MOBILE, Ala. – The Reese's Senior Bowl released its 2021 Top 250 List on Thursday and Jacksonville State tight end Trae Barry and quarterback Zerrick Cooper were both featured on it.
 
Formerly referred to as the Senior Bowl Watch List, it previously featured almost 500 players. But given the sensitivity of the current health climate we have trimmed the list to a "Top 250" format. Barry, a senior from Summerdale, Ala., and Cooper, a senior from Jonesboro, Ga., are the only two players from the Ohio Valley Conference and part of just 12 FCS players listed on the 2021 Reese's Senior Bowl Top 250 list. 
 
The game is scheduled to be played on Saturday, Jan. 30 at South Alabama's Hancock Whitney Stadium in Mobile. JSU has had five players invited to participate in the game: Dieter Brock (1974), Jesse Baker (1979), Sean Richardson (1994), Siran Neal (2018) and B.J. Autry (2019).
 
Barry, a senior from Summerdale, Ala., was voted to the 2020 Preseason All-OVC squad despite playing in just five games before an injury forced him to miss the remainder of the 2019 season. Despite the injury, he is JSU's leading returning receiver with 25 catches for 330 yards and a touchdown a year ago. He joined Cooper on HERO Sports Sophomore All-America Team in 2018 after catching 32 passes for 503 yards and a score to grab First-Team All-OVC honors that year. Barry enters his senior campaign with 67 career catches for 1,076 yards and five touchdowns.
 
Cooper, a senior from Jonesboro, Ga., earned his second-straight All-OVC honor in 2019 after being named a first-team selection in 2018, extending JSU's streak of consecutive seasons with a quarterback on the All-OVC teams to seven. In 2019, Cooper finished the regular season ranked eighth nationally in total offense with 310.3 yards per game, eighth in passing yards with 3,404 yards, ninth in points responsible for with 204 and 11th in passing touchdowns with 28. In just two years at JSU, Cooper has the top two single-season passing marks and ranks third in school history for career passing yards (6,820). He also has the top two single-season passing touchdown marks and ranks seventh in OVC history and second in JSU history with 60 career passing touchdowns, just one away from Ed Lett's school record of 61 from 1979-82.
 
The Reese's Senior Bowl is the nation's most prestigious college all-star game, as it annually serves as the first step of the NFL draft process, which explains their hashtag, #TheDraftStartsInMOBILE. The Reese's Senior Bowl has had 93 total players and 40 selected in the first three rounds each of the past two years, including 10 first-round picks in the 2019 NFL Draft. The 93 figure represents nearly 40% of the total draft these past two years. One thing that differentiates the Reese's Senior Bowl from other all-star games is the participation of two full NFL coaching staffs. Last year, the two teams were coached by the Detroit Lions and Cincinnati Bengals and there were over 900 credentialed NFL personnel in Mobile for game week.