Jacksonville State Gamecocks Football

Eagle Owls, Gamecocks and a Division II crown

Football at Jacksonville State University, in the Calhoun County town of Jacksonville, Alabama, dates from 1904, when the side played as the Eagle Owls in blue and gold. The rebrand to the Fighting Gamecocks, with red and white colours, came before the 1947 season, the same autumn the stadium now known as AmFirst Stadium opened as the College Bowl on 15 November 1947.

For most of its history the programme competed below the sport's top tier. After a long spell in the Gulf South Conference from 1970 to 1992, it won the NCAA Division II national championship in 1992, beating Pittsburg State 17-13 a year after losing the final to the same opponent. The move up to the Division I Football Championship Subdivision followed in 1995, and the Ohio Valley Conference became home from 2003 to 2020.

The FCS years produced the programme's other defining result. In the 2015 season Jacksonville State reached the national championship game and lost 37-10 to North Dakota State, the sport's dominant lower-division power. That defeat is one reason the August 2026 trip to Fargo carried more weight than a normal season opener.

The jump to FBS and a first bowl win

After a single season in the ASUN Conference in 2022, Jacksonville State joined Conference USA for 2023 and with it the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top level of the college game. Rich Rodriguez, the former West Virginia and Michigan head coach, oversaw the transition after taking the job for the 2022 season and winning the ASUN title that year.

The first FBS campaign ended with the programme's first bowl win at that level. On 16 December 2023 the Gamecocks beat Louisiana 34-31 in overtime at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. Twelve months later they went one better on the conference stage, hammering Western Kentucky 52-12 in the 2024 Conference USA Championship Game, before a 30-27 defeat to Ohio in the Cure Bowl on 20 December 2024 closed a 9-5 season.

Across all divisions the programme now counts 25 conference championships, 18 of them outright, and a bowl record of eight wins and three losses. Its oldest rivalries are with Samford, whom it leads 23-21-2, and Troy, in a series known as the Battle for the Ol' School Bell that had lain dormant since 2001 until a chance meeting in December 2025.

Charles Kelly comes home

Rodriguez's departure after the 2024 title left the job open, and on 20 December 2024 the university hired Charles Kelly, then Auburn's co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach. Kelly, born in Ozark, Alabama, on 8 September 1967, played defensive back at Auburn from 1986 to 1989 and had already spent five years on the Jacksonville State staff between 1994 and 1998, working his way from running backs coach to defensive coordinator.

The intervening quarter-century took him through Georgia Tech, Florida State, where he was defensive coordinator from 2014 to 2017 and part of the 2013 national championship staff, then Tennessee, Alabama from 2019 to 2022, including the unbeaten 2020 title season, and a year as Colorado's defensive coordinator in 2023. Jacksonville State is his first head-coaching post.

His first season, in 2025, finished 9-5 overall and 7-1 in Conference USA. Wins over Liberty on 6 September, Sam Houston in overtime on 9 October and Kennesaw State on 15 November set up a home Conference USA Championship Game on 5 December 2025 against the same Kennesaw State side. In front of 18,142 at AmFirst Stadium the Gamecocks led in the fourth quarter through touchdown runs from Cam Cook and quarterback Caden Creel, only for Amari Odom's 11-yard touchdown pass with 51 seconds left to hand the Owls a 19-15 win and end hopes of back-to-back titles.

The consolation came eleven days later. On 16 December 2025 at the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery, Jacksonville State beat Troy 17-13 in the Salute to Veterans Bowl, reviving the Ol' School Bell rivalry for the first time since 2001. Creel completed 14 of 20 passes for 173 yards and a touchdown and was named the game's most valuable player as the defence picked off Troy's Tucker Kilcrease twice.

Where things stand in September 2026

The winter brought staff turnover rather than upheaval. Offensive coordinator Clint Trickett left on 19 December 2025 to become quarterbacks coach at Arkansas, and three days later tight ends coach Taylor Housewright was promoted to replace him. Adam Ross, previously assistant head coach and offensive line coach at Murray State, joined on 15 January 2026 to run the offensive line. Defensive coordinator Brian Williams is in his second season.

The 2026 season opened badly. On 29 August, in front of 18,537 at the Fargodome, North Dakota State beat the Gamecocks 33-7. Jacksonville State managed 170 yards of total offence and held the ball for under 24 minutes; Creel completed 12 of 23 passes for 85 yards with an interception. Kelly's own diagnosis, quoted in a preview published on 4 September by Diehard Sports Network, was that on seven of ten possessions his side faced second down with 11 or more yards to go.

The response, on 5 September at AmFirst Stadium, was emphatic. A crowd of 19,677 watched a 49-7 win over Eastern Kentucky, the 20th meeting between the two old Ohio Valley Conference rivals. Creel threw five touchdown passes, four of them to Jamill Williams from 13, 55, 30 and four yards, plus a 24-yarder to Luke Gilbert. Jalen Likely added a 45-yard scoring run, Caleb Nix returned an interception 43 yards for a touchdown, and the offence that had been so stagnant a week earlier finished with 526 yards, 352 of them through the air.

That leaves the record at 1-1 with the conference schedule still to come. Next up, on 12 September, is a trip to Ohio in Athens, a rematch of the 2024 Cure Bowl, followed by home games against Georgia Southern on 19 September and Middle Tennessee on 26 September. Sam Houston visit for Homecoming on 7 November and the regular season ends at Delaware on 28 November. The programme has won nine games in each of its three FBS seasons and reached the last two Conference USA title games, so anything less than a third straight appearance would count as a step back.

AmFirst Stadium, the home ground

The ground has grown with the programme. Opened in 1947 with room for 5,000, it was expanded to 8,500 in 1965, gained a student section that lifted capacity to 15,000 in 1978, and was rebuilt in 2010 in a 47 million dollar project that added a seven-storey Stadium Tower with 33 luxury suites and pushed capacity to 24,000. It was known as Paul Snow Stadium from 1961 to 2009 and as Burgess-Snow Field at JSU Stadium until July 2024, when America's First Federal Credit Union bought a five-year naming-rights deal. The listed capacity is now 22,500 and the surface has been artificial ProGrass turf since 2005.

Demand has followed results. The record crowd of 24,166 came on 15 November 2025 for the regular-season win over Kennesaw State, and the 2025 season's average home attendance of 19,993 ranked 97th of all FBS programmes, a respectable figure for a town of modest size competing against Alabama and Auburn for the state's attention. The stadium hosted the Conference USA Championship Game on 5 December 2025 and drew 18,142 on a Friday night for it.