In two years, Georgia State University will begin competing at the Football Championship Subdivision level. The Panthers will play in the shadow of Georgia and Georgia Tech but hope to build a quick tradition much like Georgia Southern did a generation ago.

Might their future include a rivalry with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga?

“It would be something worth thinking about,” UTC coach Rodney Allison said. “My first instinct is that I’d probably like to play them for a couple of years, but after that I’m not sure.”

Georgia State will play as an independent for the 2010-11 seasons and join the Colonial Athletic Association in 2012. The CAA had five of the 16 teams in last year’s FCS playoffs — Delaware, Richmond, Massachusetts, James Madison and New Hampshire — and has produced a title-game participant at Finley Stadium four of the past five years.

Former Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky coach Bill Curry, who worked the past two years at Baylor School, was named last month as Georgia State’s first coach.

“I’m going to have to be careful as to who we play out of the league, but I have a lot of affection for Chattanooga,” Curry said. “I love Chattanooga. I love Baylor School, and I am eternally grateful to the hospitality and warmth and the fantastic people I’ve met there. I have never experienced anything like it anywhere else, not even in my hometown of Atlanta.

“I think the odds on us wanting to play Chattanooga are pretty good, but I can’t promise anything.”

Georgia State will play home games in the Georgia Dome, which is about 90 minutes from Chattanooga. The Mocs had an annual foe 90 minutes away with Tennessee Tech and played the Golden Eagles from 2002 through ’06, but Tech canceled the series.

Jacksonville State is roughly two hours away and has been an annual foe for the Mocs since 2004.

“I think playing Georgia State would make sense, but I think you still have to look at everything you are doing from a scheduling standpoint,” Allison said. “You have to figure out if that’s the level of school you want to play to fill that year’s schedule. There are some variables involved.”

Allison cited this season as an example, because his Mocs are making early trips to Oklahoma and Florida State, Football Bowl Subdivision teams that very well could be nationally ranked. UTC hasn’t faced two ranked teams at the NCAA’s highest level in the same season since losing to Auburn and Ole Miss in 1971.

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