Back When: The day Jacksonville State hit the map

Jacksonville State had been climbing for a long time before anybody outside Alabama noticed.

Division II powerhouse in the Gulf South Conference. National champions in 1992, beating Pittsburg State 17–13 after losing three previous championship games. Then the jump to I-AA in the mid-1990s. Southland Conference. Ohio Valley Conference. Two league titles in Jack Crowe’s first two OVC seasons. A $64 million stadium expansion underway. A growing belief inside the program that the FBS was not a fantasy — it was a destination.

None of that registered nationally. FCS programs don’t get attention for climbing. They get attention for arriving.

Jacksonville State arrived on Sept. 4, 2010, in Oxford, Miss.

The Gamecocks were paid $300,000 to play the role of sacrificial lamb at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Everybody in the building understood the arrangement. Ole Miss was starting the season with a new quarterback controversy — Oregon transfer Jeremiah Masoli had been declared eligible the day before — and the Rebels needed a tune-up game to sort it out in front of 55,768 fans.

It went according to script for 30 minutes. Ole Miss scored twice in the first five minutes. By halftime, the lead was 31-10 and the Rebels had outgained JSU 323 yards to 70.

In the visiting locker room, Crowe — 62 years old, 36 years into a coaching career that had taken him from Arkansas to rock bottom and back — told his team they were going to win.

“I told them this would be a great day,” Crowe said afterward. “I told them that, but I wasn’t real sure about that.”

The Gamecocks outscored Ole Miss 24-3 in the second half.

They scored 21 points in the fourth quarter alone, the last on a 19-yard pass from Marques Ivory to Alan Bonner with 10 seconds left. Ivory’s two-point conversion pass to La’Ray Williams tied it and sent the game to overtime.

What happened next should have been the end. In the second overtime, Ole Miss took a 48-41 lead on a 2-yard Enrique Davis touchdown run. JSU’s answer stalled at the 30-yard line — fourth-and-15, season on the line.

Coty Blanchard was 18 years old. A true freshman from Cherokee County High, Alabama’s Mr. Football one year earlier. He found Kevyn Cooper in the back of the end zone for the touchdown, then audibled out of a designed short pass on the two-point try and threw to Calvin Middleton, who fought his way across the goal line.

Jacksonville State 49, Ole Miss 48.

“I just wanted to get the ball into my playmakers’ hands,” Blanchard said. “This is huge. We’ve been waiting for a win like this forever.”

Crowe understood what had just happened better than anyone in the stadium. He was the only person there who had been on both sides of a game like that.

In 1992, he was the head coach at Arkansas. His Razorbacks lost their season opener to The Citadel. By the start of the following week, Crowe was out of a job.

Now he was on the other end of it — his FCS program had just taken down an SEC team in its own stadium. On the field, he couldn’t hold it together. By the time he reached the locker room, neither could anyone else.

“I’m not sure this feels as good,” Crowe said, “as that felt bad.”

The empathy came immediately. Houston Nutt, the Ole Miss coach, had been one of Crowe’s assistants at Arkansas. They were friends. Crowe knew exactly what Nutt’s locker room felt like because he had lived it.

“After the game, I had a sad place in my heart because I know what Houston is fixing to go through,” Crowe said. “At least he doesn’t have to go talk to Frank Broyles.”

The phone started ringing before the bus left Oxford. More than 300 texts. Calls from Sports Illustrated, ESPN and XM Radio. A text from Buffalo Bills coach Chan Gailey. A call from Birmingham surgeon Dr. James Andrews. Old Arkansas boosters Crowe hadn’t heard from in years.

Saturday night, the president of adidas — a complete stranger — called from Oregon to tell Crowe he had watched the entire game.

“I didn’t know that many people had my number,” Crowe said.

He celebrated the way he had as an Auburn assistant in 1982 when the Tigers snapped Bear Bryant’s nine-game winning streak in the Iron Bowl — found a quiet place, had an “adult beverage” and tried to make sense of what just happened.

The following Saturday, JSU christened its expanded 25,000-seat stadium. Crowe called the timing “marketing 101.”

“This is not Division II football anymore, and I really think 80 percent of the people who have been following us don’t know the difference,” he said. “Maybe they saw it Saturday. Division II teams don’t go out and beat SEC teams.”

There are other contenders for the greatest win in Jacksonville State football history. The 1992 national championship. The OVC dynasty that produced six titles in seven years. The last-play, walk-off Hail Mary at Florida State in 2021. All of them have legitimate claims.

But few wins have meant more than what happened in Oxford. That game was a signal — to the program, to the sport and to a national audience that had never bothered to look — that Jacksonville State was not content to stop climbing.

Crowe called the jump to the FBS “inevitable.” He said the $64 million stadium expansion demanded it. He said his team was good enough to contend nationally in the FCS and that the next step was coming.

“We’re going from being the hunter to hunted, and that’s different,” he said. “But bring it on.”

Thirteen years later, the Gamecocks accepted an invitation to join Conference USA and the FBS. They won nine games in their first season and a bowl game in the New Orleans Bowl. In Year 2, they won the conference championship.

The climb Jack Crowe talked about on the bus ride home from Oxford — the one he set in motion with two OVC titles, a near-miss at Florida State and a win at Ole Miss that shook the sport — it happened.

Jacksonville State kept going.

Sources: Doug Segrest, The Birmingham News; Jon Solomon, The Birmingham News; Rod Walker and Rick Cleveland, Clarion-Ledger. Sept. 5–6, 2010.