Tracking the Gamecocks

A Championship Tradition

After seeing the 2019-20 cut short due the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gamecocks persevered through an unprecedented 2020-21 season and found a new conference home along the way . The JSU football team was the lone sport allowed to compete during the fall semester due to the Ohio Valley Conference’s COVID policies, forcing all 17 sports to compete either in the winter or spring semesters . The Gamecocks did just that and excelled, winning three conference titles and finishing third in the OVC Commissioner’s Cup standings . The run saw the Gamecock volleyball football and women’s golf teams win titles in what was their final seasons in the OVC . The school announced in January that it would be rejoining the ASUN Conference and on the ground floor of the start of ASUN Football . The Gamecocks’ membership in their new conference home began on July 1 . The Gamecocks will rejoin the ASUN – the league that was its first Division I conference home - after an 18-year stay in the Ohio Valley Conference that produced some of the most decorated years in JSU’s storied history . The ASUN expansion includes JSU, Eastern Kentucky and Central Arkansas and brings the league’s membership to 12 teams . The ASUN also announced its plans to add FCS football to the league’s list of sponsored sports for the first time in the conference’s 43-year history . The addition of football gives the league something it didn’t have when JSU left to join the OVC in 2003, allowing the Gamecocks to play football in the same conference as its other sports . It will make the ASUN the 15th NCAA Division I conference to sponsor FCS Football . With the addition of Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky and Jacksonville State, the ASUN Conference expands its geographic footprint to seven states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia) and now features 12 of the top-80 media markets in the nation and seven of the top-50 . The move to the ASUN is one that will allow the Gamecocks a better geographic fit than in the Ohio Valley Conference, where JSU is over 209 miles south of the closest school . JSU’s new conference home features three schools closer than the nearest in the OVC, including Kennesaw State, which is just 85 miles from JSU’s campus . Also in the league is one of the Gamecocks’ oldest rivals in North Alabama, located just 146 miles away in Florence . Jacksonville State, whose previous membership in the ASUN stretched from 1995-2003, is coming off a dominant run in the OVC that saw the Gamecocks win 81 conference championship trophies . They also made over 50 trips to NCA A postseason play, honored hundreds of all-conference players and dozens of All-Americans .