Mark Edwards: Jax State's Rippa knows how to let the game-winning kicks rip

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JACKSONVILLE — Jacksonville State’s Garrison Rippa has won four college football games with a last-minute field goal, including his last-second kick to beat Western Kentucky 37-34 on Saturday.

But the moment in which he proved himself to his coach, Charles Kelly, came off the field. In fact, it came before the season even began.

It happened in a team meeting on the first day of preseason practice.

Kelly wasn't happy with Rippa. And he let him know it.

In front of the team.

"The first time I ever chewed his ass out, I mean, he wasn't fazed by it. I mean, not a bit," a happy Kelly said during Saturday's postgame news conference.

Kelly couldn't help but smile at the memory.

"I'm like, 'This guy's got something about him,'" he said. "He's got a good personality. His teammates love him. He's got some toughness about him.

"I just, you know, I trust him."

Who can blame Kelly?

The legend of Garrison Rippa just keeps growing and growing. The 28-yarder on the last play against Western Kentucky just adds to it.

Two years ago, in his first game as Jax State's starting kicker, he booted a 27-yarder in overtime to end the Gamecocks’ 37-34 win over Louisiana in the New Orleans Bowl.

This year, he beat Sam Houston 29-27 with a career-long 52-yarder on the last play of the game. His 45-yard field goal with 53 seconds left broke a tie and beat Texas-El Paso 30-27.

For good measure, he kicked a 51-yarder against Eastern Michigan last year with 34 seconds left to send the game into overtime. A 40-yarder put the game into a second overtime.

How many college football kickers can match the legacy Rippa eventually will leave behind?

These kicks aren't coming in meaningless games. The New Orleans Bowl was Jax State's first as an FBS school, and the three this year have helped clinch the chance to host next week's Conference USA championship game.

The thing about Rippa is that he doesn't seem to have the personality you might expect.

Sure, he has a slow heartbeat with the pressure at its greatest, but he's also disarming and self-deprecating. He's also funny.

About what he was thinking on that drive for the winning field goal?

"Honestly, I was kind of hoping we'd score a touchdown," Rippa said, laughing.

Quarterback Caden Creel overheard that and jokingly added, "Sorry about that."

And, what did Rippa think when Kelly chewed him out in that team meeting?

"That I couldn't sit up any straighter," Rippa said, drawing a big laugh in the news conference.

He added, "I was like, 'Oh, that's not good.' It's like the first day of camp, and I'm getting yelled at. I was just like, 'I gotta focus on what I got to do right and not cut up and just be an older guy.'"

As for all those last-second kicks, Rippa said, "It's kind of become normal."

The Gamecocks practice those kinds of situations every week. Rippa gets thrown into a pot of boiling water and a whole lot more often than not, he comes out too tough to chew.

When he takes the field for a kick, he doesn't mull the stakes. Instead, his mind goes over his routine.

"I'm thinking, 'Don't do anything different, just do the same thing I've done all day and all week and basically all year,' — just stick with what I know," Rippa said. "And that's just three steps back, two steps to the right. Let the O-line go to work, and then bang it through."

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