One of the toughest conferences in NCAA Division II football is gearing up for what should be another grind of a season ahead.

The teams of the Gulf South Conference, which in the past five (completed) seasons alone has had two different national champions, are back to going through their preseason routines ahead of their 2024 season openers in a rekindled league with both new and familiar faces.

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Coaches and star players from each team descended on the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama this past Thursday to chat about their outlooks for the campaign ahead and the GSC’s 53rd season of football.

And if it’s been anything like recent years, it’s bound to be yet another battle for the right to be called league champion. 

Here’s a look back at all that went down during Gulf South Conference Football Media Day, with team interviews available for replay at FloFootball.com and on the FloFootball YouTube channel:

Does Valdosta State Have National Title No. 5 In Store?

For head coach Tremaine Jackson and Valdosta State football, “the mission always continues,” as he noted at GSC Media Day.

That mission is simple enough — bring the fifth national championship in school history back to Valdosta, Georgia.

“There’s only one team that’s going to be happy at the end of every year on every level, and that’s the team that holds up the national championship trophy,” Jackson, who enters his third year at VSU off the back of a 12-2 season in 2023, said. “However, I will say that we do value the growth that we had in Year 2, and I don’t think anybody in our building is satisfied by any means.”

The Blazers went from a 5-6 record in Jackson’s first season in in 2022 to sharing the GSC title with Delta State last year, being the furthest-advancing team from the league in the 2023 D-II playoffs as it made the quarterfinal round before losing to Lenoir-Rhyne. That success has catapulted VSU into the position of being preseason league favorites entering 2024, earning five first-place votes to occupy the top spot in the league coaches’ poll released earlier this month. 

Jackson has little interest in chatter outside of his program, however — “If I spent all my time looking at Facebook and Twitter and seeing what people said about us, I probably wouldn’t be doing my job very well,” Jackson said — and more interest in producing further success for a decorated VSU program. And the Blazers’ window of opportunity is most certainly open for more potential hardware.

The GSC’s top passing offense in conference play (306.6 passing yards per game against league opponents) gets its gunslinger back in Preseason All-GSC quarterback Sammy Edwards, who enters the year as one of the top passers in all of D-II. The defense could get leaky at times in 2023 as VSU allowed nearly 400 yards per game, but scoring 49 points in five different games last season definitely helped the Blazers mask major weaknesses on that end, too.

“We don’t believe in the pre, we believe in the post,” Jackson said. “We’re trying to get ourselves to where we can get to the postseason and be the very best that there is. We won’t know what that is until we get there, but (being preseason favorites) that’s cute. I think some of our guys would say that’s cute, but that’s cap, too. We know what that can be; we’re just trying to be better each week.”

"𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐞."

Valdosta State isn't putting any stock into preseason polls.#GSCfb | @GulfSouth | @valdostastatefb | @coachjack212 pic.twitter.com/DLwjs04m1R

— FloFootball (@FloFootball) July 29, 2024

West Florida Keeping New QB Under Wraps

It’s been rare in recent years to have an array of questions that need answering about West Florida football heading into a season, but that’s kind of the position that the Argonauts find themselves in ahead of the 2024 campaign.

Second-year head coach Kaleb Nobles at media day, however, reiterated that national championships (like the one the program won in 2019 in just its fourth season of play) still remain the goal at UWF, even with some notable turnover going on.

“For us, (it’s) finding the right guys that can do well academically but also play good football, as well,” Nobles said when asked about building a national title contender. “We make sure we have a very tight profile of who that is and how they can manage every day at UWF, and so we focus on everything outside the field first, and then watch the whole tape, then watch the film, to make sure it all lines up.”

The Argos, picked second in the league’s preseason poll with one first-place vote, went 8-4 a season ago with a loss to GSC foe Delta State in the first round of the playoffs in 2023. Dynamic quarterback Peewee Jarrett (2,989 yards, 32 touchdowns, and seven interceptions through the air last year) and GSC Defensive Player of the Year John McMullen were UWF’s most notable departures, giving Nobles — a former Argos quarterback — some tough choices on who to trot out when the 2024 campaign begins against McKendree on Sept. 5.

Nobles didn’t share any secrets about who will be his signal-caller for UWF’s opener (“You won’t find out until Sept. 5 who the guy is going to be,” he said) but did prop up returning stars, like linebacker and reigning GSC Defensive Freshman of the Year Ralph Ortiz, and exciting newcomers such as D-III transfer Da’Mani Brown, who had back-to-back 1,000-yard receiving seasons at Loras College.

“Excited about everybody we have coming back and the experience that we have on the offense,” Nobles said. “Everybody in the conference is good; you better show up with an A-game every single day when you’re playing in the GSC … you better be prepared to play who’s showing up on Saturday.” 

No Complacency For Delta State

Delta State football has never won three conference titles in a row, but thanks to a 21-4 record over the past two seasons and an earned reputation for bringing it at any time and any place with a 12-game road winning streak, the Statesmen are unquestionably in the hunt to three-peat this season.

There’s also some cold, hard truth impacting those hopes, though.

