Beautiful Eagle Creek sits just off Tillman Road in Statesboro, Ga., tracing the edge of the practice field at Georgia Southern University, where for more than four decades, the creek has been considered holy ground.
But to call Beautiful Eagle Creek a creek at all is, well … a stretch. It’s really a drainage ditch. Its water usually sits stagnant, attracting swarms of gnats to the field during the more humid months of the year. When Erk Russell arrived in Statesboro in 1981 to resurrect the football program, he gave it the name and declared its muddy water “magical” to inspire the team.