Georgia State’s takeover of the Braves’ stadium shows how far the Panthers have come

ATLANTA — Thursday night, the building once known as Centennial Olympic Stadium began its third iteration since its opening in 1996. We now call it Georgia State Stadium, home of the Panthers.

Georgia State started its football program in 2010. The school — located in the heart of downtown Atlanta — is the commuter school of all commuter schools. Atlanta’s known for its traffic, and State students explore all of it on the way to campus. Their main routes might be I-75, I-85, I-285, or even more distant.

That included a home field at the Georgia Dome and practicing at any local high school that was available, while taking team meetings in university classrooms (Classroom South, for those familiar).

“I take that to heart, and I take it personal,” one of the Panthers’ first captains, linebacker Jake Muasau, told SB Nation. “We were starting off at the bottom, nobody knew about Georgia State, and I think slowly, as we’re starting to make a little more headway and getting these really nice facilities, I knew that, ‘OK, I can really appreciate knowing that I helped the program get to where it is now.’”

Muasau was given an offer to State after his older brother Louie — who was being recruited — passed along his tape. Both received scholarships and took their lives from Arizona to Atlanta.

“I had never been to the South, and I wanted to see what this Southern hospitality was about,” Muasau said. “And so I’m like, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ I’m so glad that I did.”

Muasau knew his role at State. “I went into Georgia State knowing that I’m a stepping stone. I’m here to help build this program to reach the level where we would like to see it go.”

When he arrived, there was no practice facility. He told SB Nation it was a big deal when the 90-man roster was able to fit into the new facility comfortably, finally giving each player his own locker in 2011.

This is what they had been waiting for.

The foundation that Muasau and others laid turned into the grand opening. There was a buzz around 755 Hank Aaron Drive.

Even the school’s president showed some nerves. As a small group of reporters gathered for an informal press conference, Mark Becker jokingly asked if his hair looked OK. He doesn’t typically dress up for football games, but for the stadium’s debut, he had on a dark navy suit.

The weather had been ugly in the metro area all day. Rainy skies mean bad traffic, which easily means bad days in Atlanta. Yet as the 4 o’clock hour approached and the earliest visitors arrived, things took a turn.

“God cleared the skies for us,” Becker said.

Surprisingly, the weather stayed great throughout the evening.

Many of the city views were gone because of the absence of the right field bleachers, but that’s part of the transformation Becker was aiming for. The disappearance of most of the skyline gave the stadium a more local, collegiate feel.

“When you walk in — I think you’ll see it — it’s a football stadium,” athletic director Charlie Cobb said. “It has the feel of being a football stadium.”

The stadium — still showing hints of Turner Field — has work still to be done. Crews were still putting the final signs up at 2:30. The seats made the venue look older:

They turned the stadium around in six months. But this was still something different, and it became clear as the game went on.

When fans were prompted to make noise on third downs and big plays occurred, you could actually hear and feel the home-field advantage. That was something that Georgia State didn’t have since its first game, against Shorter College in the Georgia Dome on Sept. 2, 2010. At GSU’s Georgia Dome games, it wasn’t rare to see remnants of a Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game logo or Falcons logo at midfield.

When the sun went down and the lights lit up the venue, it felt even more that it belonged to Georgia State, as the old right field bleachers from Turner Field faded into the night. Because of the four stadium light installations behind the newly installed seats, it became easy to block out. What was once right and center field was now occupied by thousands of fans in blue and white.

As an alum of the school and native of Atlanta, I felt pride. I watched Michael Johnson sprint around this stadium in 1996. I adored Chipper Jones as he brought the city to its feet, with Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” blaring over this stadium’s speakers for years. I witnessed my favorite MLB All-Stars take this field in the summer of 2000. I remember Jason Heyward’s home run on the first strike he ever saw and the 14-game winning streak the Braves went on when the Waffle House stand was installed in 2013.

Thursday night, I watched what felt like my alma mater’s first actual football home game.

The university avoided striking old nerves from past events in the building, which was a good move. A mixture of 21 Savage, Migos, Future, and other Atlanta artists played throughout the stadium. Unless it was a walk-up song, you weren’t going to hear that during a Braves game at Turner Field — though when the Panther band started playing Nelly’s “Shake Ya Tailfeather,” I looked up with a quickness, as the song starts with the Tomahawk Chop chant. I was prepared for a seventh inning rally, but realized we were just in the third quarter, with the Panthers down 14.

“The great history and all the iconic moments in the stadium — we want to add our own,” Cobb said.

The school announced a sold-out crowd, and while it looked far from it early in the game, it was an impressive crowd for the Panthers, who have had otherwise horrid attendance. Bill Curry — the program’s first coach — made an appearance that sparked the crowd. It was a nice touch as an attempt to show history for a program still very much in its infancy.

The Panthers fell to FCS Tennessee State, 17-10.

But Thursday night confirmed that the Panthers finally had a legitimate home at the stadium’s Parker H. “Pete” Petit Field, named for a man who has donated over $10 million to the university.

Cobb said before the game that he wanted fans to leave with a sense of pride. He added, “We have a chance to build a really successful program, and this stadium was a starting point of this next evolution in the program.”

That’s one thing Muasau truly believed: that the stadium would help the program continue to evolve. He joined in 2010 with the school having hardly anything to sell to recruits. That’s going to change.

“You never know, you could walk to Walter’s and see Rick Ross,” he told SB Nation. “You could walk down the street and see Future driving by.”

You aren’t going to get that part in Athens. Walking to Langdale Hall — formerly known as GCB — from Courtland Street, where everybody is gathered, music will be blaring as you make your way to class.

“Georgia State really was this commuter school,” Becker said. “That identity has gone away because now we have over 5,000 students living downtown on campus, we have our own football stadium. This is an entire transformation of Georgia State to a complete modern research university in the heart of Atlanta.”

All it took for State was the Braves to move to Cobb County and to run some turf down Chipper’s third base line.

Georgia State is still steps away from the next level. But there’s no question that the school has taken leaps since Becker arrived in 2009.

“This made Georgia State a complete university,” he said.