The Drive to Dixie Promotional Theme for the 1989 NCAA Division I-AA Football National Championship Game During the summer of 1989, Georgia Southern College held a contest to come up with a promotional theme to promote the 1989 NCAA Division I-AA National Championship Football Game. This game was scheduled to be played on the GSC campus in Allen E. Paulson Stadium. Hundreds of suggestions poured in, and a committee of GSC and NCAA officials decided to combine segments of two suggested themes and use "The Drive to Dixie" to generate enthusiasm and support for the game. "Drive" is a term used in football, especially when describing a team moving the ball down the field. "Dixie" has been used for over two centurys to describe the deep south, which the city of Statesboro (home to Georgia Southern) is located within. "The Drive to Dixie" filled the needs for a theme; it spoke of football, it described the geographic location of the game, and it was a catchy name. Below is a recap of what transpired. This article was take from the The NCAA News, the official record of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Host Pulls Poster After Complaints, The NCAA News, November 13, 1989 Georgia Southern College has stopped local distribution of an NCAA poster promoting the Division I-AA Football Championship, to be played December 16 at Stateshoro, Georgia, because of complaints that it had racial undertones. One of those objecting, Georgia Southern art professor Marie T. Cochran, said the poster, which depicts a Southern plantation house with silhouettes of two football players in the foreground, suggests a return to the Old South and slavery. Others took exception to the poster slogan, "The Drive to Dixie." Alfred B. White, director of promotion for the NCAA, said the poster will not be pulled nationally. White said, "We're trying to create an interest all over the country, not just in Bulloch County. I don't know if the people writing those letters realize I'm black, but there is not an intent to have a racial undertone at all," he said. Georgia Southern's Director of Athletics, Dr. David "Bucky" Wagner, said none of the posters already distributed in Statesboro will be recalled, but plans have been scrapped to ask businesses to display them. "As far as the NCAA is concerned, it sent them out nationwide," Wagner said. "We decided not to distribute them locally. Because of the controversy, we just decided not to send any more out." A Statesboro businessman, Jim Tillman of Bulloch Tractor Co., was upset by the school's decision. He called the decision to stop poster distribution a "travesty." White said the purpose of the poster was to "involve the area of the country where the game is." "When we thought of things to symbolize the South, we thought of old willow trees and a mansion," he said. White said he was not offended by the use of "Dixie" and was surprised other blacks were. "All we're talking about is a football game; we're not talking about a rise in the Confederacy," he said. Georgia Southern President Nick Henry caved to pressure from the extremely small group of individuals that complained, and he mandated the college immediately stop distributing the posters. The National Championship was not affected and "The Drive to Dixie" was played on December 16th, with host Georgia Southern defeating Stephen F. Austin University 37-34. Today, almost twenty years later, copies of "The Drive to Dixie" promotional poster and game program have become much sought after collectors' items. Original copies of the poster have been sold for more than $400 through on-line auctions, and color reproductions (marked as reproductions) have sold for more than $200 each.