Jax State, Southern Miss set football home-and-home

Jacksonville State and Southern Miss will play a football home-and-home series in 2024 and 2025, the schools announced Tuesday.

The Gamecocks will host the Golden Eagles at Burgess-Snow Field in Jacksonville on Sept. 21, 2024. JSU will then travel to M.M. Roberts Stadium in Hattiesburg, Miss., on Sept. 27, 2025.

JSU will move up to the FBS level as a member of Conference USA this fall. Southern Miss left CUSA for the Sun Belt Conference in 2022.

“This is one of the regional series that we anticipated when we made the move to FBS,” JSU athletics director Greg Seitz said. “The move into Conference USA has allowed us to connect with several regional programs like Southern Miss, and this allows us to bring an established FBS program to Burgess-Snow Field, while offering a road game that is easy for our fans to travel to. We’re excited about the opportunity to play them and will continue to schedule similar opponents going forward.”

Jacksonville State and Southern Miss have met twice in football, but not since the first half of the 20th century. The Golden Eagles beat the Gamecocks in both 1937 and 1946, both times in Hattiesburg.

Jax State, which finished 9-2 last season under first-year coach Rich Rodriguez, opens the 2023 season at home Aug. 26 vs. UTEP.