Mickey Matthews was right where he wanted to be in January 1999. He’d recently left the Georgia staff to become the defensive coordinator at Baylor, back home in Texas in the latest step in his slow progression upward in the coaching profession. But then a job 1,200 miles away opened and caught his attention, one at which most people in his position wouldn’t bat an eye.
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In James Madison football, Matthews saw something others didn’t.
While Marshall’s defensive coordinator a few years earlier, Matthews had been assigned to recruit Virginia, a state filled with underrated football talent. Marshall was a Division I-AA powerhouse at the time, competing for national championships. Matthews found it surprisingly difficult to recruit against JMU, a relatively young I-AA program. Despite having only a little success and poor facilities, it had become a popular place in the state of Virginia.
So when the JMU head coaching job opened in March 1999, coming off two losing seasons, Matthews took a risk and jumped at it.
“They really didn’t realize how good they could be,” he says now.
In Matthews’ first season, JMU won a conference championship. A few years later, JMU won its first national championship. It’s now been 20 years since the Dukes last had a losing season. Every coach in the program’s short but strong history has had a winning record there. Massive facilities upgrades and a second FCS national title followed in 2016.
Now JMU will move up to the Sun Belt in the Football Bowl Subdivision this fall, the result of a decade of planning and preparation led by longtime athletic director Jeff Bourne. FBS has its 131st team, so it’s time to get to know the Dukes.
“I still get goosebumps thinking about taking that pregame bus through campus to the stadium,” says Dallas Cowboys quarterback and JMU alum Ben DiNucci. “The atmosphere, the pride and joy Harrisonburg has for that team is unlike any other. It reflects how we play.”
The expanded Sun Belt has its eyes on becoming the top Group of 5 football conference, and JMU is one reason for that. With facilities, resources and a track record of success, everyone involved expects the winning to continue. For the current generation of fans, it’s all they know, and the support is there to push for more and more.
“You could easily see them going to the ACC in 20 years,” Matthews says.
James Madison began as a women’s teaching school. Men didn’t become regular students until after World War II, and it didn’t officially become a coed school until 1966. It’s an origin story not dissimilar from Florida State. The JMU football program began in 1972, in part to reflect the school’s growth under president Ronald Carrier and to help attract more male students.
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“A football team changed the look, changed the image,” says Gary Michael, a sports information director at the school from 1980 to 2010. “That was a lot of it. It was a growing school, and football came along like everything else.”
It began as a Division III team and had some success, going 9-0-1 in its fourth season. The Dukes moved up to Division I-AA in 1980, a jump experienced by the program’s first NFL player: kicker Scott Norwood.
Norwood went to JMU to play soccer. Football coach Challace McMillin scoured other JMU sports, like the track team, to find players. When the football staff heard that Norwood briefly kicked for his high school football team, they convinced him to give JMU football a shot. When the school moved to Division I, the team could give scholarships, a big prize for Norwood. He became one of I-AA’s top kickers and still holds school records. He credits McMillin for keeping him up on grades and helping him grow as a person and a player, which got him to the USFL and the NFL, where he spent a decade as a professional kicker.
“I remember turning a goal card in to coach McMillin in my junior year, and it was the first time I ever wrote down that I wanted to kick in the NFL,” Norwood says. “That was the first time I started focusing on it. … I was shaped by a great coaching staff, coach McMillin especially.”
A shocking upset win against Virginia in 1982 was the program’s first breakthrough moment, three years after UVA trounced JMU with little regard by a 69-9 score. “Their Ray-Ban sunglasses couldn’t hide their disappointment,” JMU’s student newspaper wrote about the scene at UVA after the win.
But it was a period of just moderate success. The draw of JMU wasn’t sports, it was the school itself, which continued to grow. Mike Barber, who covered JMU athletics for the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record from 2003 to 2012, had known of the school because some of his high school classmates in New Jersey went there. It’s two hours southwest of Washington, and enrollment is now up to more than 21,000.
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“It’s a beautiful campus, it’s a good party school, all the things that kids were looking for,” Barber says. “It’s always been a really popular school.”
When Matthews arrived in 1999, he saw all the potential in the world for sports teams because of the local talent base.
“I couldn’t believe how popular the school was in the state,” he says.
The school didn’t quite see it. Old facilities lagged far behind. Matthews says the school considered moving to a stadium away from the middle of campus, something the coach was strongly against — not that many people attended games anyway.
“When I took the job, there were so few people going to games that if you threw a hand grenade in the stands, it wouldn’t have injured anyone,” Matthews says. “We had to start winning to get it going.”
