​Prairie View A&M University head football coach Tremaine Jackson speaks at a press conference, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, ahead of the State Fair Classic at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. (Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News)
Tremaine Jackson and Colby Carthel shook hands after Stephen F. Austin’s 31-10 win over Prairie View A&M on Saturday, but days later, the two are caught in the middle of a simmering verbal tussle with Jackson calling Carthel “very cowardly” for going public with criticism of one of Prairie View’s players without bringing it up to him first.In the first quarter of the Lumberjacks’ win in Prairie View, Panthers defensive back Eric Zachery went low on a tackle on SFA tight end Gerard Edimo, then held on to his leg as Edimo flipped over the top of him. With Edimo down on the ground, Zachery walked away with an exaggerated limp, which Carthel took as him mocking the injured player.”I’ve coached 27 years of college football. That was the second-dirtiest, most unsportsmanlike play I’ve seen in my career,” the SFA coach said at his Monday press conference. “Absolutely no business in this game for a play like that. Disgusting. It’s pathetic.”Prayers up for @gerard_edimo 🙏#AxeEm🪓 #EastTexasTough💪 https://t.co/Ae1OqoRPKqpic.twitter.com/39eiML6XZY- Colby Carthel (@CoachCarthel) September 22, 2026None of that sat well with Jackson, who says the play wasn’t mentioned to him in the postgame handshake between the head coaches, nor when the staffs from both sides talked Sunday and discussed how each team can improve.  “I’ve been knowing Colby Carthel for 15 years of my career,” Jackson said Wednesday night on the HBCU Coaches Corner. “We have iPads on the sidelines. If Colby Carthel thought that play was a problem, he shook my hand at midfield and told me how great of a program we had and for us to go win the national championship. I said the same thing to him. There was no mention of the play.”On the YouTube show, Jackson said he understood the play looked bad, but explained that Edimo’s leg got caught on Zachery’s jersey. He also defended Zachery as a person, pointing out the junior from South Dallas has a 3.2 grade-point average and is on pace to graduate.What most irritated Jackson was some of the social media response that Zachery received with fans going on his Instagram page and posting racist comments under his photos, which Jackson says Carthel incited with his comments.”You’re not going to attack one of our kids or incite something onto one of our kids, one, without talking to me, the grown folks in place, and, two, without even knowing who that kid is,” Jackson said. “My response though wasn’t really to Coach Carthel, because if Coach Carthel wants to talk to me, Coach Carthel’s got my number. My response was to the people that he incited and that he decided that he was going to get them on his side, and they were going to start calling this kid out of his name, talking about this kid’s situation and saying re