Gamecocks

For more than four decades after taking the field in 1904, the football team at Jacksonville State answered to Eagle Owls. The switch to Gamecocks came in 1947, and the fighting bird has stuck ever since, following the program through three divisions of American college football rather than one.

The clearest evidence of that climb sits in 1992, when Jacksonville State beat Pittsburg State 17–13 for the NCAA Division II national title, a four-point margin that still stands as the program's high-water mark at that level. Moving up cost them a rematch with the summit: in 2015, in the Football Championship Subdivision, they reached the national final only to lose to North Dakota State. Nine Ohio Valley Conference championships between 2003 and 2020 carried them through that grade before a step up again, first to the ASUN Conference in 2022, then into the Football Bowl Subdivision as members of Conference USA, which they won at the first attempt in 2024. The New Orleans Bowl followed in 2023, the Salute to Veterans Bowl in 2025 — bowl wins that would have meant nothing to the Division II sides of 1992.

Troy is the fixture that carries the most weight now, the two sides meeting for the Ol' School Bell, while the older rivalry with Samford, running back to 1905, has sat untouched since 2013. Among those who passed through, Mike Wallace went on to an NFL career at wide receiver, one of the names Jacksonville State points to when the subject turns to the professional game.

Home games are played in Jacksonville, Alabama, at a 22,500-seat ground now known as AmFirst Stadium, red and white still the colours on the field where the Eagle Owls once played.