JSU football: What the Gamecocks should expect in their first FBS season

On Tuesday morning, Jacksonville State center Treylen Brown was one of two players to usher the Gamecocks into the FBS spotlight when he addressed reporters at Conference USA Media Days.
“We’re trailblazers,” Brown said. “And I was speaking to my dad about it, and it was like yeah, it is going to be a historic year regardless. This is huge. We’ve never been this high, and we’re excited.”
There are many reasons for the Jax State faithful to celebrate the move, but it's too early to know if those positive feelings will persist when the Gamecocks come face-to-face with its first FBS schedule.
On Saturday, the media picked Jacksonville State to finish seventh in Conference USA ahead of only Florida International and fellow first-year FBS team Sam Houston State.
“So we’re not even in the top half, but we weren’t picked in the top half of the ASUN last year either.” Rich Rodriguez said. “I tell everybody we made the top half possible.”
Rodriguez and the Gamecocks managed to win the ASUN after finishing 9-2 overall and 5-0 in conference play.
No one has to tell Jacksonville State that things likely won’t be so easy this season.
“It is certainly going to be a challenge,” Rodriguez said. “We didn’t, some people, when you make this move they, try to flip the entire roster as quickly as they can. We just went about it as a normal process.
“Like I said, we have good players, we inherited some good players, so that was good. And we think we’ve done a pretty good job recruiting. The thing I’m proud of is how our guys come to work and how they realize that, hey, it is a different level. We need to step up our work ethic a little bit, and our commitment to football and the university has done that, the staff has certainly done that, and I think our players have as well.”
The last four FCS teams that leapt to the FBS level experienced mixed results during their first few years.
James Madison went 7-3 against FBS competition when the Dukes moved up last year.
Before them, Liberty went 4-6 against FBS teams in 2018 before rebounding to go 6-5 in 2019.
Coastal Carolina went 3-8 against FBS squads in its first FBS season in 2017 before finishing with a winning record in 2020 when the Chanticleers beat 10 of 11 FBS foes. Charlotte, which moved up in 2015, didn’t go .500 or better against the FBS until its fourth season.
When asked if the Gamecocks could compete with the rest of the conference right away, Rodriguez said he believes they can, although he added that it’s hard to know how things will shake out when you’ve never played that schedule before.
“We’ve got some good players,” he said. “They’ve got a great attitude. I really love our staff and think everybody at the university is behind us and everybody in our community.
“So it is going to be a lot of fun, and certainly joining Conference USA with the schedule that we have and particularly some of the exposure that we are going to get with the midweek games in October is going to be a big boon. Not only for our program but for the university and the city of Jacksonville.”