Kelly’s a hero

By EASportsToday.com
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Updated: April 17, 2025

New Jacksonville State football resisted trend of nixing spring games for all of the best reasons to fans tired of watching change overtake college football.

JACKSONVILLE — Don’t count Jacksonville State’s new head football coach as an afflicted with poach paranoia.

Not when Charles Kelly can look around and see how hard his new players worked through the winter and spring practice. Not when he can see that poaching has pretty much become a year-round sport.

So, why not have a spring game, he says, and score him points for all of the right reasoning.

That’s probably the most insightful thing to come from Thursday’s J-Day game, which which the White team won 22-17 thanks to Cade Cunningham’s 2-yard touchdown keeper with 34 seconds to play.

Kelly acknowledged that he kept the offense and defense watered down. He didn’t want to show things he’s working in the kicking game.

Gavin Wimsatt, the quarterback Kelly called his “leader in the clubhouse” headed into summer workouts, didn’t play because of a hamstring injury.

It wasn’t because Kelly wanted to hide Wimsatt. The kid wanted to play, and Kelly would’ve let him, had he been healthy.

The way Kelly’s first team in his first head-coaching assignment worked made them heroes, in his mind.

Kelly’s reasoning for playing a spring game when so many peers have made nixing them their own brand of cancel culture will make Kelly a hero. To all who hate so many things about college football’s fast-moving era of change, take in the words of your champion.

Take them in and smile.

“Why am I going to punish our players and not have a game when all they’ve done is work?” Kelly said, his talking hands moving to emphatic mode more than at any other point in his postgame news conference. “I’m not going to do that.

“And listen. everybody’s worried about everybody poaching their players. They’re not going to poach them in the spring game. They’ve been trying to poach them since the day I got here, so what’s the spring game going to do?”

The Gamecocks played for stakes Thursday. Actually, they played for steaks, and the losing team got beanie weenies, Kelly said.

And it mattered. Don’t believe so?

The Red sideline seemed awfully happy when Garrison Rippa hit a field goal with 1:01 to play to put them up 17-15.

Then lightning struck. Cunningham hit a short sideline pass to Deondre Johnson, who broke free down the Red sideline for a catch and run to the Red 10-yard line.

Two plays later, Cunningham kept into the end zone, and that score stood as the winning score, touching off a medium–rare, red-meat celebration on the White sideline.

Kelly’s heroes got something out of going through a would-be game-winning drive, followed by an actual game-winning drive in span of 27 seconds. They Gamecocks, who formed up teams based on a true draft of players and coaches, got something in a stadium, in front of fans, they wouldn’t have gotten had their coach suffered from poach paranoia.

As Kelly spelled it out, he transitioned from channeling John Madden to shades of Herman Edwards. HELLO!

“The only way you learn how to play this game is to play,” he said. “There were a lot of situations in that game tonight, especially with the two-minute (drill). White team, they were almost done for, and now we hit an explosive play. DeAndre had not had a big night, and then, all of a sudden, he makes a big play at the end of the game.

“You learn how to play the game by playing the game. I just think that’s important, and I’m not going to let the circumstances of college football change the way we do things.”

Welcome to the big corner office, Charles Kelly. We get the feeling we’re going to enjoy watching you put your touch on it.

Game updates

FIRST QUARTER

—Cade Cunningham to Pettway, unguarded, deep for 45-yard TD, 12:42. PAT no good. WHITE 6, RED 0. Cunningham leads a 70-yard drive with keeps/scrambles in non-contact jersey.

–-Garrison Rippa 48-yard FG, 4:15. WHITE 9, RED 0.

SECOND QUARTER

—Caden Creel TD pass to Carter Lambert, 14:51. PAT good. WHITE 9, RED 7

—White’s Morven Joseph recovers fumble at R36.

—Rippa 34-yard FG good at 9:20. WHITE 12, RED 7

—Rippa misses FG attempt from 48 yards.

—Creel to Jaxson Shuttlesworth, 17 yards for a TD at 0:25. RED 14, WHTE 12

THIRD QUARTER

—Creel pass picked by White’s Caj Mayoa, returns to R13. Leads to RIppa 25-yard FG at 3:21. WHITE 15, RED 14

FOURTH QUARTER

—Rippa 46-yard field goal with 1:01 to play. RED 17, WHITE 15

—Cunningham keeps for a 2-yard TD run at 0:34. WHITE 22, RED 17