Prairie View A&M head coach Tremaine Jackson made one thing clear: Last season’s success carries no weight heading into the new year.
Despite the label of defending SWAC champion, Jackson is taking a ground-up approach as it enters the season.
“There’s no defending this title,” the coach said at SWAC Football Media Day on Wednesday. “What last year’s team did was incredible, but this team hasn’t done anything. We haven’t even made a first down yet.”
That mindset reflects a deliberate cultural tone within the program—one rooted in accountability and separation from past achievements.
“We’re starting from ground zero,” Jackson added. “We’re trying to get it out the mud and figure out who this team is going to be.”
At Prairie View A&M, the standard remains championship-level, but the path to get there is treated as entirely new. The coach emphasized that anything short of a Celebration Bowl game victory would be considered a failure, regardless of overall record.
“If we don’t get the confetti falling on us in Atlanta on December 12, then it’s a bad year,” he said. “That’s the mentality.”
The program also rejects the notion of being a target or “the hunted” heading into the season. Instead, the focus is internal—on preparation, identity, and execution.
“There’s no target on our back,” he said. “You haven’t done anything, so those things don’t matter. We approach football differently. We program our guys differently.”
With a renewed sense of purpose and a clean slate, Prairie View A&M enters the season focused not on expectations, but on building toward a championship standard from the ground up.
