Shawn Elliott has Georgia State rolling. Next is a return to South Carolina

Shawn Elliott swivels around in his plush black chair and points out the floor-to-ceiling window pane in the back left corner of his office.

The turf at what’s now called Center Parc Stadium — and in a past life was Turner Field, longtime home of the Atlanta Braves — crawls right up to the base of the glass.

Elliott motions out across the playing surface and up toward the concourse.

“I sat, gosh, right there on the first-base line, about 12 rows up,” he said. “I remember watching Mark McGwire and all those guys in that big year. I remember the Dale Murphys, the Bob Horners, the Glenn Hubbards and all their runs to the pennant.”

The converted baseball stadium is barely recognizable from the days Elliott’s childhood heroes patrolled its diamond. The space has since been outfitted with hashmarks and swanky football offices — proof of concept for Elliott, now entering his sixth year at Georgia State. It’s part of the vision athletic director Charlie Cobb pitched the former Steve Spurrier assistant when he took the head coaching job sight unseen in 2017.

“There were plenty of moments right there (our first season) where we all sat around — especially (Shawn) and I, ‘cause we were really close — where I’m like, ‘What in the hell have we gotten ourselves into?’ ” quipped Louisville tight ends coach Josh Stepp, who spent five years on Elliott’s staff.

“It was almost like ‘Field of Dreams,’ ” defensive coordinator Nate Fuqua told The State. “You gotta visualize it. If we build it, they would come kind of deal.”

Georgia State barely registered a blip in the college football universe when Elliott was hired. It had won 10 games total in four years at the FBS level. Its facilities were outdated, at best. The program itself lacked any discernible identity in the crowded Atlanta sports scene.

Enter Elliott.

The fun-loving, hyper-competitive Camden native has transformed the Panthers into one of the Group of Five’s most consistent and physical teams over the last half-decade, reaching bowl games in four of the past five seasons and notching a 2019 upset of Tennessee.

Georgia State enters this year poised for another run at bowl eligibility, if not better. The running back tandem of ex-South Carolina transfer Jamyest Williams and Tucker Gregg are back in the fold. The defense also returns seven starters.

If expectations meet reality, Elliott is sure to have bigger schools knocking on his door. But glancing at the rain sputtering outside his window, his focus is on the now.

It’s only seven years ago Elliott was thrust into the interim coaching position following Spurrier’s sudden retirement. His final year as an assistant at USC came the following year after working for Will Muschamp.

On Saturday, “now” entails a season opener against Shane Beamer and South Carolina, in a city and stadium he’s plenty familiar with, guiding a Georgia State program he’s flipped on its head.

“I remember when I walked up to the facility (for the first time) — and this is about a mile up the street — I thought I was walking into, really, a penitentiary,” Elliott said Georgia State’s old football digs. “The practice field had turf on it that looked like outdoor carpet. There was a barbed-wire fence around it.

“I can remember thinking to myself, ‘Wow, how are we gonna do this?’ ” he continued. “But through the trust in Charlie Cobb that I had, he had told me his plan to build our operations facility, purchasing this stadium. And here we are.”

‘I’m getting ready for this game’

Understanding Elliott’s personality takes some mental gymnastics. He’s equal parts friendly, funny and inviting as he is a blood-pumping, hellfire-spewing football guy, depending on the moment.

His face lights up talking about his golden retrievers Champ, 8, and Charlie, 10, that roam through the offices. Whenever the team needs a morale boost, he enlists the help of his trusty pups to hang out with players and bring a few smiles to the squad. It’s part of keeping things light, he explains, in what can be a long and taxing season.

That brief spiel grounded in a life lesson is preceded by an exuberant Elliott shifting backward in his seat when prompted on his pregame rituals. Clasping his iPhone in his left hand, he turns toward the back portion of his L-shaped desk to reach the Bluetooth speaker he’s turned down to a hushed volume.

Elliott begins listing off the artists on his pump-up playlist, increasing the sound on the speaker as he thumbs through his music library.

There’s the Foo Fighters classic “Times Like These.” Metallica’s “No Leaf Clover” is on the list. A recent favorite? “Chop Suey!” by System Of A Down.

“I’m definitely going with the hard rock,” Elliott said, laughing. “Something that gets your blood boiling a little bit.”

That intensity isn’t new.

Pregame at Williams-Brice Stadium during the Spurrier era included Elliott shaking shoulder pads, chest-bumping breastplates and barking inspirational messages.

“I think on the sideline, he’d wear a short-sleeve shirt if it was 25, 30 degrees,” Spurrier told The State. “I don’t think I ever saw him in a long-sleeve shirt or coat. That’s just sort of his nature.”

Added Stepp: “That three and a half hours of a game day, somehow he finds a way to take himself to another level. But I’ll tell you, he’s the best I’ve ever been around about putting it behind him. ... He refuses to let football run his life. He’s got such a positive outlook every day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy have a bad day.”

Elliott laughs explaining his intensity between the lines. It’s part of who he is.

He smiles remembering the coat and tie he donned for a trek to Penn State, his first road trip as head coach at Georgia State. Elliott got to thinking — what was he doing putting on a coat and tie just to get on a plane and a bus? He hates coats and ties.

Elliott has opted for a team warmup suit and a pair of headphones ever since.

“Most head coaches don’t go out there and get fired up before the games and raise hell,” he said. “I still sit in my office and I’m just like a player in the locker room. I’ve got that door closed, this music up and nobody bothering me, because I’m getting ready for this game.

“Just be true to who you are,” he continued. “Don’t ever change.“

A fire burning from App State to South Carolina

Where Elliott’s competitive fire spawns from is a matter of opinion. It’s always been there to some degree, furthered by those who didn’t think he could cut it.

