Jacksonville State vs Kennesaw State Prediction Football Picks Today 12/5/25

The Kennesaw State Owls and the Jacksonville State Gamecocks meet Friday in Conference USA Championship Game college football action from AmFirst Stadium. Here’s a Jacksonville State vs Kennesaw State prediction. We will look at this from a betting perspective and determine the best Jacksonville State vs Kennesaw State pick.

Kennesaw State Owls Betting Preview

The Owls opened up their year with a couple of tough losses but they’ve been much better since then. Kennesaw State fell in a close one versus Wake Forest then dropped a blowout to Indiana in their first pair. The Owls would then rattle off wins over Merrimack, Arkansas State, Middle Tennessee, LA Tech, FIU, UTEP and New Mexico State before another loss versus Jacksonville State. Since then it’s been a couple more wins over Missouri State and Liberty, giving the Owls a 9-3 record overall this year.

In the Liberty game on Saturday, the Owls came out of the locker room with a 14-14 tie and traded punches the whole way. After two overtime periods, Kennesaw State had a hard-fought 48-42 win. QB Amari Odom was 14-of-23 for 240 yards and four touchdowns while also running in a score. Coleman Bennett had 14 carries for 92 yards and a TD and Gabriel Benyard had 82 yards and two scores off four catches.

Jacksonville State Gamecocks Betting Preview

Over on the Jacksonville State side, they opened their season on a spotty 2-3 run with losses to UCF, Georgia Southern and Southern Miss during that stretch. The Gamecocks would hit a win streak next though, taking out Sam Houston, Delaware, Middle Tennessee, UTEP and Kennesaw State. After another loss to FIU, Jacksonville State took out Western Kentucky to finish off an 8-4 regular season.

Matched up against Western Kentucky on Saturday, the Gamecocks were down 28-24 going into the second half. Jacksonville State scored 13 more points from there in a 37-34 finish. QB Caden Creel had 204 yards with two scores on 12-of-19 passing and also rushed 20 times for 143 yards and a TD. Cam Cook had 137 yards rushing and a score, while Deondre Johnson added five catches for 122 yards and a TD.

Jacksonville State vs Kennesaw State Prediction

I’ll lean toward Jacksonville State but you could call this one either way. The Gamecocks got past a feisty Western Kentucky team in their last outing, notching 515 yards, 293 rush yards, 7.6 yards per play and 24 first downs. Jacksonville State went a spotty 6-of-15 on third-down tries, though. Defensively the team gave up 204 rushing yards and 6.3 yards per play but also did pretty well on third downs (4-of-10) and had a couple of takeaways.

The last time these teams met up was back on November 15 in a 35-26 win for the Gamecocks at AmFirst Stadium. Jacksonville State rushed very well in that one also (252 yards) but also went just 4-of-11 on third-downs and had eight penalties for 92 yards. The Gamecocks defense gave up a whopping 579 yards on the other side along with 32 first downs and 7-of-15 on third-down attempts. The saving grace, however, was the four interceptions. Jacksonville State can’t rely on that this time; they’ve got to clean up the mistakes and keep drives going by staying on the field. Kennesaw State’s 10 penalties for 90 yards certainly didn’t hurt matters, either. I could see this rematch going either way. Should be a great matchup, all things considered.