Alabama State and Jackson State headline SWAC preseason honors for 2026
Andrew Body and Kam Sallis split SWAC top honors, while Alabama State’s nine preseason picks and Jackson State’s six signaled a title race built around two power programs.
Alabama State quarterback Andrew Body and Jackson State safety Kam Sallis split the SWAC’s top preseason individual honors, and the rest of the all-conference vote showed the league’s power sitting squarely with the Hornets and Tigers. Alabama State led all member schools with nine preseason selections, while Jackson State, Bethune-Cookman and Alcorn State each landed six.
Body was named the SWAC Preseason Offensive Player of the Year after a 2025 season that looked like a résumé built for a title push. He completed 113 of 160 passes for 1,770 yards, 20 touchdowns and only one interception, while adding 500 rushing yards and four more scores. Body averaged 221.3 passing yards per game and posted a 203.6 passer efficiency rating, numbers that helped Alabama State finish 10-2 overall and 7-1 in conference play. The Hornets also produced the SWAC’s highest-scoring offense at 42.4 points per game, and the 10-win campaign was their first in 21 years and their best run since 2004.
Sallis took the preseason defensive honor after anchoring a Jackson State unit that gave up just 18.8 points per game in 2025. The Tigers also held opponents to 111.7 rushing yards per game, forced eight team interceptions and reached the SWAC Football Championship Game while finishing 9-3 overall and 7-1 in league play. That kind of balance keeps Jackson State in the same conversation as Alabama State, even before the first snap of 2026.
The vote distribution filled in the rest of the picture. Prairie View A&M, Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Alabama A&M each placed five players on the preseason teams, giving the upper tier of the league a crowded middle behind the two headline programs. The ballots came from the SWAC’s head coaches and sports information directors, the same group that handles postseason honors, so the preseason list reads like an early map of where title expectations are concentrated.
That map also shows how fast the league’s center of gravity can shift. In 2025, Jackson State quarterback Jacobian Morgan was the preseason Offensive Player of the Year and Southern edge rusher Ckelby Givens was the preseason Defensive Player of the Year. One year later, the spotlight has moved to Body, Sallis and an Alabama State team that turned a breakthrough season into the league’s loudest preseason statement.
The 2026 SWAC football season begins Thursday, August 27. Before then, the league will hold SWAC Football Media Day on Wednesday, July 15 at 10:00 a.m. CST at the Sheraton-Birmingham in Birmingham, Alabama, where the preseason forecast will turn into the first real countdown to kickoff.
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