James Madison fans have had two weeks to emotionally prepare for this weekend’s huge Sun Belt opener at Appalachian State.
The Dukes (2-0) are one of two remaining Sun Belt teams who are undefeated. The college football odds market pegs App State as a -7 favorite.
JMU has, in the words of head coach Curt Cignetti, “passed its first test” – that test being the Week 1 blowout win against Middle Tennessee back on Sept. 3.
With FBS conference play on the horizon, the truly difficult tests now begin. JMU fans are accustomed to coasting through a CAA slate that generally offered all the resistance of a wet paper bag; Marshall, App State, Georgia Southern & Co. are a welcome change.
Opinions may vary here, but I’m of the opinion that this weekend’s renewed grudge match in Boone is one of the biggest, most memorable games in JMU history. And if you are familiar with how I often think about JMU Sports, then you probably know that this game got me thinking…
What are the other biggest games in JMU Football history?
Here’s the criteria. Outcome has nothing to do with it. I’m focused on games that loom large when considering both the historical arc of JMU football and the wider history of college football.
The case for this weekend’s game is simple: JMU has finally arrived on the scene of big-time FBS football. Win or lose, the period that this game marks is one of real national relevance.
If the game does end in an outright win for JMU, it could serve as an inflection point for its immediate future in FBS football. The Dukes can’t win the Sun Belt this year because of transition eligibility rules, but the “What if JMU was Eligible?” conversations will start in earnest.
Recruiting will spike. Media attention will spike. Marshall/JMU gets very interesting as a College GameDay location … though Penn State and Oklahoma State might still have inside positioning, thanks to their P5 status. (As much as the ESPN staff continues to declare its undying love for Harrisonburg, it’s also hard to imagine the show hitting two Sun Belt games in the same year.)
In short: App State marks the beginning of JMU’s journey as an increasingly powerful team, amidst an increasingly powerful conference.
I’d put that up there against some of these historical games to remember:
1. September 6, 1980: App State 34, JMU 6
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: JMU moved up a level, then played App State.
Just a handful of years after Madison College became a coed institution, President Ronald Carrier had an idea. If the school had a football team, it might gain acclaim more quickly as a destination for both sexes.
So in 1972, JMU fielded its first college football team.
The team kind of sucked. Understandable.
In its first game, JMU lost to Shepherd College’s JV team, 6-0. A week later, the Dukes lost to Salisbury State, 55-0.
Naturally, it took a few years for inaugural head coach Challace McMillin to build out its program. The Dukes were unaffiliated at first, later joining the NCAA for competition in lower divisions.
That finally changed in 1980, when JMU moved up to D1-AA. And its first game was against – you guessed it – App State.
2. December 17, 2004: JMU 31, Montana 21
Mickey Matthews took the head coaching job at JMU in 1999 because he saw the potential of a program that had mostly lay dormant.
I sometimes wonder if even he was surprised, five years later, when the Dukes became the only D1-AA/FCS team to ever win a national championship with a series of all-road playoff wins.
The 2004 national championship game legitimized 30 years of growth in Harrisonburg and put JMU on the college football map. Playing for a Division I national championship – the second one in a decade across all sports – was a huge moment for the program.
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3. Nov. 24, 2007: App State 28, JMU 27
FCS playoff fans got their money’s worth for this game, as the winner of the ‘04 championship traveled to play the winner of the ‘05 and ‘06 championships to open the ‘07 playoffs.
JMU took a 27-19 lead with 7:37 to play in the fourth quarter, but they couldn’t hold on late. App State kicked a field goal, then got a stop on fourth down to get the final possession they needed. Armanti Edwards ran in the winning touchdown with just over a minute to play, and App State went on to complete the championship three-peat.
It was a devastating loss, but JMU fans are generally okay with the outcome. Because…
4. Sept. 20, 2008: JMU 35, App State 32
It’s difficult to oversell how huge this game was. This was an era where FCS football was deep with contenders and dominated by east coast teams in the south and mid-atlantic.
App State was the three-time defending champion. They were the consensus No. 1 team in FCS.
And they were coming to Bridgeforth Stadium.
App State jumped out to a 21-0 halftime lead, which was brutally demoralizing. But Scotty McGee returned the second half’s opening kickoff for a touchdown, and JMU rallied to an incredible three-point win.
Revenge was so sweet.
5. Oct. 24, 2015: Richmond 59, JMU 49
I came of age as a JMU fan in the more listless portion of the Mickeyball era. JMU missed the playoffs in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013, then lost a brutal home game to Liberty in the first round of the 2014 playoffs. I still have nightmares about Liberty’s fourth-quarter drive from that game.
JMU had clearly exited its prime run from the mid-2000s. The fan base was in the desert.
But in Year 2 of the Everett Withers experiment, the team had become an offensive juggernaut. JMU ran out to a 7-0 record, which included a wild 48-45 win at Southern Methodist, and attracted the attention of ESPN’s College GameDay.
The actual game itself was a huge disappointment – Vad Lee suffered what turned out to be a career-ending injury, and JMU’s undefeated season came to a sudden halt at the hands of archrival Richmond. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
But the euphoria of ESPN operating from the Quad, with Wilson Hall in the background, completely blew up the ceiling on how much fun was theoretically possible when JMU football was good.
That, as it turns out, was a much more important legacy than one rivalry game against Richmond.
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6. Dec. 16, 2016: JMU 27, North Dakota State 17
How does one describe our Bison frenemies in 2016? They were somehow more and less terrifying than the present-day NDSU.
Here in 2022, North Dakota State has won nine of the last 11 FCS national championships, which is so dominant that it’s actually a bit boring. (Even Bison fans now concede this.)
Back in 2016, though, NDSU was defending an active streak of five straight titles. A semifinal game against JMU was all that stood between the Bison and a sixth straight trip to Frisco. NDSU was a behemoth deserving of total FCS reverence. Can they even lose? Is that even possible?
Yes, as it turns out. Bryan Schor played an incredible game, and Tyler Gray came up with an impossibly clutch field goal late to give JMU the lead for good.
JMU’s win in Fargo remains one of the greatest games the program has ever played, as well as one of the only times any Division I program has lined up and outplayed NDSU during the dynastic decade.
It’s telling that this is the game so many Dukes fans remember from 2016, rather than the sleepy championship game win against Youngstown State a few weeks later.
7. Jan. 6, 2018: North Dakota State 17, JMU 13
It’s still probably the greatest football game I’ve ever watched.
I still get animated about a ton of stuff. The weird turnover bounces. The PA announcer inexplicably trying to fire up JMU fans to get loud while the Dukes had the ball. The fake punt that everyone saw coming … that somehow still worked. The winning drive that only needed about 20 more seconds.
This is the last great game the FCS has produced.
It’s not the last time JMU played NDSU in the playoffs; it’s not even the last time JMU played NDSU in Frisco.
But it was the last epic, historically significant game that JMU has played.
The Dukes hosted College GameDay for a second time in 2017. It had an impossibly good defense that was like a college recreation of Seattle’s Legion of Boom. It entered the game with a 26-game winning streak – the longest active streak in Division I college football.
Win or lose, this was the capstone to an epic season. Even then, it felt like a heavyweight battle that would be hard to ever recreate again.
Chase Kiddy is a staff writer for The Roar by BetMGM. If you liked this, you might also like his explanation of how the 49ers’ playoff odds changed after Trey Lance got hurt.
