Jax State football’s Charles Kelly on potential CFP appearance

JACKSONVILLE — In the new era of college football, there’s a chance that a Group of 5 team can go on a run to the College Football Playoffs.

Coming off a Conference USA title winning season, Jacksonville State football could be one of those teams that makes a run, if they can keep up that same standard under new coach Charles Kelly. The Gamecocks went on an eight-game winning streak, showing what could’ve been capable if they didn’t have an 0-3 start to the 2024 season.

Kelly recently sat down with the Gadsden Times and discussed what it would take for the Gamecocks to make a playoff appearance. He isn’t directly focused on making the playoffs, but rather what they have to do to win each game, as that’s all they can do to be considered.

“What we have to do is focus on what it takes to win every game. That’s what we got to focus on, take it game-by-game. If you win every game, you put yourself in the conversation, now it’s in someone else’s hand but we have to focus on that. Don’t look out there, don’t look at the result. That’s our goal, go game-by-game, if you do that,” Kelly said. “…It’ll never be about someone else, it will always be about us and that’s what we got to focus on.”

The Gamecocks will be replacing almost 40 players off the Conference USA championship team, due to graduation and plenty of players entering their names into the NCAA transfer portal. It led to the new staff hitting the portal hard to try and fill some gaps, and they hope it will help them keep the standard.

“Our standard will never change. Our job is to go out and find the players to replace them. We don’t lower the standard. We have every resource here to be able to attract really good players. I’m not one of those to predict the future but with a lot of the guys we’ve gotten so far, we probably replaced with some really good players,” Kelly said.

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