Once more, the Georgia Southern Athletics Department is exploring the past with its True Blue Unlocked program. The Spring '25 collection takes inspiration from the early years of Georgia Southern Baseball, paying homage to legendary coach Jack Stallings.
Rolling out the new collection, Southern Exchange Company has resurrected more vaulted logos from The Eagle Baseball locker room, offering a new and unique spin to our historic 39 seasons with Jack Staillings and winning tradition.
A common theme throughout the collection is that of a drawing done by Roger Inman on the side of the home dugout during the time when Jack Stallings was at the helm for the Eagles. The piece was a painting of the GS strutting Gus logo with the singular phrase "You gotta love it," written in cursive underneath it. In an interview with Georgia Southern Athletics, Inman remembers "laying it up on the
wall, sketching it out by hand, and coming in the next day and painting it by hand the old-fashioned way with little art brushes. But it made it look great back then."
"Jack had a lot of one-liners," Inman said when reflecting on the legendary coach. When asked about the quote he created into a visual form that the Eagle baseball team and community could see, Inman was not hesitant on saying that Coach Stallings "used it daily. Everyone would ask him how he was doing, and he'd say, 'hey, you gotta love it'. You're out here doing it all day, you gotta love it".
The IT that Coach Stallings would mention daily was the ins and outs of the season, and simply, the game of baseball, or as Inman would put it, "the best sport in America." Stallings and his teams loved IT. They loved the daily grind, and as Inman puts it, it was tough to get them to quit. "They would turn the lights on and stay out here until seven or eight at night, and I would tell them 'you gotta go home because we gotta go home.' And they wouldn't do it. They would stay out here and practice, practice, practice for endless hours."
Not only is the collection an homage to Roger Inman and his legendary dugout piece, but also Coach Stallings and the mark he made on Georgia Southern University. "Wherever he went, he made an impact," Inman said about the legendary skipper. "He was very good at teaching the game of baseball to you, the spectators, the players, and anybody around him. He was just a hell of a teacher of the game… You don't forget those people."
The apparel and non-apparel products will be available at Southern Exchange Company in-store and at J.I. Clements Stadium.