Elliott didn’t get a look from Appalachian State as a player coming out of Camden until his father, Charles, called legendary head coach Jerry Moore late in the recruiting process, landing a chance to work out for the staff.

It took a commitment falling through even later in the cycle for Moore to phone Charles to gauge the family’s interest in the half-scholarship that had suddenly opened.

“I didn’t even finish the sentence,” Moore told The State. “(Charles) said, ‘We’ll take it.’ ”

Elliott became a four-time letterman and team captain between 1992 and 1995 on the defensive line. His senior season, he helped the Mountaineers to a 12-1 record, including wins over Wake Forest and three ranked Division I-AA (now-FCS) opponents.

Moore’s deep admiration for his ex-captain was, at least in part, why he offered him a position on the Appalachian State staff shortly after graduation — a spot Elliott kept under varying titles for 13 seasons.

“He probably put out a lot of fires that I didn’t even know existed,” Moore said. “I’ve always had great respect for him.”

Locally, there are plenty who insist Elliott never got a fair shake when handed the impossible task of taking over for Spurrier six games into South Carolina’s 2014 season.

Elliott is more diplomatic about the situation.

He recounts heading to a workout with some of the younger players. Spurrier had just let it slip to a handful of older players that he was retiring. The message spread. Elliott and the rest of the team were called into a meeting 15 minutes later.

Athletic director Ray Tanner and deputy athletic director Charles Waddell met with the staff shortly thereafter. Interviews with a handful of folks about the interim job followed.

By 9:30 p.m., Tanner and Waddell entered Elliott’s office to chat. Elliott received a call at home a little after midnight informing him he’d been put in charge of the program.

“My wife was terribly upset because we’re all thinking we’re losing our job,” Elliott said. “And then here I am, I’m excited, because I’m going to be the interim head coach at University of South Carolina.”

Elliott held things together as best he could, albeit the topsy-turvy nature of a coaching search amid a lost season added increased weight. The loss to The Citadel in November 2015 didn’t exactly help the cause, either.

Muschamp eventually kept Elliott on as the offensive line coach in 2016, before the latter took the head coaching job at Georgia State.

Cobb notes the interim role at South Carolina was part of the appeal in hiring Elliott, who he worked with during his time as the athletic director at Appalachian State, over the 12 other candidates he interviewed.

“The win-loss results (1-5 as interim coach) weren’t what he wanted or, I think, what Carolina would want,” Cobb said. “But, at the end of the day, you’re dealt an interesting card, if you will, in terms of a midseason leadership change. You kind of see what someone is made of.”

Anatomy of an upset in Knoxville and beyond

Georgia State offensive coordinator Brad Glenn snagged a blue felt-tip marker and scrawled a single word on the white board in the visiting locker room at Neyland Stadium.

“Believe,” it read.

No, the message wasn’t an overt homage to Apple TV’s “Ted Lasso.” That show wouldn’t debut until a year later.

Glenn’s verbiage was, instead, part of the anatomy of Georgia State’s season-opening upset of Tennessee in 2019, encouraging players to “believe” they could outlast a program that has played more complete seasons of football (118) than the Panthers have played games (109).

Part II of that equation was less subjective. It simply entailed out-executing the Volunteers to the tune of a 38-30 win.

“We were the better team that day,” said Cobb, who played college football at N.C. State. “We played hard. We played tough. And it was exciting to see, OK, that’s a one-time thing, but here’s the potential.”

Elliott-coached teams have made a habit of matching perceived favorites. Clipping Tennessee was a start. Georgia State came inches away from beating Auburn last fall, giving up a go-ahead touchdown with 45 seconds remaining.

Oh, yeah, Elliott was also an assistant on the Appalachian State team that downed Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2007 for one of college football’s greatest upsets.

He’ll get two more shots at Power Five opponents in 2022, trekking to South Carolina on Saturday and welcoming North Carolina for a home game the following week.

“He is wirrrrred,” Moore said. “You take the Michigan game, they ought to just make a movie on him. He just had that charisma about him.”

“Who would have thought in 2017 that North Carolina would travel down here?” added current Georgia State offensive coordinator Trent McKnight. “And I’m sure some of the schedulers already had that stuff planned out, but it’s exciting just to see because when we first got here, it was a baseball field out there.”

Elliott points behind his seat, toward a picture of his family huddling together on the field at Neyland Stadium after the Tennessee win.

His wife, Summer, a former Appalachian State tennis star from Chattanooga, hadn’t planned on attending the game. Her family is littered with Volunteers — including Summer’s mother, father and brother.

Summer’s grandmother, also a UT grad, even told Shawn years ago not to take the offensive line job at South Carolina, “because she was that big of a Tennessee fan,” Shawn said, laughing.

But as game week arrived, Shawn felt an internal tug. He wanted Summer to be in Knoxville.

“That is as true of a story (as there is),” Shawn insists. “They were not going on Tuesday. I said, ‘You need to go.’ For whatever reason, it was just one of those feelings.”

Summer and the kids, Maddyn and Max, will be at Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday. It’s only a short trek from the family’s home base in Lake Catherine, where Summer and the kids live.

Shawn splits his weeks between the family’s house outside Columbia and a condo a few minutes from the football facility in Atlanta. That arrangement has put more than 27,000 miles on the black GMC Sierra he bought last June, but the comfort of home, Elliott said, is well worth it.

Asked about returning to South Carolina for the season opener, he smirks. Elliott has heard pleas for tickets from friends and family for weeks.

He’s been more than willing to dole out his few extra stubs — though there’s a caveat.

“They’ve gotta wear blue,” Elliott said, starting to chuckle. “We’ll turn ‘em away at the ticket booth if they show up in garnet and black.”