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Reigning two-time MACCC champion and 2023 national runner-up East Mississippi Community College will begin the upcoming football season ranked second nationally in the 2024 NJCAA Division I Preseason Football Rankings announced Monday by the national office.

Rewarded with their highest preseason football ranking since pre-COVID, head coach Buddy Stephens’ EMCC Lions have now been ranked among the NJCAA’s top-10 preseason football teams 13 times as he enters his 17th season at the East Mississippi helm. The five-time national champions and nine-time conference champions were previously tabbed as the nation’s No. 1 preseason team six times during the eight-year span from 2012 through 2019.

During the team’s 15 seasons of competition under Stephens’ guidance, the Lions have been represented in the NJCAA’s weekly football poll 92% of the time.

With a 16-year head coaching record of 143-24 with the Lions, Stephens will enter the upcoming 2024 football season ranked second on the NJCAA’s all-time list for career winning percentage among coaches with 100 or more career games coached. Along with ranking tied for third among the NJCAA’s winningest active head football coaches, Stephens is currently tied for 23rd on the NJCAA’s all-time wins list and is fifth in Mississippi junior college football history.

In addition to the Lions’ nine conference titles (2009, ’11, ’13-14, ’16-18 & ’22-23) in the last 15 years, Stephens’ EMCC football teams have also claimed five national championships (2011, ’13-14 & ’17-18), along with last year’s national championship runner-up finish, as well as 11 division crowns (2008-09, ’11-16, ’18, ’21 & ’23) dating back to the 2008 season.

Scheduled to kick off on Thursday, Aug. 29, with a conference semifinals rematch against Mississippi Gulf Coast on the Scooba campus, East Mississippi’s 2024 gridiron slate also features home MACCC North Division contests against Itawamba on Sept. 19, Coahoma on Sept. 28 – which is homecoming — and Mississippi Delta on Oct. 24. Along with interdivisional road meetings with MACCC South Division foes Hinds on Sept. 5 and Pearl River on Oct. 17, the Lions will also have road matchups within division play against Northwest Mississippi on Sept. 12, Northeast Mississippi on Oct. 10 and Holmes on Oct. 31. The 2024 MACCC football playoffs are slated for consecutive Saturdays on Nov. 9 and 16.

Two-time reigning NJCAA Division I football champion Iowa Western Community College remained atop the poll in this year’s preseason rankings with all 12 first-place votes, followed by No. 2 EMCC, third-ranked Hutchinson Community College in Kansas, No. 4 Kilgore College in Texas and fifth-ranked Snow College in Utah. Northwest Mississippi Community College is listed seventh in the NJCAA’s preseason poll, along with MACCC foes Copiah-Lincoln, Mississippi Gulf Coast and Jones College.