2025 CUSA Championship Game Storylines: Jacksonville State vs. Kennesaw State

For the second-straight season, the Conference USA Championship runs through Jacksonville, AL.

The Jacksonville State Gamecocks (8-4, 7-1 CUSA) are only in their third year of FBS membership, but they’re already looking to wrap up their second CUSA title after annihilating WKU 52-12 on the league’s grandest stage last December. This time, Jax State’s opponent is a fellow recent FBS addition. The Kennesaw State Owls (9-3, 7-1 CUSA) more than quadrupled their 2024 win total to qualify as the Gamecocks’ challenger.

Prior to Friday night’s showdown in Jacksonville, Jax State head coach Charles Kelly and Kennesaw State head coach Jerry Mack — both in their first year at the helm — took the podium to discuss the championship matchup.

The birds meet again

The Owls and Gamecocks are quite familiar with each other, and you don’t have to move far back on the calendar to locate their latest entanglement. On Nov. 15, Jacksonville State hosted Kennesaw State in a high-stakes matchup where both teams entered with spotless 5-0 CUSA records.

Jacksonville State emerged in 35-26 fashion in front of its home crowd, utilizing a 62-yard Hail Mary right before halftime, run game dominance, and four defensive interceptions to spoil the Owls’ perfect conference record. But Jax State head coach Charles Kelly acknowledges that a rematch is a completely different ballgame. In 2024, teams that won the first matchup went 2-2 in the conference championship game rematch. One of the results that flipped involved Jax State which lost to WKU in a November regular season matchup but won the important rematch in December.

“When you play, this is a different game,” Kelly said. “If you have aspirations of playing in the NFL or coaching in the NFL and you want to be successful, you’ve gotta play teams twice. That’s just part of this game. That’s part of what you do. It’s going to come down to execution — both teams. Who executes, who plays the best, and that has nothing to do with winning or losing twice.”

Kennesaw State is beyond eager at the opportunity for another shot at the Gamecocks. The Owls lost the turnover battle 4-0 in the first meeting and all four picks occurred within 10 yards of the end zone. Kennesaw State wants to show the defending champions what it can do when not overwhelmed by an avalanche of self-inflicted mistakes.

“Everybody’s really excited about the opportunity to go back to Jacksonville State,” Mack said. “We feel like we kind of let one slip away and made some mistakes. Any time you get a second chance in life to revamp and reconcile about some of the mistakes you made, you get excited about that chance because you know where those traps and where those blindspots lie. That’s the biggest thing these guys are excited about.”

Cooking in the run game

There is no shortage of star power in this matchup. The 2025 CUSA Championship Game features the nation’s leading rusher in Cam Cook. The Jacksonville State running back boasts 1,588 rushing yards to his name — sitting 51 yards short of the number former Gamecock running back Tre Stewart produced last year in the program’s run-heavy offense. After watching Stewart thrive a year ago, albeit a different coaching staff, Cook realized Jax State’s system was perfect for him.

“Cam was looking for an opportunity to be in an offense where he has a chance to run the football, and the only way a guy gets 100 yards is you’ve gotta give it to him,” Kelly said. “Our philosophy offensively is we want to be able to throw the ball to score, but we want to run the ball to win.”

Cook spent the 2023 and 2024 seasons at TCU, ranking atop the Horned Frogs’ roster in rushing yards in 2024. But when he entered the transfer portal, he quickly developed a relationship with running backs coach Maxwell Thurmond which ultimately blossomed into a commitment. Now Cook rides a 7-game streak of producing at least 100 yards and a touchdown. He rushed for 75+ in all 12 games and 100+ in 10 games, reaching the end zone in 10 of the Gamecocks’ 12 outings.

“We didn’t promise him anything,” Kelly said. “Just like anybody else who comes into our program, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a newcomer or whether you’re a freshman, playing time doesn’t have an age limit, it has a maturity limit. If you compete and you’re the best player, we’re gonna play you… All you can do is give a person an opportunity, and that person makes a choice every day to work and earn what he gets, and Cam’s earned everything.”

Avoiding rumors and distractions

One unfortunate reality of conference championship weekend is that it is incredibly marred by the coaching carousel. The carousel already swept through the American Conference, which will pit newly-named Oklahoma State head coach Eric Morris vs. newly-named Florida head coach Jon Sumrall in a matchup between North Texas and Tulane. With other American Conference heavyweights such as Memphis and South Florida also having vacancies, Kennesaw State head coach Jerry Mack is a name floated around in rumors.

