The 2014 season will be the fifth for Georgia State football. The team has experienced its share of growing pains, including going winless last year. The Panthers are hoping to turn their fortunes around with the introduction of a new quarterback—Nick Arbuckle.
Arbuckle is a 6’1, 230 pound quarterback from Camarillo, California. He played at Saint Bonaventure High before entering the junior college ranks at Los Angeles-Pierce College. In his first season with Georgia State, Arbuckle says there is a lot of preparation being done for the season.
Nick Arbuckle will battle to be the next starting quarterback of the Panthers.
“We’re looking forward to the upcoming season a lot. We’re preparing every single day for it,” Arbuckle said. “It’s a big driving force behind us being out here every single day. More importantly, we’re just looking forward to spring practice and putting on the pads again.”
He could enter the season as the starter as head coach Head Coach Trent Miles has already given plenty of praise to Arbuckle, including referring to him as a “brainiac”.
The team also has last year’s starter Ronnie Bell, Clay Chastain and Ben McLane competing for the starting job. As for Arbuckle, he hopes that his tenure with the team can be the start of Georgia State’s ascent in college football.
“Hopefully we can begin to establish something here that people can carry on into the future and establish a tradition of winning,” said Arbuckle. “It would allow Georgia State to attract more three-star and four-star athletes coming out of the state of Georgia and make more high school athletes want to come here to build the prestige and popularity of the school.”
Los Angeles-Pierce College had struggled prior to Arbuckle’s arrival. During his time with L.A. Pierce, the team won two conference bowl games.
They defeated the Mount San Jacinto College Eagles 37-34 in 2012 in the Patriot Bowl and the Chaffey Panthers 21-13 last year in the American Division Championship Bowl. He describes the junior college bowl game as two of the proudest moments of his career.
“Pierce College had won only three games the year before and weren’t really a great program,” Arbuckle said. “They were always hovering around .500. So, being able to go there and helping them turn around, go 9-2 and win our bowl game was really amazing,” said Arbuckle.
University of Nevada-Las Vegas, New Mexico State, the University of Massachusetts and Virginia Tech all tried to recruit Arbuckle, but he said Georgia State contacted him first.
“To see everyone’s faces and the way they reacted after that because we had a lot of guys on the team that hadn’t really won before and hadn’t been part of any high school championship teams, so it was all new to them. Personally, I’ve always been part of championship teams, so winning is what I expect to do.”
That consistency of winning is why Arbuckle had several schools vying for him coming out of L.A.-Pierce.
Among the schools that attempted to recruit him included the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, New Mexico State, the University of Massachusetts and Virginia Tech. Despite the stiff competition for him, Arbuckle chose Georgia State in what was hailed as a recruiting coup for the Panthers.
“I guess one of the big things that led me here would be the fact that the program didn’t do too well in the past, and that it’s just in the beginning,” said Arbuckle. “I think the opportunity to create something new rather than to continue something on. It’s kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Arbuckle said that Georgia State was the first school to offer him a scholarship.
“Coach [Luke] Huard, our quarterbacks coach was the first college coach to really talk to me. This school was the first to really profess their belief in me.”
Arbuckle was not only impressed with the rapport that he has built with the quarterbacks coach. The rest of the Georgia State coaching staff, including second-year head coach Trent Miles also left an impression on the Panthers’ new quarterback.
“Before Coach Miles came into Indiana State, it was a horrible program. That played a really big role in me coming here to believe that there was an opportunity to change things here,” Arbuckle said.
“Before Coach Miles came into Indiana State, it was a horrible program. That played a really big role in me coming here to believe that there was an opportunity to change things here,” Arbuckle said.
His play at L.A.-Pierce earned him high praise from his former coach. In 2013, he completed nearly 60 percent of his passes and threw 26 touchdowns. Efrain Martinez said that Arbuckle was the best quarterback ever to come out of the school.
“It was a great honor to play for [Coach Martinez] and play for the team. I was fortunate enough to have some great receivers to throw to as well,” said Arbuckle. “We had more guys from our receiving corps go to Division-I than any junior college had in the nation.”
In addition to a receiving corps that has since landed at other Division-I schools, Arbuckle’s style of play has contributed to his huge statistical numbers. Scouts and observers describe him as a prolific passer who can make plays outside of the pocket.
“I was almost the same size now that I was when I was in eighth grade, so I was a monster compared to everyone else because I had grown so quickly,” said Arbuckle. “So, I was able to run around, be creative and do more things because I was such a superior athlete to everyone else my age.”
Between his junior high, high school and college days, Arbuckle’s style of play is well established. Arbuckle may have developed his ability as a running quarterback in junior high school, but his passion for the game of football dates back even further than that.
Arbuckle said that his love for football started when he was 2 or 3-years-old starting with video games until he was introduced to the contact aspect of the sport.
“Then, once I started playing when I was 7-years-old, I just fell in love with the contact of it. As I got older I loved to hit people, which is something you don’t get to do often when playing quarterback, but it happens to be what I’m pretty good at.”
Arbuckle first got into football by his family and video games, but fell in love with it after first experiencing the contact aspect of the game.
Arbuckle said he would likely be a linebacker if he were not playing quarterback because of the contact.
Arbuckle has had to adjust from the big city of Los Angeles to the big city of Atlanta in a short period of time. Arbuckle said the people in Atlanta are nicer then in Los Angeles, but he said one-way streets, walking around campus and humidity are the some of the things he has to get used to in Atlanta and Georgia State.
However, Arbuckle said Atlanta’s recent snowy weather was a “culture shock.”
“I’ve never seen snow before,” Arbuckle said. “I grew up about 5 to 10 miles from the beach, so we typically had perfect weather.”
Atlanta is a slightly smaller metropolitan area than Los Angeles, but Georgia State University is a bigger school than is L.A. Pierce. For Arbuckle, the transition is not only about going from one big city to another, but from a community college to a larger, more traditional university.
“It’s been different. Going through the recruiting process, I always told myself that I didn’t want to end up in a city. I’ve never liked cities before. I don’t really party, drink, or do anything like that, so there’s really never been a draw to the city for me,” Arbuckle said.
Whether he ends up as the starting quarterback or not, Arbuckle wanted to assure Georgia State football fans that the team will be better after last year’s winless campaign.
“We’re definitely going to be winning games. A lot of games. I have been around winning programs before. I know what a winning program feels like, I know what the attitude is like. In my freshman year, we had 23 guys go to Division-I schools, and 13 are starting right now. The talent we have here is just as good, if not better than those guys that started in other places.
“The coaching you have here is better than any you’re going to find in the Sun Belt. The opportunity to win here is very real. It’s just going to take time for people to see and for them to start believing in us.”
