Had the result of this game or the events that followed gone the other way, this whole story could have been very different.

After knocking off the top-ranked Mountaineers, the Eagles finished the regular season with victories over Western Carolina and Furman to earn an at-large bid to the I-AA playoffs for the first time in five years. Georgia Southern would win three games over South Carolina State, William & Mary and Wofford before falling in the semifinals to Delaware 27-10.

Despite falling short of a national title in 2010, the 2011 squad was ranked No. 3 in the country in the preseason polls and Statesboro had an undeniable buzz entering the season. The Eagles rose to the No. 1 spot after just two weeks and remained there for six weeks. Unfortunately, App State returned the favor from 2010 as the No. 5 Mountaineers downed Georgia Southern 21-17 at Kidd-Brewer Stadium.

The Eagles bounced back with wins over The Citadel and Wofford to claim their first Southern Conference title since 2004 but lost a hard-fought, 45-21 contest at FBS’s No. 3 Alabama in a game where the Crimson Tide kept in most of their starters until the 44-second mark of the fourth quarter. Alabama went on to win the BCS National Championship that season. The season once again ended in the semifinals of the playoffs with a 35-7 blowout at the hands of the newly emerging dynasty of North Dakota State. The Bison went on to win their first national title in the next game.

After returning to national prominence once again, a lot of fans began to talk about the possibility of moving up to the FBS level in the near future. Some fans were not entirely serious, but more of a kind of fantasy of who in the FBS the Eagles could beat based on recent games against Alabama and Navy. Others were very much against the idea for many reasons.

Traditionalists cited that Georgia Southern would be a small team in a small conference competing for six wins to make a bowl or get blown out every year. Others claimed that it did not make sense for financial reasons based on a feasibility study on the subject conducted in 2008. Despite these opinions, there were a very large number of those who wanted to make it all a reality; this group included Dr. Keel and Monken himself.