Before former star quarterback Patrick Shegog turned into the award-winning player he ended up becoming for DSU during his final two seasons at the school in 2022 and 2023, the Statesmen finished under .500 in 2021 as Shegog hadn’t quite hit his stride yet. Then he became a two-time GSC Offensive Player of the Year and last year’s Conerly Trophy winner, given to the best college player in the state of Mississippi regardless of level, as the string-puller behind the school’s back-to-back league titles.

So, now that Shegog is gone, who is going to do the same for this year’s Statesmen squad?

“I don’t know if you can replace him,” DSU coach Todd Cooley, the reigning GSC Coach of the Year, said. “Patrick was an unbelievable leader and human being and I just think the example that he set on being a teammate (and) the way he carried himself every day, I think that carries on. … We got some quarterbacks that are ready to compete, and I’m excited about them.”

Regardless of who gets the starting job in DSU’s post-Shegog era, however, the standard in Cleveland, Mississippi remains the same — win titles.

The Statesmen are third in the GSC’s preseason poll and earned the second-most first-place votes of any team behind preseason favorite Valdosta State. Six of the 13 offensive spots on the Preseason All-GSC Team were occupied by DSU standouts and three more went to Statesmen’s defensive/special teams players, showing that Cooley will still have a lot of firepower to work with even without Shegog calling the shots anymore.

“Every year, we start back in January and we talk about, ‘Hey, we're 0-0,’” Cooley said. “This 2024 team has done nothing, and that’s kind of how we keep it in perspective. But I like where our program is; our young men wake up every day and for the most part they try to make good decisions. We’re young men, we're all going to make mistakes, but they try to chase greatness, and that’s kind of what we want to be about there.”

Choctaws Changing It Up Under Kershaw

Often heavily reliant on running the football under former coach John Bland, who stepped down following the 2023 season, Mississippi College football has been used to a certain identity for a long time. 

New coach Mike Kershaw, however, doesn’t exactly plan on keeping things the same with the Choctaws this season.

“I guess if you ask anybody, they’re going to say, ‘He’s going to start throwing the ball when he comes off the bus,’” Kershaw said in answering a question about his coaching philosophy. “And they’re not wrong. … There’ll be some more footballs in the air in Clinton, Mississippi, I can tell you that.”

Formerly a quarterback at in-state rival Delta State, Kershaw returns to the GSC for the first time since being an assistant coach with the Statesmen in 2006 in his first head coaching role of his career after being on staff at Rice from 2018-23, first as an offensive assistant then as the Owls’ wide receivers coach. He’ll attempt to rejuvenate a MC program that hasn’t gone over .500 since 2009, when the Choctaws were still in their D-III stint before returning to D-II and the GSC in 2014. 

While the passing game will likely be much more of a factor under Kershaw in the MC offense than in past years, he noted that he doesn’t plan to completely abandon the run game, especially with Preseason All-GSC tailback Marcus Williams (1,883 yards, 19 touchdowns in his career) still in line to tear it up in the backfield.

“I recruited Mississippi when I was at Rice, as well … I think there’s a lot of really good things going on at Mississippi College,” Kershaw said. “I think this place can be a sleeping giant, and I’ve thought that ever since I’ve come back here. … Now it’s time to wake the giant.”

Last Hurrahs For Chowan, Erskine, North Greenville

This fall will mark the final time that three GSC programs will field football teams in the league as North Greenville, Chowan and Erskine are all due to end their affiliate memberships with the conference ahead of Conference Carolinas restarting football sponsorship in 2025. 

All three will be looking to close their stints in the GSC on high notes, especially in a rekindled league compared to last year as Shorter (who joined Conference Carolinas this year) left to go independent in football for a season and West Georgia moved up to the D-I Football Championship Subdivision level.

NGU has been playing football in the GSC for the longest time of the trio as the Trailblazers joined in 2018 after years of being a D-II independent, going 5-5 in 2023. Wide receiver Dre’ Williams, linebacker De’Iveon Donald and defensive back EJ Bradford are names to watch at NGU this fall as all were selected as Preseason All-GSC picks.

Chowan, meanwhile, is still looking for its first victory under second-year coach Paul Johnson, with the Hawks going 0-10 in their debut GSC season last year. Johnson expressed optimism at media days of the team’s outlook going into the 2024 campaign, which Chowan will start on Sept. 7 when it visits Elizabeth City State.

“Year 1 was a great learning experience, it taught me a lot,” Johnson said. “When you go 0-10, if you don’t learn anything, then something’s wrong. But the progression of the program and of the team is in a totally different space. … Really dived into the recruiting piece, trying to make sure that we got the right kids that fit what we’re trying to build and fit the culture of trying to build a winning program.”

Finally, there’s Erskine, who joins the GSC for football for one season only in 2024 before going to Conference Carolinas for all sports in 2025. The Flying Fleet, who restarted their football team in the spring 2021 season after a 70-year hiatus, is coming off of an 0-11 campaign in the South Atlantic Conference in 2023 as coach Shap Boyd will try and steer Erskine in the right direction this season in a similarly-tough league. 

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