KENNESAW, Ga. — The Kennesaw State Owls will play in their first-ever bowl game Friday as they take on the Western Michigan Broncos in the Myrtle Beach Bowl.
It’s an incredible accomplishment given where the program was a year ago. In the first season under head coach Jerry Mack, the Owls went from a team that won only two games last year to Conference USA champions this year.
Channel 2’s Alison Mastrangelo sat down 1-on-1 with Mack. The two talked about the team’s turnaround, his future contract and the playmakers who have gotten them to where they are now.
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Mastrangelo: I know it’s been like a busy whirlwind for you, but can you kind of describe for me just what the past couple days have been like for you after winning the conference championship?
Mack: They’ve been great. You know, it’s been great to see the excitement on the kids’ face. It’s been great to see the excitement in and the energy in the building more than anything else. You know, but we have one more game ahead of us.
Mastrangelo: At what point in the season did you realize you had something special boiling?
Mack: The first game where we came up short by one point against Wake Forest, I knew we had a pretty good football team. You know, we played a couple of weeks later. We didn’t play up the standard against one of our other opponents. And so we understood how important the process was every single day ... And every week we just tried to get better and better. And that’s what you consistently saw from this team.
Mastrangelo: There’ll be other teams and schools and things like that watching, like, how’d you do it? How’d you go from a program that only had two wins last year to now having 10 and making it to a bowl? What do you think was the secret sauce or the recipe to do that?
Mack: A lot of hard work, a lot of great evaluations, obviously. Some luck goes into that as well. But I do think we had a blueprint. We had a process that we went through. We understood exactly what we were looking for through the transfer portal. We played about three or four high school guys that all had a lot of success as well. And then just continued to build those relationships within the building. There was a connection with this team. And that doesn’t always happen.
Mastrangelo: Talk to me about some of the special players that you have that were able to make this possible for you guys, especially a quarterback Amari.
Mack: Amari did a great job, obviously. He had some ups and downs throughout the season, some health issues throughout the season as well, but he was able to overcome those adversities. There are a host of players, you know.
Coleman Bennett, our running back, is consistently putting in work. He had over 1,000 all-purpose yards this past year. You saw Gabe Benyard, who was a guy that was basically an unknown the previous year, and then he came in and led the entire league in receiving. Baron Hopson, who’s the co-defensive player of the year in the entire league ... Elijah Hill, who’s a true freshman that we identified. And he leads the league in sacks. So the stories go on and on.
Mastrangelo: How important is this a bowl game for just your football program to be on a national stage?
Mack: It is a great opportunity to get exposure. A lot of people in the country, with Kennesaw State being a brand-new Division I program, don’t exactly know where it’s at. So an opportunity to get our name out there. And I think over the next few years, I think we got a chance to continue to push our name out there. We have a great product to sell.
Mastrangelo: Do you guys look at like maybe like what did Tulane did? Like, hey, maybe we can eventually get into the playoff if they keep expanding?
Mack: No question. The sky’s the limit. You know, with the administration having the alignment that we have, with some consistency and stability within any program, you never know how big something can potentially be. We’re in a great area, a great location.
Mastrangelo: What’s the key for you guys to beat Western Michigan and get that eleventh win?
Mack: It’s gonna be a physical game. It’s a physical opponent. They do a great job of controlling the line of scrimmage. They don’t like to make a lot of mistakes ... They do a great job of running the ball. So we have to do a great job of being fundamentally sound, especially at this time of the year, and especially an opponent like that, you cannot make a ton of mistakes because they will hold you accountable for those mistakes that you make.
Mastrangelo: I know you reportedly signed a new contract, a long-term deal. Can you overall just talk about just the importance of knowing that that you’ll be here for a while?
Mack: I wanted to make sure that people understood, not only just recruiting it, but also to the administration, the people in the community, they understand that this program could be as good as we want to be, as fast as we want to be, if we do a great job all pulling together and making sure that we’re all on the same page ...
I’m in it to try to build something special.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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