Georgia State

Georgia State is the youngest program in its own state, built from a standing start in 2010 in a downtown-Atlanta venue that belonged to baseball before it belonged to football. Center Parc Stadium — the former Turner Field, retrofitted for the sport — is the physical argument the Panthers are always making: that a commuter school in the middle of the Southeast's biggest recruiting city can be a real football program, not just an activity. Shawn Elliott made the argument credible, taking Georgia State to four bowls and a Cure Bowl win in 2017, and an upset at Tennessee in 2019 that the program still leads with.

Dell McGee's second season in 2025 collapsed to 1-11 — nine losses by double digits, zero conference wins, the lone victory over an FCS opponent. It was the kind of floor that exposed how thin the foundation still is when a young program loses its footing. McGee enters year three having overhauled his staff, rebuilding the staff structure that the 1-11 season revealed as insufficient, trying to climb back to the bowl level that Elliott proved Georgia State could reach.

The 2026 season will answer the most fundamental question in downtown Atlanta: is Dell McGee's tenure a rebuild with an arc, or is the 1-11 floor evidence that the program's foundation is more fragile than Shawn Elliott's run suggested? The largest university in Georgia is two miles from the best high school talent corridor in the South. Whether the Panthers can finally convert proximity into production is the question the next two seasons will adjudicate.