Quoting JSU Head Coach Jack Crowe

ON THIS WEEK'S GAME AGAINS EASTERN ILLINOIS
“We got an opportunity again to get on the field with a quality football team and make a statement about our football team. This is a team ,that in six years, we have split with and they have actually won the last two times they were here. So, we feel enormously challenged. I am going to work hard to make sure the quality football team we are playing. They are in the Top 25 in the country. It goes back really to Coach Spoo and the quality program that he has created there. You are looking at a football program that produced three NFL head coaches. Two of them are undefeated in the NFL right now, at the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints. They played and coached there along with Mike Shanahan. This is a school with a great football tradition. They have won the league many times and represented the league in the playoffs many more. They have a quarterback, Jay Christianson, who led Iowa to a bowl game in his sophomore year. He graduated and decided to play his final year at Eastern Illinois. Mon Williams and Chevon Walker are their top two running backs that transferred from the University of Florida. Defensively, they've always been a tough football team on us. I don't think we have ever really had what you would call a good day offensively against them. I do think with Ryan, and their quarterback, it offers an opportunity for a very exciting game for the fans for Homecoming.”

ABOUT JSU
“We are still an upstart football program against what they represent. We have to carry an attitude into this football game. We've had a week off. I thought we were playing with a lot of momentum before the open week. We are talented and we know how to play the game, but it is really more about focus. That's the challenge for our football team. The (open) week should have helped us. It should have allowed us to get healed up, but it could have allowed us to become arrogant and lose our purpose too. I really don't expect that to be the case. We worked very hard before they left for the weekend. I do expect us to pick back up where we left off, but I am going to be diligent into the expectation that is required to do that.”

ON HOMECOMING
“We will have the crowd back and former players back. We will have people from around the country that have been gone a long time that want to come back and have a positive experience on this weekend. We have people from any decade that were used to winning, because we have been a winning and a championship program in every decade. No matter which decade they come from, they don't expect to see anything different than it was when they left. A great band and a football team that takes pride in playing front of its alumni. Maybe we will have a beautiful day for it and bring out the value that the weekend represents.”

ON THE EIU RIVALRY
“I am disrespecting Eastern Kentucky because their tradition over a period of time is unmatched in Division I-AA. But since we have been in the league, I don't think there is any question they've been the team that we have probably pointed out more than any other and I think we've been the team they've pointed at more than any other. I think it is a two way street. This has traditionally been a benchmark game. ”