Georgia Southern and Georgia State have only competed against each other in football since 2014. They played annually in basketball from the 1971–72 to 1980–81 seasons, 1995–96 and 1996–97, and 2009–10 to 2013–14 out-of-conference and as conference mates from the 1985–86 to 1991–92 seasons in the Trans America Athletic Conference (which is now the
Atlantic Sun Conference) and since the 2014–15 season in the
Sun Belt Conference. Starting in December 2009, the two teams went nearly 10 years without losing a home game to their rival. The streak was snapped on March 9, 2019 when Georgia State won in Statesboro by a score of 90–85. Georgia Southern has a 42–31 lead in the all-time basketball series. Because both schools can be abbreviated GSU, a point of conflict between the two is the claim by either fan base that their university is, in fact, "the real GSU." Georgia State lays claim to the initials as it became a university (and therefore GSU) in 1969 while Georgia Southern did not achieve university status until 1990. Both schools are referred to as GSU colloquially in their region of the state, though Georgia State is the only one of the two that officially brands itself "GSU." In 2014, when Georgia Southern joined the Sun Belt Conference (the conference Georgia State joined the year prior), Georgia Southern updated its branding and media guidelines to explicitly state the school should be referred to as "Georgia Southern" or "GS" to avoid confusion in the media. But fixtures on their campus such as the "GSU" hedge and traditions like the marching band's "GSU Scramble" remain. The rivalry intensified after the hire of former
Appalachian State (
longtime rival of Georgia Southern) athletic director Charlie Cobb to the same position at Georgia State University. During Georgia State's press release introducing Cobb, he revealed that Georgia Southern's athletic director Tom Kleinlein told him "welcome, now the war is on." The two teams first met on the gridiron during the 2014 football season. During the run up to the game, fans from both teams expressed their dislike for the other over social media outlets such as
Twitter. Students at the time used the hashtags "SouthernNotState" and "StateNotSouthern" in their tweets to differentiate which GSU they attended. Both schools adopted the phrases as a slogan that defined their side of the rivalry. During the period before the game, a beat writer for
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution dubbed the matchup as "Modern Day Hate," a play on the rivalry between
Georgia and
Georgia Tech:
Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate. After the game, Georgia Southern fans unrolled a banner saying "Paulson Stadium North" claiming the stadium as their own and cementing the rivalry. The following season, Georgia State handed Georgia Southern their worst home defeat in school history with a final score of 34–7. The football series is currently tied 6–6. In 2024, the schools announced the intent to stop calling the football game "Modern Day Hate" alongside a partnership with the
Georgia Department of Agriculture to rename the rivalry the Georgia Grown Bowl, named after the department's "Georgia Grown" marketing campaign. The two schools will begin competing for the Commissioner's Cup trophy. ==Football game results==