E-Mail ATLANTA--Absentee property ownership in many small college football towns has a negative impact on permanent residents of those communities, according to a study by a Georgia State University geosciences researcher. The research is the first known attempt to quantify and map local geographies of gameday home investments. Each weekend in the fall tens of thousands of football fans flood into college towns to watch their favorite teams kick off against rival schools. Many of them stay in gameday homes, investment properties that sit vacant for much of the year. Taylor Shelton, assistant professor of geosciences and the study's author, examined data from more than a dozen college towns in the South where schools in the Southeastern Conference attract large fan followings. He compared cities like Athens, Ga., Gainesville, Fla., and Auburn, Ala., and developed a study of Starkville, Miss., home of theMississippi State Bulldogs.