SWJCFC MEDIA DAY JULY 25 | Can KC three-peat as conference champs?
Memorial Day has gone by, the Fourth of July has now gone by – and the unofficial “holidays” of the summer that are next on the calendar are the college football media days, including media day for the Southwest Junior College Football Conference.
That’s coming up on Thursday, July 25 at Hollytree Golf Club in Tyler, and seated at the head of the table has to be the two-time defending conference champion Kilgore College, who not only won the SWJCFC last season, but also represented the conference on the national stage in the NJCAA’s college football playoff.
Gooden, the former Ranger himself who has been tied to so many great moments as a player, an assistant and as a head coach, will be in his sixth season as head coach at KC coming up in 2024.
Joining KC in the conference are, of course, Navarro, Tyler Junior College, Trinity Valley Community College, Blinn, New Mexico Military, Cisco, and Northeastern Oklahoma A&M (NEO).
Gooden and the coaches for each of those programs will address the media, and in all likelihood, there will be a media poll and a coaches’ poll released to the public, predictions from the groups of what program will win the conference.
KC went 9-2 a season ago, finishing up conference play with a 7-1 record, avenging their only conference loss – to Navarro – with a win over the Bulldogs in the conference championship. Coach Willie Gooden and the Rangers made it into the top four, similar to the College Football Playoff’s top four, where No. 1 plays No. 4, No. 2 plays No. 3 and the winners face each other for the national title.
The Rangers lost in the semifinals to Iowa Western, but then re-loaded in the offseason, and hope to make another run – and to win another conference title, too, something they’ve been very, very good at in their football history, dating back to 1935.
KC has won the conference title 30 times, including three of the last four years, and the last two. In 2022, they did so completely on the road, as the conference’s No. 4 (and lowest) seed, and then knocked off the defending national champion New Mexico Military in Roswell, N.M.
Last year, KC went the distance as the conference champion, went into the conference playoffs as the No. 1 seed, beat NMMI and then, as mentioned, Navarro in the title game before the loss at Iowa Western.
The Rangers open the season at home at R.E. St. John Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 24, at 7 p.m. against Monterrey Tech (Calif.). A countdown clock is on the college’s athletic website, www.kcrangernation.com, and at this writing, that clock sits squarely at 49 days.