“It’s very flattering to have my name brought up. Anytime you put in that work, it’s a good thing,” Mack said. “The reality is, we have a conference championship that we’re preparing for. I don’t concern myself with any of the talks. Obviously, you get texts and calls and things like that. I try to have my phone on silent and mute as much as possible during these teams of the year. We have representation to talk to people if need be, but my total focus to be honest with you is really on this conference championship game.”

Mack didn’t necessarily shoot down any rumors. But the first-year head coach, who arrived after a stint as the Jacksonville Jaguars running backs coach, reiterated his commitment to living in the moment and committing to the now. Kennesaw State can be comfortable with 100 percent buy-in for this weekend, from its first-year head coach, based on what he preaches.

“We talk about being where your feet are,” Mack said. “We all have been on this journey since day one, whether those guys came in January with us, or whether they came in the summertime with us. We cannot let this golden opportunity pass us by. There’s only so many times in the history of your college career or coaching career where you get a chance to play for championships, and you have to really make sure you take every moment in stride. We talk about not having any regrets, and I don’t want to have any regrets looking back 5, 10 years from now. At the end of the day, this team is gonna be a team that comes back and is gonna celebrate Kennesaw State. It will be really good not just celebrating us for a bowl game but also celebrating us for a championship.”

Back in Jax

There are nine conference championship games this weekend. Five of them are hosted at neutral sites. The other four involve a homefield advantage. Jax State earned the homefield opportunity thanks to prevailing in the head-to-head matchup over Kennesaw State on Nov. 15.

AmFirst Stadium has been kind to the Gamecocks. Since joining the FBS, Jax State owns a 16-2 record at home, sweeping visitors with a 5-0 record in Kelly’s inaugural season. The Gamecocks capitalized on homefield advantage in last year’s 52-12 conference title thrashing of WKU, and they enjoy the luxury once again — operating in the same place they defeated Kennesaw State three weeks ago.

“My first home game here was my first home game in about 20 years,” said Kelly, who also served as a Jax State assistant from 1994-98. “Fans, alumni, our ex-players, the tradition of the Marching Southerners — I’d put our band up against anybody in the country… we are a family here, and I take a lot of responsibility of making sure we give our fans and our alumni and our faculty a product they can be proud of. Playing at home, there has definitely been a homefield advantage.”

Championship in year two?

Kennesaw State was not eligible for the CUSA title game in 2024 as a first-year transitioning FBS program. But it didn’t even matter, as the Owls were subject to struggles that many transitioning programs face. They wound up 2-10 and fired head coach Brian Bohanon — who was the team’s first-ever head coach when the university started sponsoring football in 2015.

But in Mack’s first year on campus, the Owls instantly flipped from a doormat into one of the conference’s powerhouses. The coach saw the signs as early as Kennesaw State’s Aug. 29 road game at Wake Forest — a 10-9 defeat ultimately caused by a missed extra point.

“The very first game where we played Wake Forest and ended up losing by one point, I think that’s when I knew we had a football team,” Mack said. “I didn’t know exactly how good we could be because there were a lot of things we needed to clean up. But seeing the fight, the effort, the grit, the toughness that this team applied in a game like that, against a team that you know has more resources, they’re bigger and faster in a lot of ways — those guys didn’t blink.”

Interestingly enough, Wake Forest exceeded all expectations just like Kennesaw State, snatching eight regular season wins after checking in at 16th of 17 in the ACC preseason media poll. The Owls didn’t flinch against the Demon Deacons, and that became a theme throughout the year. Other than a 56-9 shellacking at Indiana, Kennesaw State consistently proved its mettle on a weekly basis, ultimately leading to a conference championship run.

“It didn’t matter who the opponent was,” Mack said. “They went out there and competed and gave themselves a chance to win in the fourth quarter, but we came up short. I knew we had something special on our hands, then we go to Indiana and fight for about a half or so, and they became Indiana after that. But after that, I think we settled in to, we have some pieces and we just gotta do a great job of putting those pieces in the right place.”

Jacksonville State and Kennesaw State kick off from AmFirst Stadium in Jacksonville, AL at 7 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network, with the CUSA championship on the line.