Why the Cure Bowl’s mission has special meaning for Coastal Carolina star Tarron Jackson
Coastal Carolina senior defensive end Tarron Jackson believes he and his teammates earned the right to play in a lucrative New Year’s Six bowl by going 11-0 with a pair of top-20 wins and Sun Belt Conference co-championship.
But if he were to pick another bowl game to participate in, the FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl in Orlando, Florida would be it.
The Aiken native has been to Orlando previously.
He went on a trip sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, when his older brother, Daron, was dying from leukemia.
The Cure Bowl’s mission is a dedication to finding a cure for cancer through research, which makes the game incredibly special for Jackson, who lost his brother when he as 9 – hence the number he wears on the field.
“I’ve seen what cancer can do, so being a part of a bowl that’s working to stop that, to combat that is huge,” Jackson said. “It has a little bit more meaning to me, going through what I went through. I’ve seen the impact and certain things happen with kids. The big thing for me when I was younger was the Make-A-Wish Foundation, they gave us an opportunity to go to Orlando and go to the different places at Disney World, and that was a blessing. Being a part of the Cure Bowl is great.”
Jackson is the 2020 Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Year, and earned First Team All-Sun Belt honors for the second straight season. He was a finalist or semifinalist for several national defensive player awards this season, and has been named a first team All-American by ESPN and the Reese’s Senior Bowl, and second team All-American by CBS Sports/247Sports.
Despite seeing double teams on more than 60 percent of his snaps, according to CCU, he is second in the Sun Belt in sacks with 8.5 on the season and third in tackles-for-loss with 13.5.
He is also tied for second in the Sun Belt with three forced fumbles and has 49 total tackles, a fumble recovery and a school-record 18 quarterback hurries, which is five more than his program record set last year.
“He’s an All-American and player of the year and all these things, but if you came to our practice you wouldn’t know that’s who he was,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said. “He works every day like he’s trying to earn his spot, like he’s trying to earn a scholarship, and like he’s trying to prove himself to coaches every day, and that epitomizes what you want your team to be about. You want them to be hungry all the time, and even though they get accolades you want them to keep striving to be better.
“. . . I know he’s going to go at the next level and he’s going to get doubted there, and he’ll end up proving himself there as well.”
Jackson is the career leader in several categories at CCU: sacks (26.5), yards lost from sacks (176), tackles-for-loss (44), yards lost from tackles-for-loss, and quarterback hurries (34).
“I’ll never doubt anything that he could ever do,” Chadwell said. “He’s a perfect example of people saying he’s not good enough, he’s not this, he’s not that, and he has used that to as motivation to fuel his dreams and desires. He is a self-made man and I think that’s what excites me about him. He’s going to go out and continue to prove people wrong.”
Jackson graduated in May with a degree in Mathematics, and is a projected pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.
His present and future have been shaped by the tragic impacts of cancer, which organizers of the Cure Bowl hope to influence.
“That had a huge impact on my life. It taught me a lot of things, you know,” Jackson said of his brother’s death. “It definitely helped me get through a lot of stuff in football. Certainly when you’re going through that process that’s kind of rough, kind of gritty, it made me not make excuses for a lot of things. Just seeing somebody that you love go through that and not have the ability to do anything, I feel it creates something in you that helps you get through a lot of stuff.”
Outside looking in
Coastal Carolina’s discontent with the College Football Playoff selection committee’s controversial decisions on Sunday only grew with Brigham Young’s 49-23 demolition of Central Florida on Tuesday in the Boca Raton Bowl.
CCU’s incoming president, Michael T. Benson, penned an open letter to the committee and its chair, Iowa athletic director Gary Barta, criticizing the committee’s “lack of fairness,” “absence of character” and “flawed logic.”
Benson called for an “equality of opportunity” for teams from Group of Five conferences, and called out the overt favoritism for programs from Power Five conferences.
“The [power] five have worked to ensure that a different kind of Golden Rule remains firmly in place at the highest level of Division 1 football: those with the gold make the rules,” Benson wrote.
CCU (11-0) had two primary beefs with the committee. First, the at-large teams selected for lucrative New Year’s Six bowl games were Power Five teams with a combined eight losses, and one of those was Iowa State (8-3).
Both Coastal and the Cyclones had two CFP top-25 wins, but Iowa State had three losses and one of those was a 31-14 beating at the hands of Louisiana, which had just one loss – to Coastal. Louisiana (9-1) is 19th in the final CFP rankings, CCU is 12th and Iowa State is 10th and was selected to compete in the Fiesta Bowl.
