Shorter College Athletic Director, Bill Peterson, has aggravated the horns off the Berry Vikings Athletics department by publicly submitting a proposal for a two day athletics event to a small Rome newspaper before contacting Berry in private. The proposal features entertainment activities and competitive sports events between Berry and Shorter athletes for the fall of 2014, a year after Berry starts its first football season, and is intended for the entire community. In his message to Berry, Peterson communicated that he believes this idea has the potential to become the most significant sporting event in the history of this community in addition to attracting possible state or national exposure.

Berry officials were not happy with the pre-publicity of these plans without their input or review and responded to Peterson with the following statement provided by Berry, "We just received the proposal Monday morning. We wish the Shorter AD had discussed it with us first before sharing it with others. Our commitment is to Division 3 and its distinctive blend of academics and non-scholarship athletics. We'd be happy to consider the proposal if in the future Shorter chooses to move to Division 3."