Jacksonville State University, often called Jax State, is a public university located in Jacksonville, Alabama. It sits nearly midway between Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia, just north of Interstate 20. The university was founded in 1883 and has evolved from a teachers college to a regional university with a large campus of 459 acres in the Appalachian foothills of northeast Alabama. It offers a broad range of undergraduate and graduate degrees and has more than 9,000 students enrolled. The university is known for its athletics teams called the Gamecocks, and since 2023, it competes in Conference USA for football among other sports.