Jacksonville State University Athletics

Greg Seitz begins his 33rd year in the athletic department at Jacksonville State University, where he has served as Director of Athletics since being officially named to the role on February 26, 2016.
 
Seitz served as interim Athletic Director for 14 months leading up to his full-time appointment, marking his third term as the interim Athletic Director for the Gamecocks.
 
In Seitz’s decade at the helm, the Gamecocks have experienced unprecedented success on the field and in the classroom. The architect of Jax State’s move from NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Conference USA, Seitz has navigated the athletic department through the recovery of the 2018 EF-3 tornado, the 2020 pandemic and a series of three conference changes over a four-year span.
 
During his tenure, the Gamecocks have shined in the classroom. Jax State student-athletes have earned a 3.20-or-better department GPA in each of the last six years, including the department’s highest combined GPA of 3.341 set during the most recent 2024-25 academic year. 
 
Since taking the reins full-time in 2016, Seitz has hired an impressive list of head coaches that have produced Jax State’s first two trips to March Madness and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (Ray Harper), first FBS bowl appearance, bowl victory and FBS Conference Championship (Rich Rodriguez) and the school’s first Division I national championship in women’s bowling (Shannon O’Keefe). The Gamecocks have claimed multiple softball and volleyball conference crowns, while also regularly placing individuals in NCAA postseason competition in golf, tennis and track and field. In 2019, Jax State baseball won its first NCAA Tournament games eliminating Illinois and Clemson en route to the Oxford Regional Final.

In the school's second season as a full-fledged FBS school and member of Conference USA in 2024-25, the Gamecocks reached the championship game/round and finished first or second in the league in six sports (football, men's basketball, bowling, women's golf, softball and baseball). A feat made more impressive by the fact that CUSA ranked Top 10 in conference RPI in four of those sports (Bowling, Men's Basketball, Softball, Baseball) The Gamecocks hosted and won the 2024 CUSA Football Championship with a dominant 52-12 win over Western Kentucky at AmFirst Stadium to win the program's first FBS conference title. Jax State earned a second-straight bowl bid traveling to Orland, Fla., to face MAC champions Ohio in the Cure Bowl. The bowl game capped a record 10th nationally-televised game of the season for Jax State football. In March, Jax State made its debut in the men's basketball National Invitation Tournament (NIT), where the Gamecocks made another national television splash with an 81-64 Opening Round win at Georgia Tech for the program's first Power Four win in the last 50 years. 

Jax State made a head-first dive into Conference USA and FBS football for 2023-24. Behind the school's first FBS bowl appearance and bowl victory in the New Orleans Bowl and the upstart bowling program claiming the 2024 NCAA national championship, the first for the school in any sport at the Division I level, the Gamecocks ending the year with their best-ever finish in the LEARFIELD Director’s Cup standings. Jax State scored 145 points to rank 123rd among all 350+ Division I institutions. Both marks surpassed Jax State's previous bests of 140 points and 124th-place finish from 2015-16, which came during Seitz's earliest year leading the department. 
 
 
From his earliest days leading the Gamecocks, the Jax State football team won a JSU and Ohio Valley Conference-record five consecutive league titles and won a league-record 36-straight OVC games from 2014 to 2018, the second-longest conference win streak in FCS history. The Gamecocks were the only Division I program to win its conference title outright during those five seasons. The 2015 season saw the football team post it’s first-ever No. 1 ranking in school history, and earn the No. 1 National seed in the FCS Playoffs before advancing to Jax State’s first Division I National Championship Game appearance in Frisco, Texas. The Gamecocks set more than 50 school records and ranked in the top three in attendance at the FCS level after hosting three-straight home playoff games.
 
In 2017, Jax State reached the Division I NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for the first time under first-year head coach Ray Harper. The Gamecocks made their second all-time appearance in March Madness in 2022, winning the ASUN Conference in their first year. The transition to the ASUN saw immediate success on the hardwood as the women’s basketball program also took part in its first Div. I postseason with a bid to the WNIT.
 
Seitz has been with Jax State since 1993, when he began working as assistant sports information director. In 1999, he became Sports Information Director and was promoted to Associate Athletic Director in 2002, before being promoted to Senior Associate Athletic Director in 2011.
 
During his term as interim and Athletic Director, Seitz has been instrumental in many of the facility upgrades at Jacksonville State, including renovations at Rudy Abbott Field at Jim Case Stadium, Pete Mathews Coliseum, the Loring and Debbie White Football Complex and the Riley Green Athletic Sports Performance Center.
 
In 2017, Seitz announced an extension of a 14-year partnership between Jax State Athletics and Adidas, securing the Portland, Ore., based company as the Gamecocks’ official athletic apparel and footwear brand.
 
Also during 2017, Seitz and the Board of Trustees announced plans to install new state-of-the-art high definition video boards at football, baseball and softball, while also placing new scoreboards at the Jax State Soccer Field and the Jax State Tennis Courts. That project went one step further in 2019, when a pair of video boards were installed inside Pete Mathews Coliseum as part of the reconstruction process following the 2018 EF-3 tornado that struck campus.
 
As part of the campus rebuild following the tornado, Seitz brought the athletic department’s administrative home to Pete Mathews Coliseum creating new office space throughout the third floor of the facility. The transition paved the way for a new main athletic ticket office in the coliseum lobby, updated basketball, soccer and volleyball locker rooms, and the installation of a full-size practice court on the east end of the building. 
 
Under his guidance, Jax State athletics transitioned into the ASUN Conference in 2021, to better align with the evolving college landscape, and soon after accepted an invitation to join Conference USA beginning in 2023. The move elevated the Gamecocks’ football program to the highest level of college football. Among his notable hires since taking over as AD, Seitz landed Rich Rodriguez to lead Jax State’s efforts into FBS and Conference USA. The move proved successful from the start as Rodriguez and the Gamecocks won the ASUN Conference in his first season in 2022 during Jax State’s final FCS season. The momentum continued into Jax State’s debut FBS season in 2023 when Rodriguez and the Gamecocks became just the fifth team to play in a bowl during the program’s first full season of FBS competition. Jax State then became the first and only team to win a bowl in its first FBS campaign with a thrilling 34-31 overtime victory over Louisiana in the R+L Carrier’s New Orleans Bowl.  
 
Seitz has served on the NCAA Men’s Final Four Media Coordinator team for the last 14 years and was just named to the NCAA Division I baseball committee, serving a four-year term through 2028. He also serves as a site representative for the NCAA for the Division I Baseball Regionals and Super Regionals, and has worked the College World Series for the past six years. Seitz served a four-year term on the NCAA FCS Football Committee, serving as Chair in 2019, and has been a site representative for the last 11 years. In addition, he served as a member of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee in 2019-20 and was a member of the NCAA Championships Financial Working Group that was formed in 2019.
 
He has worked numerous NCAA Championships and Alabama High School Athletic Association events over the last 30-plus years. In 2002, he became the first SID elected as President of the Alabama Sports Writers Association and currently serves as the organization’s secretary and treasurer.


Updated June 2025