Florida State Seminoles vs. Jacksonville State Gamecocks: Previews, analysis

Florida State Seminoles football will be taking on FCS school Jacksonville State Gamecocks in its sole non-conference game of the season, seeking the team’s first win of the season.

“We are having continued heightened competition in all that we are doing,” head coach Mike Norvell said Tuesday. “We’ve got to get better and we’ve got to get better quickly.”

“Continue to believe. Continue to trust the process. We knew coming in that this was going to be a process to improve. There’s nobody within the program that is pleased with the result on the field. But what we can control is how we respond to it.”

After receiving a cancellation from original non-conference opponent Samford, there was much speculation regarding what team the Seminoles would be playing outside of the Atlantic Coast Conference — and the answer came in the form of Jacksonville State, who FSU already had a game scheduled with in 2021.

Florida State has played Jacksonville State previously — most notably in 2009, when JSU and Ryan Perilloux, a former five-star LSU quarterback, nearly beat Florida State in Bobby Bowden’s final year, with a harrowingly close final score of 19-9.