Cover Story

By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

Another era for Mobile sports began when the University of South Alabama introduced new head football coach Joey Jones to the public on Feb. 15.

A Mobile native and former star for the University of Alabama, Jones was lured to USA from the same position at Birmingham-Southern College, a title he held for two years.

For both Jones and the Port City, the journey into intercollegiate football is hardly a step into the great unknown.

Warm-ups

Jesuit-founded Spring Hill College fielded a football team for the first half of the 20th Century. Beginning in 1900, the Badgers enjoyed gridiron exploits that found them facing off against some nationally renowned opposition, powerhouses of the era, like Loyola, Auburn and Alabama who tangled with the Badgers on a regular basis in the days before facemasks and plastic helmets. In fact, the Crimson Tide’s very first night game was Sept. 27, 1940 when they topped the Badgers 26-0 in Mobile.

World War II put an end to the team in 1941 and the program wasn’t renewed in the post-war era due to the escalating costs involved with intercollegiate football.

In 1982, a club football team sprang to life at then-Mobile College – now the University of Mobile – and students at the University of South Alabama followed suit in 1983.

The Jaguars played a single game against the crosstown rival Rams in that first fall.

The South Alabama team played a three-game season in ‘84, losing twice to the Rams. They also travelled to Marion, Ala. to be trampled by Marion Institute’s top-ranked junior college team in a storm that featured power outages and nearby tornadoes.

The team was disbanded in the spring of 1985 amidst a rancorous dispute with the school’s administration.

In 1999, another club team emerged at South Alabama and still remains in existence with a staff of four coaches, three managers, booster groups and a list of sponsors according to the team’s Web site. The Jaguars played teams from as far away as Georgia and Texas in 2007 and seem to draw respectable crowds for home games in the track complex’s natural amphitheatre.

Practice

According to Keith Ayers, director of public relations for the University of South Alabama, the club team was made possible by other overtures.

“We took some steps into getting a team, did some feeling out to see what it looked like then (in 1999),” Ayers said. “We felt things weren’t right at that time. The general state of the economy, projects here and other things made us realize we had some other work to be done first.”

One of those first tests to gauge community reception was for USA to open up requests for season tickets. The lack of response to the measure gave them the answer they sought but the present club team was born as a result of the interest stirred.

The push for varsity football stayed alive within a segment of the student population, gained momentum with the Student Government Association and the student newspaper and was stoked by a receptive administration. A petition accumulated 2,500 names as it was circulated throughout the student body during the fall of 2007 and was presented to President Gordon Moulton at the home basketball season opener in November.

Within weeks, the university’s Board of Trustees agreed to field a team.

“This time, the timing was there,” Ayers said. “The economy around here is doing so much better than it was then. That’s a factor, certainly. And our student enrollment now is 30-percent greater than it was then.”

The City of Mobile announced an agreement to allow the school free use of Ladd-Peebles Stadium for the Jags’ home games over the next seven years. The historic 40,000-seat facility in midtown Mobile was opened in 1948 and is the home of the 56-year-old Senior Bowl and the annual GMAC Bowl.

Ayers said transportation for students between the campus and the stadium four miles away will be addressed. He also explained a need to tie the games in with on-campus activities such as pep rallies.

The first Jaguars’ team will take the field in the fall of 2009.

Depth chart

Joey Jones was an icon in Mobile long before accepting the position at South Alabama.

As a standout wide receiver at Murphy High School, his average size belied breathtaking speed, uncommon diligence and thrilling receiving ability. He took those talents to the University of Alabama where he emerged as a star for the Crimson Tide while they made the transition through the last years of legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s era.

His return to Mobile for the 1985 Senior Bowl was a triumphant welcome for a native son lauded from the bay to the boundaries that entire week.

After a few years in the professional leagues, Jones took his passion and work ethic to the coaching ranks where he quickly excelled. He earned a healthy reputation in a decade at the helm of Mountain Brook High School in Birmingham. Jones parlayed it into the head coaching job at Birmingham-Southern College, a school literally in the shadows of the stadium where he had some of his greatest collegiate football exploits.

His stellar work there earned him notice from USA and Jones emerged as the perfect man to begin the Jaguars’ program. Not only was he a personable hometown hero, but he had built the BSC team from nothing. It would be a familiar task and one he could begin immediately.

“I’m interviewing assistant coaches right now,” Jones said recently. “I’m looking for five assistants and then we’ll add a couple of others later.”

“The next biggest step is we’ve got to get me an office,” he laughed.

The coach mentioned spring evaluations of possible players and a recruiting schedule.

Jones talks about using a spread offense, throwing the ball around, employing the option out of the shotgun to move the ball on the ground. His defensive philosophy revolves a 3-4 alignment and odd man fronts, blitzing and pressure, “getting after it” as he described. But he also thinks basics are best.

“I think sometimes you can get too caught up in Xs and Os and don’t just get out there and play,” Jones said. “We’ve got to remember that.”

Asked if he has a defensive coordinator in mind, he shortly answered “yes” and then laughed at his intentional reticence. He’s not tipping his hand.

