Jacksonville State football, Rich Rodriguez officially bowl eligible in first FBS season

The math is in Jacksonville State football's favor, and the Gamecocks will be going bowling in their first season as an FBS program.

With South Carolina's loss to Clemson, it's official that there will not be enough teams to fill the 82 teams needed to play in the 41 bowl games. Coming into the weekend, there were 67 bowl-eligible teams and 23 teams vying for the final 15 spots. There were not enough slots following Florida State's win over Florida. But with James Madison also vying for a spot, the other Gamecocks loss secures a bowl spot for both teams.

The JSU Gamecocks are 8-4 and should find themselves in one of the bowl games tied to CUSA. The Gamecocks fell to New Mexico State on Saturday on a last-second field goal. They will now wait to Dec. 3 to find out their bowl fate.

Due to NCAA rules, even after hitting the six-win mark, Jacksonville State had to wait until there was not enough six-win teams due to rules during the school's transition period to the FBS level. The Gamecocks are in the second year of the transition, coming from FCS. The school sought a waiver from the NCAA for immediate eligibility but it was declined, along with the request for a waiver to be allowed to play in the conference title game.

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Coach Rich Rodriguez has expressed thoughts about the whole ordeal, including the NCAA rules that prohibit teams that are transitioning to the FBS level from the FCS to be bowl eligible during the two-season period. The Gamecocks are in their first season of FBS play but in the second year of the transition, meaning that there was this exception for the Gamecocks to go bowling.

Here's what Rodriguez said after the Gamecocks' win over Louisiana Tech last week.

"I'll tell our guys: the NCAA doesn't have a lot of common sense at times. They don't have common-sense legislation, (in) this case it's common sense legislation that if you're doing all the things your supposed to be doing in your second year of transition, like us and James Madison, you should be atomically eligible for a bowl game; if you get enough wins you should be eligible to play in a conference championship," Rodriguez said. "We knew what it was going into it, so I'm not going to (complain) about it, or cry about it all day. I'm hopefully things will work out and there won't be enough teams to qualify and we'll be in."

Maxwell Donaldson covers high school sports and Jacksonville State athletics for the Gadsden Times. Find him on Twitter/X @_Max_Donaldson and contact him at MDonaldson@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Jacksonville State football officially bowl eligible