As Jacob Thomas sat down to speak during a press conference, the James Madison star defensive back noted how many people were in attendance.
That’s because, now more than ever, the spotlight is on JMU.
Some of it is for good reason. The Dukes are in the College Football Playoff vying for an FBS national championship, something that seemed impossible five decades ago, five years ago, or even five weeks ago.
“You can’t you can’t control everybody’s opinions,” JMU quarterback Alonza Barnett III said. “People might say stuff that you disagree with. That’s their opinion. My job and our team’s job is to focus on the guy to the left and to the right of you. Focus on their why. Focus on why they play the game the way they do, how they play, and how can I be the best version of myself to help that guy and help this team win.”
Not all of that attention is positive, though. The inclusion of a second Group of Five team in the CFP has seemingly countless talking heads on ESPN clamoring for the format to change.
Some fans are starting to go along with it, the sentiment that G5 programs should be somehow barred from making the CFP. And I could tell you all about why I disagree with that illogical, hand-me-down thinking. In fact, I already have.
But I’ll let JMU do that for me this time. After all, this isn’t a G5 program that’s wallowed in mediocrity for years and finally got lucky.
JMU’s unlikely path to this point starts well before the Dukes’ 11-game winning streak and Sun Belt Championship, and well before the ACC’s doomsday scenario where Duke won that conference.
It goes way back.
About a half century ago, JMU started its football program, seeing men’s sports as “a key strategy to transition a women’s institution to co-ed.”
In the late 1970s, it transitioned from Division III to I-AA. With solid seasons sprinkled in, JMU was never a year-in-year-out powerhouse in the previous century.
But the rise of the underdog has to start from a downtrodden place.
The Dukes won the Division I-AA championship in 2004 – the season where their tradition of throwing streamers in the stands began. Six years later, they became the second FCS program to defeat a ranked FBS team, defeating Virginia Tech 21-16. And in 2016, JMU upset five-time national champion North Dakota State, which had earned a reputation of upsetting FBS teams in its own right.
My wife and I were in attendance for that one. She, a JMU alum, will never let me, an NDSU graduate, forget about it.
And when JMU transitioned to the FBS, it defied expectations once again. The Dukes were the first team since 1999, when FCS-to-FBS transition rules changed, to play a full FBS schedule.
But the Dukes embrace challenges. It’s at the basis of what they do.
In their very first FBS year, they went 8-3, the most wins for a team making that jump. Then in 2023, they started 10-0 overall, a season where they were visited by ESPN’s “College GameDay” for a third consecutive year.
JMU is on its 23rd consecutive season of finishing .500 or better. It is 40-10 since joining the FBS.
“Exciting week for everybody here, not only on our team but in our campus community and in the community itself,” JMU head coach Bob Chesney said. “A lot of work to get to this point and we’re really proud to be one of the 12 teams in this College Football Playoff.
“It’s rare for teams in the Group of Five to make it, and I think to have two in here is pretty exciting and certainly a lot of work went into it. A lot of commitment over the years from our university, and we’re excited to get out there and have a chance to play one of the best teams in the country, and we certainly understand the opportunity.”
From Charles Haley to Arthur Moats, the Dukes are more than accustomed to defying expectations.
And now JMU is in the CFP. You still want to tell me how this is bad for the sport?
Recall the part about me being a graduate of NDSU, a program that would love to be in the FBS right now. I have every reason to hate what JMU has done.
But I don’t. Because I love Cinderella stories.
Actually, no. That’s cliche.
I love chaos. And if you love sports like I do, and their unpredictability that resists everyday life’s relentless pull to monotony, you should relish in some chaos once in a while as well.
The presence of JMU, and Group of Five teams in general, brings a March Madness twist to the sport of college football that’s growing more sterile by the day.
The Dukes are the “Rudy” of this movie. Isn’t it ironic that the school, Notre Dame, that built its personality in part around an underdog film now despises the underdog getting a shot?
The story of “Rudy” resonates with people because we all know how it feels to be doubted. And we all, at some point in our lives, should know how it feels to thrive in the face of those doubts.
The CFP format, with five conference champions guaranteed to make the field, has been established for multiple years now. The talking heads weren’t upset about this format until two G5 teams made the field.
That’s because JMU did what they thought was impossible. And now we’re supposed to believe the system is broken.
Make no mistake, they’re specifically upset about JMU’s presence. If Virginia had won the ACC and Tulane was the only G5 team in the field, this would hardly be a discussion.
Those media personalities want us all to feed into their game, a game of brands. I want to see the game of football. How it was intended – settled on the field rather than through rankings graphics and hot takes.
The landscape continues to tilt against the underdog. NIL money often entices talented players more than good coaching or education, and the transfer portal makes it easier for players to leave the schools that developed and believed in those players before anyone else did.
And yet we persist on altering the CFP field and tilting the field further? I don’t think so.
Let the underdog in, and let’s give space for chaos.