Jones stresses recruiting, often deemed the “lifeblood of the college game.”

“We’re going to get out there,” Jones said. “We’re going to hit Birmingham and Atlanta in addition to this area on the coast. I’ve got some contacts in south Florida, too so we might be able to get down there.”

“The situation with setting this up is real similar to what we did at Birmingham-Southern,” Jones said, “but the biggest difference here is that we have scholarships to offer. We’re going to be dealing with a different type of player.”

Making the cut

Birmingham-Southern College is a small liberal arts school on the Magic City’s west side near Legion Field. The school’s gridiron history was similar to that of Spring Hill College, having last fielded a team in 1939.

The school once had Division-I NCAA sports, though that changed in early 2006.

It was then BSC President David Pollick noticed the school offered 116 full athletic scholarships, at a total of $3.5 million while they awarded only one full academic scholarship. He and the board of trustees changed that in May of 2006 by voting to drop the school down to the non-scholarship, Division-III level. With the money saved, the school was able to add a football program in addition to four other sports.

The result has been an increase in alumni contributions and student applications for enrollment have risen 50 percent.

The BSC Panthers at first played down the street at Legion Field where Jones caught touchdowns for the Crimson Tide and are presently wrapping up work on new on-campus facilities, developments they firmly credit to the sacrifice of athletic scholarships.

Scouting report

While Birmingham-Southern certainly bucked trends in returning to football, most regional schools have gone the route of the Jaguars. A survey of area forays into big-time college football in the last decades finds plenty who have traveled the road USA now faces.

The success of the University of South Florida’s team in the 2007 season caught recent attention. The Tampa-based school began their program in the mid-’90s and this past season upset nationally renowned powerhouses, moving as high as a number two national ranking at one point.

“I think the success of South Florida’s team this year certainly had some effect on our situation,” USA’s Ayers said. “It gave the alumni and students more motivation.”

Still, quick comparisons with USF are difficult. USF is almost a decade older than USA and sports an enrollment of over 40,000, while USA contains less than half that number of students. USF is also located in a major metropolitan area with a population of almost three million, third largest in the Southeastern United States.

Tampa citizens have a healthy track record of active support for athletic teams including a 32-year-old NFL team with a Super Bowl title, a Major League Baseball franchise, a National Basketball Association outfit, a National Hockey League team with a Stanley Cup title and an arena football team.

However, just up the road from USF is another school whose journeys might have more in common with USA. The University of Central Florida in Orlando was established the same year as South Alabama although they presently boast an enrollment of 48,000.

According to UCF Associate Athletic Director Art Zeleznik, they began their football efforts on a club level in 1979.

“I think we had a club team at first, then moved into Division-III right after that,” Zeleznik said. “When I got here in 1982, we were at Division-II. We moved up to Division-IAA in 1990 and made the conference playoffs. Then in ‘96 we moved to I-A.”

“Until we joined the Middle American Conference, we had a hard time with the higher division status,” Zeleznik said. “That helped a lot with scheduling.”

USA is presently a Sun Belt Conference member in its other sports and that group currently includes nine other Division-I football teams. The Sun Belt office is eager to see the Jags join the action.

Zeleznik said UCF’s locale is a natural advantage. “It helps a lot in recruiting,” he said. “This is about the most talent-rich area in the country and one of the reasons we started football.”

“We kept it within our means financially, too,” Zeleznik said. “There were growing pains. When we moved into Division-I, we saw everything grow much more, ticket sales, booster involvement, fan base.”

“Now, it’s our biggest revenue source,” Zeleznik said. “We have a 50,000-seat stadium that just opened and we premiered it by playing Texas in front of a sell-out crowd.”

The UCF Knights have gained national fame playing such traditional heavyweights as Florida State, Auburn, Georgia, Nebraska and Iowa. In 2000, they upset Alabama for the Crimson Tide’s homecoming game.

Zeleznik’s advice for South Alabama? “Constantly build on your successes.”

Other regional teams have grown into Division-I status and had success. The University of Alabama at Birmingham began with club football in the late ‘80s and entered Division-III in 1991. They moved up to top division in ‘96 and faced Auburn that same season. The Blazers most notably upset LSU in 200 and made their initial bowl appearance in 2004.

UAB also fights the competition from long-established programs such as Auburn and Alabama. They play their home games in 71,000-seat Legion Field-located approximately three miles from their urban campus-and have seen attendance rise as high as 44,000 though the average according to Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations Norm Reilly is closer to 17,000.

Kick-off

“We’re not going to see ourselves as competing with Auburn and Alabama,” Ayers said. “We see it more as co-existence. We’re already looking into games against quality opponents like Tennessee and Navy.”

Ayers, who spent time working at both Auburn and Alabama before coming southward has sage advice for the Jags and their fans.

“Above all else,” Ayers said, ” just remember the reason we do this is to give something to the students and alumni, to give them more motivation and involvement in their school. If we can keep it all in perspective, we’ll have fun.”

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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