The Kennesaw State Owls started playing football in 2015. They made the FCS playoffs for the first time this year, and now they’re going to the third round of that tournament on the heels of a big upset on Saturday.
The No. 3 and 4 seeds in the FCS playoffs lost to unseeded visitors on the same day
Kennesaw State and New Hampshire are moving on. Jacksonville State and Central Arkansas are out.
KSU went on the road to beat No. 3 seed Jacksonville State, 17-7. They’d beaten Samford in the first round, when Jacksonville State had a bye as a seeded team. But the Owls mustered enough to beat the heavy favorites in their own building anyway.
KSU out-rushed JSU 213 yards to 99. JSU averaged a lousy 3.7 yards per play and couldn’t get traction against a stingy Owl defense.
Look at all these excited students:
Kennesaw State is a cool story. For one thing, it’s a startup program that didn’t exist four years ago. For another, the Owls have Turnover Plank — their answer to Miami’s more famous Turnover Chain and one of the great sideline props in college football.
The brief origin story:
-As pieced together by five different Kennesaw State Owls, including head coach Brian Bohannon, who brought WR Dez Johnson into his office to help track it down:
-Scout team wide receiver Tanner Jones found Plank somewhere in Florida on spring break in 2015.
-Two years later, Jones’ father was cleaning the garage and asked whether Plank was worth hanging on to.
-Jones started bringing Plank to the locker room every day in October.
Redshirt junior safety Taylor Henkle takes it from there:
“I’d seen Plank around. I saw him on the plane. Somebody had him, but nobody did anything with him. After I got an interception [at Montana State on Nov. 4], somebody — I don’t even know who it is, we’re still trying to figure it out — handed it to me. I had no idea what to do. There was a couple Kennesaw State fans in the front row, so I just held it up to them.”
Plank’s number was called once in the JSU upset, after a Kennesaw State interception.
And that wasn’t the only huge FCS upset of the day.
No. 4 Central Arkansas lost at home to unseeded New Hampshire, 21-15.
This was despite UCA out-gaining New Hampshire 434 yards to 216. UNH picked off UCA quarterback Hayden Hildebrand twice and held up after getting a 21-9 lead in the fourth quarter.
These playoffs have some upsets every year. No. 3 and 4 going down in their first games is on the wilder side of things, though.
An updated bracket:
See More:
