Baseball

An Eagles baseball player fields a pickoff throw during a 2014 game

The baseball team is led by head coach Rodney Hennon, who is in his seventeenth year at Georgia Southern. Georgia Southern played its first year of baseball in 1933.^[2] The team went to the College World Series in 1973 and 1990 and has appeared in 11 NCAA regionals. The team was also crowned the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics National Champions in 1962, sweeping Portland State.^[3]

The team won the 2009 Southern Conference baseball tournament with a 7 to 3 victory over top seeded Elon and clinch its first SoCon title since 2002. They also won the 2011 SoCon Tournament after Chris Beck pitched a complete-game shutout against Samford University. They lost two games against future national champion South Carolina, losing a 2–1 decision, and NC State, coming short by three runs in a 5–2 game.

Men's basketball

The head coach of the Georgia Southern men's basketball squad is Charlie Henry.^[4] Introduced on March 29, 2023, Henry is the 15th head coach in program history.^[5] The team participated in the NCAA Division I Tournament in 1983, 1987 and 1992, and the NIT in 1988, 1989 and 2006.^[6] The first year of men's basketball at Georgia Southern was 1926, and the first year the school played in Division I was 1971.^[7]

Georgia Southern basketball player Roger Moore was the first African-American athlete to receive a scholarship in the University System of Georgia.^[8]

Football

The head coach of the Eagles is Clay Helton. The Eagles have won six NCAA FCS (I-AA) National Championships (1985, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1999, and 2000). In addition, the Eagles have won ten Southern Conference championships (1993, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2011, and 2012) and one Sun Belt Conference championship (2014); with the Eagles' first Sun Belt title, they became only the third team, after Nevada in 1992 and Marshall in 1997, to win their conference championship in their first year at the FBS level.^[9] Home football games are played at Allen E. Paulson Stadium, known as "The Prettiest Little Stadium in America." Georgia Southern fielded its first football team in 1910; however, the sport was suspended for World War II and was not restarted until 1982.^[10]

Beautiful Eagle Creek

Beautiful Eagle Creek

In the early 1980s, a drainage ditch that the team had to cross several times a day during football practice came to be called Beautiful Eagle Creek by popular Head Football Coach Erk Russell. When the Eagles traveled to Northern Iowa during the 1985 playoffs, Coach Russell brought along a jug of Eagle Creek water to sprinkle on the field. The Eagles were victorious and went on to win many national championships with the help of that magical water. Today, the jug is on display at Georgia Southern University and signs have been erected along the creek.

Nickname

Eagles is the third nickname of Georgia Southern University. From 1924 to 1941, the nickname was the Blue Tide. After World War II, athletic teams were referred to as the Professors, as the school was a teachers college. However, in 1959, when the school was renamed Georgia Southern College, a student vote was held to determine the new mascot. Eagles was chosen over Colonels by a narrow margin.^[13]

Plain uniforms

When the football program was revived in 1982, the school did not have a large budget and coach Erk Russell ordered solid blue helmets and asked the players to put a white strip of tape down the middle. The uniforms consisted of plain white pants and blue jerseys without names.^[14] With the subsequent success of the Eagles, the basic simple design of the uniforms has remained the same.