COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The reigning back-to-back national champion East Mississippi Community College football team was picked No. 1 in the National Junior College Athletic Association’s (NJCAA) preseason poll, which was released Thursday.
EMCC will start the 2015 season at the top for the third time in four years. The Lions have won three NJCAA titles in the past four years. Winners of 44 of their last 46 games dating back to their 2011 national title season, including a current 24-game winning streak, EMCC will kick off the season at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, against Southwest Mississippi in Scooba. Coach Buddy Stephens’ Lions will attempt to match the all-time NJCAA standard for consecutive wins on Thursday, Sept. 3, when they travel to Wesson to take on preseason No. 7 Copiah-Lincoln C.C. in a rematch of last year’s Mississippi Association of Colleges and Junior Colleges (MACJC) State Championship game.
Those games could set up a potential record-setting home date against Coahoma C.C. on Sept. 10. Blinn College (Texas) owns the NJCAA all-time mark of 26 consecutive wins from 1995-97.
On the heels of the program’s third unblemished 12-0 campaign in the past four years, EMCC became the third NJCAA football program to claim back-to-back outright national titles, and the first to do so since Butler (Kansas) C.C. in 1998 and 1999. Blinn initially accomplished the feat during the 1995 and 1996 campaigns. In addition, EMCC also joined Mississippi Gulf Coast C.C. as the lone MACJC schools to win three NJCAA football championships.
Including preseason and final rankings as determined by the NJCAA, EMCC has been ranked in 53 consecutive NJCAA football polls dating back to the team’s No. 16 preseason rating heading into its 2011 national championship season. Spanning back to the 2011 football season, the Lions have stood among the NJCAA’s top 10 teams in 42 of the last 44 regular-season polls, including 39 weeks ranked among the nation’s top five squads. Dating back to Week 1 of the 2013 campaign, EMCC has been ranked among the NJCAA’s top five teams in 26 straight polls, which includes the 2013 and 2014 seasons along with the two most recent final rankings and last two preseason polls.
With a record of 68-10 as the NJCAA’s second-winningest football program behind Butler (69-12) since 2008, including four MACJC State/ NJCAA Region 23 titles and six MACJC North Division regular-season crowns to go along with their three national championships, EMCC has been represented in the NJCAA’s weekly football poll 83 percent of the time in the past seven seasons combined.
When including preseason and final rankings, EMCC has been ranked first or second nationally among the NJCAA top 20 in 20 consecutive polls. A year ago, the Lions held the top spot or runner-up position in all 11 weeks of the season, including the first eight weeks atop the list. EMCC slipped to the No. 2 slot behind Iowa Western during weeks nine and 10 before re-claiming and maintaining the No. 1 position at season’s end with a 34-17 victory against the Reivers in last year’s NJCAA National Championship game/Mississippi Bowl VII in Biloxi.
MGCCC (No. 9), Northwest Mississippi (No. 16), and Jones County Junior College (No. 19) also are ranked in the poll. Hinds C.C. is also receiving votes.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.