The national title run in 2004 came out of nowhere. JMU had two winning seasons in Matthews’ first five years, but the veteran-laden Dukes entered the playoffs at 9-2 with a top-10 ranking, then became the first team in FCS playoff history to win every game away from home en route to a national title.
“We won games in the fourth quarter every way you could win them,” Matthews says. “The kids refused to lose. That’s how we won it.”
That began the march forward. Football became a big deal at JMU. There hasn’t been a losing season since then. In late 2009, a $62 million expansion and renovation of Bridgeforth Stadium began. It now seats nearly 25,000 people.
“The difference from 2003 and just a few years later was amazing,” Barber says. “The national title really changed the outlook.”
In 2010, the Dukes beat No. 13 Virginia Tech, becoming the second FCS team to beat a ranked FBS team. The Hokies had played Boise State six days earlier, so Matthews knew they’d be tired, and he installed option concepts the Dukes had never run before. It paid off.
“I was famous for about two hours,” Matthews jokes.
Many around the program call it the biggest win in school history, even bigger than the national championships. To beat the in-state top dog when they were at a high level, there was nothing like it.
“They looked down their noses at us,” Matthews says.
But that wasn’t even a good JMU team. The Dukes went 6-5 and missed the playoffs. Matthews reached the playoffs just once from 2009 to 2013 and was eventually fired.
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Everett Withers saw the same potential at JMU when he played at Appalachian State in the 1980s. That’s why he left a co-defensive coordinator role at Ohio State to take the JMU job in 2014.
“They should never be 5-6 or 6-6,” Withers says. “There’s too much talent around there. The location, the passion of the student body, the young alumni base — it’s got so much to offer.”
The Dukes went 9-4 in Withers’ first season and haven’t looked back, with eight consecutive FCS top-20 finishes since then, including five top-three finishes. Games became sellouts. He left for Texas State after only two years but knew what was on the horizon.
“When I left, I told Jeff Bourne that you should win a national championship in the next few years,” Withers says.
Mike Houston arrived in 2016 and did just that in his first season, winning the program’s second national title after beating powerhouse North Dakota State in the semifinals. JMU’s 26-game winning streak was the second longest in FCS history at that point. The school hosted “College GameDay” in 2015 and 2017.
“Our roster was always at the upper end of FCS,” Houston says. “There was always a commitment to success from the administration.”
Houston left for East Carolina after three years and a 37-6 record, and Curt Cignetti has led the program to a 33-5 record since then. By 2021, JMU’s only consistent major competition was NDSU, which beat JMU in the 2017 and 2019 national title games. The Dukes had outgrown the rest of their conference, the Colonial Athletic Association.
“We ended up in a situation where we kind of had more than everybody else,” Cignetti says.
It reached the point where anything less than reaching the national championship felt like a letdown. This seemed sustainable, but was it enough? It was a question the school and community had bounced around for a long time.
Then Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC.
The idea for JMU to move up to the FBS had been in the water for a decade. School officials asked Withers about it when he interviewed for the job. Same with Houston and Cignetti. A consulting firm determined in 2013 that JMU could make the move.
The school had earlier chances to but turned them down. JMU said no thanks to Sun Belt interest in 2013, when App State and Georgia Southern moved up. Matthews says the MAC and Conference USA showed interest as well. But the early 2010s were a period of FBS instability, and JMU wanted stability. It continued to invest in facilities and programs for preparation when the time was right. JMU regularly ranks near the top of the FCS in attendance, including third in 2019 at 18,108 fans per game. A new basketball arena opened in 2020.
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Bourne doesn’t remember exactly where he was when he heard the Texas/Oklahoma news last July, but he knew the water would begin to cascade over the falls and trickle down. With the future of the FBS and Division I as a whole up in the air, this would have to be the time to make a move.
“Movement at the Power 5 level pretty much guaranteed we were going to see change,” Bourne says.
He’d stayed in touch with FBS commissioners over the years to keep the relationships fresh. During the pandemic, he formed an internal committee to prepare for potential realignment. Once it was clear the Big 12 would take Cincinnati, Houston and UCF from the American Athletic Conference, JMU got more aggressive.
School leadership was interested in the AAC and the Sun Belt from the get-go. But the AAC wanted bigger media markets, and conversations with JMU didn’t go far. After its failed Mountain West raid, the AAC added Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA from Conference USA. JMU wasn’t interested in C-USA with its long travel and uncertain future.
The Sun Belt proved to be the best option. The divisional setup would allow for regional games. Former FCS rivalries with Old Dominion, Appalachian State and Georgia Southern could be rekindled. Former FCS schools had moved up and found success in the SBC, so the model was there.
