Everything building up to Saturday’s Jackson State-Southern showdown was a showcase for Deion Sanders’ defending Southwestern Athletic Conference Tigers.
The Tigers (8-0, 5-0) appeared on “Good Morning America” before last week’s homecoming win over Campbell, and the elder Sanders and the school were featured on “60 Minutes”. The team received their SWAC championship rings. ESPN pulled up with the Home Depot orange bus and set up shop outside of Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium for “College Gameday”.
When it came time to play football, Jackson State finished the day putting the final touches on the Tigers’ showcase week by beating down and overwhelming Western Division leader Southern 35-0 in front of a raucous JSU crowd. The beatdown was the first time the Tigers shut the Jaguars out since blanking Southern 14-0 in 1987.
Jackson State notched its seventh shutout win over Southern (5-3, 3-2) in the rivalry, and the margin of victory was the third largest in a Tigers win over the Jaguars in series history.
The statement shutout win over their archnemesis featured a JSU team showing off all its strong points. Quarterback Shedeur Sanders piloted the offense to four scoring drives against the SWAC’s second-best defense. The Football Championship Division’s stingiest defense stifled the conference’s second-best offense. Thee Believers in Thee Vet sang along with the music like it was the largest-ever assemblage of the Mississippi Mass Choir.
An early fourth-quarter weather stoppage because of nearby lightning? No worries. The Tigers and their fans brought enough electricity to light the entire state of Mississippi for a week.
The question that remains is where do the teams go from here.
For Jackson State, it’s celebrating for 24 hours before focusing on a potential road trap game in Houston next week against Texas Southern (4-4, 3-2). It’s the elder Sanders leading a Sherman-March-To-The-Sea-like romp through the SWAC with all eyes set on Veterans hosting the SWAC Championship Game for the second-straight year, and a shot at redemption against the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference champion in the Celebration Bowl.
It’s the youngest Sanders on the roster further placing himself in the Walter Payton Award — the award that goes to FCS’s best offensive player — conversation and getting some long-shot Heisman Trophy votes in the process. It’s running back Sy’Veon Wilkerson’s continued emergence as a complimentary threat in the Tigers’ pass-dominant offense.
It’s highly-touted freshmen Travis Hunter and Kevin Coleman Jr. getting increasingly more comfortable with eyes to the future. It’s linebackers Nyles Gaddy and Aubrey Miller making a run at SWAC defensive player of the year while also becoming the third-straight SWAC defensive player to take home the Buck Buchanan Award after Southern’s Jordan Lewis in 2020 and Florida A&M’s Isaiah Land in 2021.
Meanwhile, Southern once again has some soul searching to do after being shut out for the second time this year. Ironically, the Jaguars’ two conference losses were shutouts, with Texas Southern blanking the Jaguars 24-0 earlier this year. The Third Ward Tigers hold the tiebreaker over Southern by virtue of that win.
However, the Jaguars will not have a healing salve the next week like they did coming off the TSU loss. Instead of a home game against a toothless Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Southern hits the road against next week to take on FAMU (6-2, 4-1) in Tallahassee in another longstanding rivalry game.
A win against the Rattlers keeps Southern on pace for a potential rematch with Jackson State in the SCG. The Jaguars must beat FAMU and hope Alcorn State does Southern a solid and knocks off West leader Prairie View (5-3, 4-1) to keep their division title hopes alive.
Southern’s offense did not look anything like the offense from the now-snapped four-game winning streak. The Jaguars took big blows with running back Jerrodd Sims and Lewis, an All-American, leaving the game early with injuries. However, the biggest blow suffered might be Southern’s psyche after Jackson State whooped them like Clubber Lang whooped Rocky Balboa early in “Rocky 3”.
The Jaguars’ defense did all that it could to hold off the Jackson State offense, but the Southern offense’s inability to cash in on scoring opportunities and good field position — like what happened against TSU — doomed the Jaguars’ chances.
For Southern, it’s can the Jaguars get off the canvas a second time and fight its way back to a potential SCG rematch against Jackson State. Can coach Eric Dooley restore the team’s confidence like Apollo Creed helped restore Rocky’s after the first Lang fight?
Those are some of the questions worth $310,000 per year that the Jaguar Nation has for Dooley.
