketball team, Stancil met alumni Mark Lawson and Ed Gadrix, who love football. <br> <br> Lawson, a GSU employee, agreed to sponsor the club. Gadrix, an attorney and member of the GSU athletic board, said he&#39;d help sponsor a seven-game season, at a cost of at least $40,000. They say Georgia Southern&#39;s NCAA Division I-AA champion team started this way. <br> <br> ``Football is a disease only cured by death,&#39;&#39; Gadrix said as he watched practice from the sidelines. <br> <br> On the field stood coach Ted Bahhur, formerly of Clark Atlanta, Morris Brown and Kent State. His assistants included Darrell Pasquale, a former special teams coach with the San Diego Chargers. By day, the coaches work as security guards, personal trainers and pizza salesmen. The allure of coaching for free is ``starting something new from scratch,&#39;&#39; Pasquale said. <br> <br> ``Full scholarship players wouldn&#39;t be this excited,&#39;&#39; Bahhur said. ``We&#39;re just a homemade bunch, but I&#39;d take these guys over recruited athletes anyday.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> The program&#39;s entire capital fits in a storage container at the field&#39;s edge. Inside are stacks of shoulder pads, practice pants and field markers from Middle Georgia College, which just disbanded its team. The University of Kentucky donated blue and white game pants. As for the shirts, players who paid their fee early got to pick their jersey number. The team picture won&#39;t be taken until the end of the season, a carrot for players to keep showing up. <br> <br> At the end of the night, they huddle and chant ``G-State!&#39;&#39; and thrust their index fingers up to the sky. They aren&#39;t No. 1 of anything, but they draw confidence from one fact. They have yet to lose a game. <br> <br> Every underdog faces great odds, and G-State has those, too. No one&#39;s too sure how long the team will survive. <br> <br> ``Short-term success would be having a team next season,&#39;&#39; said senior Mike Jamal, an end from Stone Mountain. <br> <br> University president Carl V. Patton has said football doesn&#39;t have a prayer of becoming a varsity sport at GSU. Such a program would take too much money, including the funds needed to add enough women&#39;s sports to comply with Title IX. <br> <br> ``The university is very happy that the students are so enthusiastic and supportive of the new club football program, as they are all club activities at Georgia State,&#39;&#39; Patton said through a spokesperson. ``However, there are no plans to begin an NCAA-sanctioned football program at the university.&#39;&#39;