“I think we ended up settling in the best place we possibly could have,” Bourne says. “I really feel the Sun Belt down the road can be one of the most powerful leagues within the Group of 5.”
It also helped that Bourne and SBC commissioner Keith Gill first met in the 1990s and were conference colleagues when Gill was at Richmond.
“They really fit a profile we’d used successfully before in getting top-ranked FCS schools,” Gill says. “They were in a footprint on the eastern side, which was important for us. And third, they have comprehensive success. They’re kind of good at everything. As we began building information about schools, they continually rose to the top.”
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After announcing the move, there was drama on the way out. The CAA banned other JMU sports from conference championships after the football move due to the timing, citing league bylaws. Basketball games were moved off national television. There was a backlash against the CAA, but public and formal appeals didn’t work. Some defenders noted JMU had voted to uphold the bylaws when previous schools had left, which Bourne acknowledges.
“I was at times frustrated with myself because I was an AD in that league and I should have worked harder to get that changed,” he says. “Having been a foundational member of that league and in good standing for years, it’s something that needs to change. I do hope it changes in the future. … It has no bearing on whether an institution is going to leave the league. It’s a penal policy that affects student-athletes. To me, it’s driven from the wrong place.”
As for the football team, JMU will make the FBS transition quicker than most, moving right into the Sun Belt this fall with hopes of shortening the normal two-year reclassification process to one year. Reclassifying schools are not eligible for the postseason or conference championships, but JMU plans to petition the NCAA to make it a one-year process, citing the resources already in place, like facilities. The Sun Belt moved its schedule around to give the Dukes a full slate as a member, even if they’re not eligible for the title.
JMU will be at a full 85 scholarships this fall, but there are other parts of the infrastructure that must be built. There is also a new slew of opponents to study, and the program may recruit the South in the future more than it has, due to the layout of the conference.
“The most immediate thing from my standpoint is organization,” Cignetti says. “It’s adding people, creating a recruiting department so you’re on that same playing field.”
The 2022 team already faced an uphill climb in personnel. It needs a new quarterback — a battle between Colorado State transfer Todd Centeio and redshirt freshman Billy Atkins is ongoing. The Dukes also lost two key players in the transfer portal, as record-breaking receiver Antwane Wells Jr. transferred to South Carolina in January, and FCS All-American linebacker Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey transferred to Texas in late May.
With or without them, there is extra motivation for the rest of the team to prove they belong at this level.
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“A lot of people take this as a chip on the shoulder, including myself,” running back Percy Agyei-Obese says. “We want to show JMU can play ball no matter what conference.”
All of the former coaches expect JMU to continue success in the FBS, even if there are some growing pains. It’s been done before. Georgia Southern won nine games in each of its first two FBS seasons and went 8-0 in the Sun Belt in its debut. App State won 11 games in its second FBS season and is now consistently among the winningest programs at this level.
It’ll also be an adjustment to no longer competing for national championships. That’s the trade-off with all the teams that make the FCS to FBS leap.
“On the field, they’ll be successful, they’ll make the commitment,” Barber says. “I’ll be curious how the fans react when the ceiling is a low-major bowl game. At the FCS level, you’re the last team standing. I know so many fans who would make that trip to Chattanooga or Frisco (for the national championship). It was such a moment. How will they react when it’s a bowl game in a less-than-desirable location? But the fans have been clamoring for this move overwhelmingly. They really want it.”
Because the program is still so young relative to much of the FBS, there isn’t an alumni base with deep ties to football — not yet. The Dukes are still building it. That growing base that now has that relationship with football will pay off down the road. That’s what all of the former coaches see in the program’s future. There’s catching up to do, but a path to do it.
“When I was at TCU or Georgia, I’d go to these alum meetings and there’d be a bunch of old guys who’d made a bunch of money,” Matthews says. “We didn’t have those people at James Madison. It’s going to get nothing but better over the next 20 years.”
Harrisonburg is now an FBS town. When Withers was the coach, he liked to go skiing not far from the remote city. Houston loved to stop by Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint. As a writer, Barber loved the diversity of restaurants in town. The local businesses will have a new crop of visiting fans with the move up, starting with Middle Tennessee in Week 1.
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It’s the beginning of a new era, and if it’s anything like the last era, or anything else in its history, JMU expects to keep moving up and competing for championships.
“They have all the ingredients,” Matthews says. “James Madison can be as good as they want to be. The possibilities are endless.”
(Top photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
