Southern Hospitality Meets Deep Hate In the JLab Birmingham Bowl

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - December 28, 2025

Officially, Georgia Southern and Appalachian State will meet in the 19th JLab Birmingham Bowl, where the official slogan is “Southern Hospitality. Serious Football.”

In this case, though, the teams will bring their own game slogan with them, which is not common during the bowl season. But when your rivalry is known by your fans as “Deeper than Hate” then it’s impossible to turn that off.

It will be the 41st meeting between the programs when Georgia Southern and Appalachian State get together on Monday at Protective Stadium with kickoff scheduled for 1 p.m. CT. The first meeting came on Nov. 25, 1932 when Georgia Southern, which was then known as South Georgia Teachers College, beat visiting Appalachian State, 33-0. The most recent meeting, before Monday, came on Nov. 6 of this year when Georgia Southern knocked off Appalachian State, 25-23, in a Sun Belt Conference game.

“These are two teams that love to compete against each other,” said Georgia Southern head coach Clay Helton, who is 26-25 in his four seasons at Georgia Southern. “We have a fierce, fierce rivalry, but we have a lot of respect for each other. Even more respect as we look at the college football landscape and you get the opportunity (for a bowl game) and everybody said, hey, where's everybody going? You look up and it’s Georgia Southern versus App State. There's one thing that I can say about our two programs. We have immense, immense respect for each other. And if you ask us to play, we'll tell you any place, anytime, anywhere, put the ball down. We just love to compete. And we're going to love to compete in Birmingham and put on the show for this great city.”

Expectations for a close game are common in this series. Add up all the points scored in the first 40 meetings between these teams and the average margin of victory is three points per game. For the record, the average score is 27-24 in favor of Appalachian State. But the Eagles do carry the bragging rights into the game after the win earlier this season.

Helton joked during the JLab Birmingham Bowl coaches press conference in early December that Georgia Southern senior athletic director for communications Bryan Johnston told him that no FBS team had won a conference game against an opponent and then won the rematch when they played in a bowl game.

“I said, well, thanks a lot for that, Bryan, I really appreciate it,” Helton said. “But it is hard, especially when you know each other so well. We compete against each other every year, and you know each other's personnel. I think that's the biggest thing. You don't realize how important personnel matchups are until you play them.”

In the first meeting, both team’s quarterback had a big day. Georgia Southern’s JC French IV threw for 352 yards and a touchdown and Appalachian State’s AJ Swann threw for 348 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Wide receivers Marcus Sanders Jr. of Georgia Southern and Jaden Barnes of Appalachian State also had big days. Sanders had nine catches for 127 yards and a touchdown and Barnes had 13 catches for 160 yards and a touchdown.

Georgia Southern  had some red zone problems in the first meeting, settling for four short field goals by Tripp Bryant but made some key defensive stops in the game. Appalachian State cut the deficit to two with 1:54 left but Georgia Southern iced the game with a 9-yard run by OJ Arnold on 4th-and-1 with 34 seconds remaining.

Despite the familiarity between the teams there is a bit of the unknown in the rematch because of players opting out of bowl games to enter the transfer portal. Georgia Southern is not expected to be without any significant players but Appalachian State has in the neighborhood of 30 players in the transfer portal including the team’s top two quarterbacks – Swann and JJ Kohl – and Moody High graduate wide receiver Davion Dozier.