The EMCC Lions celebrate their 2022 MACCC Football Championship.

In advance of the upcoming 2023 junior college football season, reigning MACCC champion East Mississippi Community College has claimed a No. 1 national ranking in the JCGridiron Preseason Dirty 30 Rankings.

Selected during the preseason and postseason for the past 18 years by widely respected junior college football expert Brad Hoiseth with assistance provided by coaches from across the country, the JCGridiron.com Dirty 30 preseason rankings annually reflect team performances on the field from the previous year, the overall strength of the teams’ conferences and predicted impact players in key positions for the various teams under consideration. The rankings include all junior college football programs affiliated with the National Junior College Athletic Association as well as from the highly acclaimed California Community College Athletic Association.

Head coach Buddy Stephens’ EMCC Lions have earned a record four postseason Dirty 30 national championships to date during an eight-year span between 2011 and 2018. East Mississippi captured solo JCGridiron national titles in 2011, 2014 and 2018 in addition to sharing the 2013 crown with Butte (CA). Only four other programs nationally – Butte (CA), Iowa Western, Mt. San Antonio (CA) and San Francisco (CA) – have collected multiple JCGridiron Dirty 30 national championships through the years. JCGridiron has had 14 different programs declared as postseason Dirty 30 national champions, including 15 individual school champions and three split titles dating back to 2005.

The remaining top five in this year’s JCGridiron Preseason Dirty 30 Rankings are No. 2 San Francisco (CA), third-ranked Jones (MS), followed by Ventura (CA) and Hutchinson (KS) at fourth and fifth, respectively. Other Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference (MACCC) teams represented in the 2023 preseason Dirty 30 are No. 16 Mississippi Gulf Coast and 18th-ranked Northwest Mississippi.

On the heels of claiming their eighth MACCC football championship during a title-filled, 14-year span dating back to 2009, East Mississippi’s Lions are slated to open the 2023 season on the road by taking on the Wolves of Copiah-Lincoln Community College on Thursday, Sept. 7. Kickoff for EMCC’s season opener is set for 6:30 p.m. at H.L. Stone Stadium in Wesson. EMCC will then close out the month of September with successive home Thursday contests against Jones (Sept. 14), Holmes (Sept. 21) and Mississippi Gulf Coast (Sept. 28). Game times are scheduled for 7 p.m. at Sullivan-Windham Field on the Scooba campus.