Salute to Veterans Bowl Foes Once Bitter Rivals Posted December 16, 2025 By Tim Gayle When C.C. Bush and Ross Ford got together for a football game on Nov. 27, 1924, they had no idea of the rivalry that gridiron meeting would create. Bush was in the final year of a three-year stint at Jacksonville State and had coached the team to three consecutive wins before the season finale. Ford was completing his only year at Troy, tying his first four games and winning his next two before the season ender at Jacksonville State. The Gamecocks’ 14-9 win didn’t trigger an instant rivalry — the two teams would play just nine more times over the next 21 years before starting an annual series in 1946 — but it was indicative of the type of game the two teams would play against each other. “I figured out my first fall, real quick, what it meant,” said Stewart Lowery, Troy’s middle linebacker on the 1984 national championship team. “That game was circled on the schedule early in the fall when we first reported. “When you stepped on Troy’s campus, if you could not accept (the intense rivalry with Jacksonville State) and that could not become part of your DNA, you were probably at the wrong school. If you were to put us in the same room with the (Jacksonville State) guys we played against, they’d say the same thing. It was a bloodbath, it was a war, and you knew it was going to be that way. On top of everything, you had the ‘Battle of the Bands.’ The bands got involved as well. It was something else. I’ll never forget it.” Between 1946 and 1965, 16 of the 20 games were decided by two touchdowns or less, generating the intensity of the rivalry. By the early 1970s, both were members of the Gulf South Conference in Division II, which meant their arch rival was standing in the path of a conference title. And with Jacksonville State’s Charley Pell and Troy’s Charlie Bradshaw, a pair of Paul “Bear” Bryant disciples, coaching the teams at different times in the 1970s, the rivalry grew even more heated. “It was as much of a rivalry between the bands as it was the football teams,” said Jacksonville State band director Ken Bodiford, a former drum major with the Marching Southerners who will wrap up a 32-year career as the school’s band director on Tuesday night at Cramton Bowl. “Back then, when you came in as a student, you were taught that rivalry, kind of like the Alabama-Auburn rivalry.” For the bands, much like the football teams, the competition between two passionate leaders took the rivalry to a new level. Dr. Johnny Long, director of Troy’s Sound of the South from 1965-96, was a Jacksonville State graduate. Dr. David Walters, director of Jacksonville State’s Marching Southerners from 1961-91, was just as competitive. “I was a freshman in 1983, so (the rivalry) had already started when I came in, but it was a huge deal when I was a student,” Bodiford said. “The Troy game was the big climax of the season. That was the game you looked forward to all season. We always had what was called the ‘Battle of the Bands’ and after the game both bands would stay in the stands and play back and forth for what seemed like hours.” By the early 1990s, the programs drifted in different directions. Troy moved to I-AA (now Football Championship Subdivision) in 1993, while Jacksonville State would make a similar move two years later. By 2001, Troy was transitioning to Football Bowl Subdivision as Jacksonville State was moving from the FCS Southland Conference to the Ohio Valley Conference and finally to FBS in 2023. The two teams last met on the gridiron in 2001 at Troy as the Trojans won their seventh consecutive game in the rivalry, 21-3. “I understand the rivalry and the hatred (from older players),” said Charlie Goodyear, a center on Troy’s 2001 team. “2001 was our first year going I-A, that was the talk. As I recall it, the game with Jacksonville State didn’t have that buzz around it. I think when I started coaching at Troy and was around events where I rubbed shoulders with the older alum and the community, that’s when I fully appreciated the history.” For 24 years, a generation of Jacksonville State and Troy fans and students have cheered on their respective team, largely unaware of their school’s biggest rival. “It was pretty intense,” said Mike Turk, a former Troy quarterback and assistant coach. “The Troy folks didn’t like the Jacksonville State people and the Jacksonville State people didn’t like the Troy folks. I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to be in a rivalry. That one was certainly the case. It was always an interesting game, hard fought and without a doubt the most intense, bitter rivalry that we had while I was playing and in the years that followed that.” While a younger generation has trouble understanding a rivalry that hasn’t been played in a quarter of a century, an older generation continues to ask why the two teams don’t play any more. “The question I get the most when I’m out talking to groups is, ‘When are we going to play Troy again?’” Jacksonville State athletic director Greg Seitz said. “We have some future dates available to play. I’ve reached out to Troy and they’re evaluating their future schedules. We would love to play Troy. That game means a lot to our fans and alums. It’s always been a very important game to us. There’s nothing on our end that would prohibit us from playing that game.” If the pre-game buzz and excitement associated with the 12th annual Salute to Veterans Bowl is any indication, a gridiron meeting between the Gamecocks and the Trojans is long overdue. “When the possibility of this game was initially floated to me, my immediate reply was there’s going to be a long line of Jacksonville State and Troy people who are going to be really excited about this matchup,” Goodyear said. “Which I wouldn’t have fully understood had I not been around people that played in or coached in that game over the years.” One of those people is Turk, who is grateful for the rivalry’s renewal. “It’s exciting to know that they’re going to play again,” he said. “It’s hard to believe it took a bowl game in Montgomery, Alabama, to get them back together. But it doesn’t matter how. I’m sure it’ll be fun and should be well attended. I guarantee you it’ll be hard fought.” On Tuesday night, as the old rivals meet for the 64th time, a new generation of Gamecocks and Trojans will be introduced to a rivalry that has never faded among an older generation of fans. “There’s no love lost whatsoever,” Lowery said. “When I found out they were playing, I was like, ‘Heck yeah.’ One of my coaching colleagues went to Jax State and played wide receiver and I give him a hard time all the time. I tell him all the time that I like him, but I don’t like the fact he played at Jax State.”