Johnson C. Smith lands No. 2 seed, home game in NCAA Division II football playoffs
The Johnson C. Smith football team is hosting a playoff game as it competes for an NCAA championship.
The Golden Bulls earned a No. 2 seed in the Division II playoffs and will host Frostburg State at 1 p.m. Saturday at Irwin Belk Complex, the NCAA announced during its live selection show Sunday night.
The Charlotte school, crowned CIAA champions for the first time since 1969, made the 32-team bracket for its first NCAA tournament appearance in program history. The Division II championship has been held since 1973.
“This is all part of our plan,” head coach Maurice Flowers said Sunday at a watch party inside the school’s new science building. “Life is not a fairytale. You can have all these great plans, and somehow they come crumbling down, but this has been a test of adversity. What our young men realize is, ‘nothing is going to be given to you. You’ve got to earn everything.’ And that’s what we believe in.”
‘Championships are won in December’
The winner of Saturday’s postseason contest at Eddie C. McGirt Field advances to play No. 3 seed Virginia Union.
JC Smith enters the NCAA playoffs with a 10-1 record, riding a seven-game win streak after smashing the Panthers on Saturday in Durham in their first CIAA title game appearance in 53 years. The Bulls now match up against Maryland’s Frostburg State, which comes in at 9-2 and co-champion of the Mountain East Conference.
The players wore gold T-shirts reading “Not Done Yet” and packed the Truist Auditorium alongside numerous JCSU alumni, including Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden. An exception was made to a rule about wearing hats inside buildings for Sunday night’s watch party, Flowers said with a laugh, and many donned the ball caps they’d received roughly 24 hours prior after winning their historic conference title.
“How about that? A college football playoff game in Charlotte, North Carolina,” Flowers said. “We don’t talk about weather in our program. We’re not allowed to talk about, ‘It’s too hot, it’s raining, it’s cold,’ because from Day One, we let our team know championships are won when it’s cold. Championships are won in December. And if the elements are going to affect you in any kind of way, you’re not going to be a champion. We talk about these things from Day One, so we get to this point right here, that’s part of it.
”We had a day last week, we know, the temperature just dropped in the mid-to-high 20s. We brought it to our leadership council: ‘Guys, when we play on Saturday in the championship game, it’s going to be 73 to 75 degrees. We can go in the afternoon on Tuesday because it’s going to be so cold.’ And they said, ‘No, sir. Coach, we might have to go to Colorado for a playoff game. We need to practice in the morning.’ That’s the kind of team we’re dealing with here.”
A home playoff football game Saturday in Charlotte
Flowers anticipates additional seating for this weekend’s NCAA playoff game.
Fans dressed in gold and blue filled the visitors’ section at the CIAA title game, outnumbering spectators representing Virginia Union, the conference’s No. 1 seed playing for its third consecutive championship.
Community has been essential in JC Smith football’s rise to prominence. Several distinguished graduates of the program spoke to the team after the selection show, emphasizing the generational impacts of their work as the team sets its sights on preparing for the Bobcats.
“I didn’t know what to expect (Saturday), and I’m just so glad we traveled well, and now for this playoff game, we’ve got to have an even better crowd,” Flowers said. “We’ve got to fill the stadium. We need to be able to bring temporary bleachers in. We want everyone who is available to come on out to ‘The Cut,’ as we call it. That’s Eddie McGirt Field on Johnson C. Smith’s campus. Come on out and support the Golden Bulls.”
This story was originally published November 16, 2025 at 6:29 PM.
