The immediate impact of JSU’s 49-48 Appalachian Stating of Ole Miss on Saturday will show in this week’s national discussion. Lou Holtz and Mark May have all week to jaw about how the Football Championship Division Gamecocks went into an SEC home stadium on a clear Saturday and won in double overtime.
The ESPN yappers have all week to dissect how JSU faced down the Rebels a day after transfer quarterback Jeremiah Masoli won his eligibility appeal. Ole Miss trotted out a would-be Heisman candidate, save for off-field issues that sent him packing from Oregon, but JSU struck the pose.
Yes, the talkers will talk about JSU. The game changed that much.
All of that leads to this week’s emotional home opener. JSU will christen its expanded stadium as the nation’s next App State.
The team that nearly pulled the same feat off a year ago at Florida State will play Chattanooga, the team that nearly App Stated App State on Saturday.
Comparisons to App State’s shocking and dramatic victory at Michigan in 2007 will fill the air this week, much like JSU’s Marching Southerners filled Jerry Hollingsworth Field after Saturday’s shocker — some band members posing for pictures while others formed to play the theme to “Ghostbusters.”
Such was the vision after the Gamecocks showed they weren’t afraid of no ghost.
Now, look ahead a week. Take whatever vision one might have had for the scene as JSU dedicates Burgess-Snow Field at JSU Stadium and multiply it.
The game changed, and it’s because of JSU’s game changer at Ole Miss.
It’s the game changer that could goose sales of JSU’s new suites and club seats.
It’s the game changer that could change views of JSU as a potential Football Bowl Subdivision team. After all, the victory at Ole Miss is no lonely outlier. It backs up JSU’s near victory at Florida State.
“I need 25,000 people in the stands, if we’re going to make that move,” JSU athletics director Oval Jaynes said Saturday.
Filling the stadium just got more feasible, thanks to a game changer.
Saturday’s thriller also changed the game in terms of how to see JSU’s life after Ryan Perrilloux. It looks better than life with Perrilloux, the tainted Masoli-like talent who finished his purgatory in 2009.
The Ole Miss game also changes the view of JSU’s quarterback lot. The Gamecocks have and will play two, a prospect that looks a lot better today than it looked as late as the start of the Gameocks’ final drive in regulation Saturday.
JSU coach Jack Crowe reinserted starter Marques Ivory after true freshman Coty Blanchard rallied JSU into tying position. Ivory led the tying drive, completing passes for the touchdown and 2-point conversion.
What a comeback for Ivory.
What steel-sack call for the sad-sack coach best known nationally for losing to The Citadel right before losing his job at Arkansas.
Yes, Crowe was on the other side of an App Stating once, and it stuck with him over the years. Just read gojaxstate.com’s message board.
Crowe “goes into games ready to lose,” a poster said in the early pages of Saturday’s game thread. “Players pickup real quick on who is a winner in life and who isn’t.”
Crowe went with his gut on Ivory and won Saturday.
Crowe went for two in the second overtime and won.
“SIGNATURE WIN!” another poster said.
No, it was a game changer, with potential reaching effects that have only begun to sink in.
Joe Medley is The Star’s sports columnist. He can be reached at 256-235-3576 and jmedley@annistonstar.com or follow on Twitter @Jomedstar.