“I think the Iowa State one is the one that’s a little bit more disappointing,” Chadwell said. “They didn’t win their conference, they had three losses including one to a really fantastic team in Louisiana, who dominated them at their place, and obviously we beat Louisiana at their place. I think that’s the one that you sort of scratch your head on a little bit because they did have three losses and two top-25 wins. Well so did we, and we didn’t have three losses, and you lost to somebody we played. But they were in love with Iowa State the whole year long . . . They’re not going to let a Cincinnati and Coastal get all that money, I’m sure.”
CCU’s second criticism was the committee’s placing of Cincinnati (9-0) of the American Athletic Conference at eighth and in a New Year’s Six bowl despite the Chants having two top-25 wins to the Bearcats’ one. Both were also against teams ranked higher – BYU at 16 and Louisiana at 19 – than Cincinnati’s one top-25 win over No. 24 Tulsa.
Coastal gave both Louisiana and BYU (11-1) their only losses of the season.
“I think people thought BYU was pretty good, but then we beat them and, ‘Well, maybe they’re not as good as we thought,’ ” Chadwell said. “Then they go out and totally annihilate UCF last night, and UCF was one of the great wins for Cincinnati, and the AAC is this great conference, you know, and they just got obliterated. I do not think we got the credit for that [win]. But at the end of the day it’s not like we can go back and do it again. We felt that way from the get-go.”
Playing at home
Coastal senior punter Charles Ouverson of Murrells Inlet and St. James High is glad he chose to remain close to home to further his football career.
“I’m thrilled that I’ve been able to go to play at Coastal,” Ouverson said. “I grew up watching Coastal. Obviously it’s right in my back yard. I know a lot of the people who have gone here, the alumni. I see people I know every day. I can see my parents every weekend or whenever I want to go home, and old friends and stuff. It’s just meant a lot to be able to represent my community, the Murrells Inlet and Myrtle Beach area.”
Ouverson won the starting punter job back this season after holding it as a redshirt sophomore in 2018 but losing it to Myles Prosser last season, and he has been the holder on field goals and extra points for the past four seasons.
Ouverson has posted an average of 40.3 yards over 33 punts this season, including a long of 62 yards in a win over Appalachian State on Nov. 21. He has five punts of 50 yards or more and has had few punts returned, as he has placed 18 inside the opponents’ 20-yard line and has had 13 punts fair caught.
Spawning a bobblehead
The Turnover Cloak has grown in popularity over the past two years, to the point it is being featured on a new bobblehead.
FOCO, a manufacturer of sports and entertainment merchandise, has created the Chauncey Coastal Carolina Chanticleers Celebration Series Bobblehead that is selling for $40 on the company’s website.
The bobblehead features CCU mascot Chauncey wearing the “Black Swarm” Turnover Cloak and holding a sword.
The cloak is awarded on the sideline to a defensive player who registers a turnover, complete with an impromptu ceremony and celebration.
The black cape has patches of fur on the shoulders and is modeled after the cloak worn by Jon Snow, formerly King in the North and heir to the iron throne in HBO’s Game of Thrones series. Legend has it the cloak was the idea of strength coach Chad Scott and one other staff member, and was made by defensive coordinator Chad Staggs’ wife Kelli.
Rivalry renewed
To most of the players and coaches at both Liberty and Coastal, the intense 14-game rivalry between the teams is something of legend and hearsay.
But for the fifth-year seniors such as Jackson, they are versed in the deep dislike the teams shared. It was derived from the teams’ games almost annually determining either the Big South Conference championship or an FCS playoff berth, or both.
Jackson recalls being a redshirt freshman in 2016 when CCU last played Liberty and seeing the intensity the upperclassmen on that team brought to the game. He has heard from many of them in the leadup to the game.
“I’ve got a lot of alumni and other guys hitting me up, kind of making sure that some of the young guys know the importance of this game and the history that we’ve had,” Jackson said.
Saturday’s Game
Who: AP No. 9 Coastal Carolina (11-0) vs. No. 23 Liberty (9-1)
What: Sixth annual FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl
Where: Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Florida
When: 7:30 p.m.
TV: ESPN
Radio: ESPN Radio and WRNN FM 99.5
This story was originally published December 26, 2020 at 6:30 AM.
