Anger Turns to Sadness
Rob’s rational, well thought out, well-meaning post on Friday definitely had the desired effect on me. It grounded me in many ways and began to allow me to move from the anger stage to the sadness stage in what really has become a ridiculously emotional process for me on the conference front. When I actually stop to consider Rob’s most important thought – that a move has never actually been imminent – things start to make a little more sense. And while it bothers me that JMU continues to play the semantics game about “not having an invite” when we all know this borders dangerously on outright lying, and is the furthest thing from transparent, given the Sun Belt’s position, I am somewhat stunned by my own capacity to appreciate rejecting the Sun Belt for not aligning with JMU’s goals. In case you haven’t noticed from our Twitter account’s schizophrenic nature lately, we are in very different places on the conference issue. In a nutshell, Rob is a grownup and I am a screaming child. Or, for our fellow nerds who take the time to read books instead of just watching the movie, Rob is Demosthenes to my Locke. Generally, I think it’s fair to say we both think a move, at least a move to the MAC or CUSA, is absolutely better than the CAA. I have to admit I would have said the same about Sun Belt, while Rob probably would not have, but the truth is I actually find myself getting over the Sun Belt pretty quickly even if I’m extremely unexcited about the CAA. There’s another big difference, Rob doesn’t believe the CAA is crumbling while I do. Actually, crumbling is probably a bit much, but what’s absolutely unquestionable is that the CAA is made up more than ever of schools that have very little in common with JMU beyond horrible men’s hoops and this problem seems likely to get worse instead of better (can you say Winthrop?).
Pretty please
But myself and others like me probably need to realize that at this point, the only rational thing to really be angry at is JMU’s, well particularly Dr. Rose’s, missed opportunity to try for CUSA a few years back when ODU asked JMU and UD to go with them. THAT was a botch. But everything since then is not necessarily something I can go nuts about when I take a few steps back. I do believe that President Alger and AD Jeff Bourne want to move JMU to FBS, I just also believe they want to do so in a conference they can be proud of for a long time. If they don’t think that’s the Sun Belt, I’ll deal with it. But the reason I’ve really moved on to sadness instead of anger is there just isn’t an opening, or any reason whatsoever to expect one to be available in the foreseeable future, for JMU in either the MAC or CUSA. CUSA is D.O.N.E. with expansion unless there’s another major shift. They’re already at 14 and they may even regret they’re that large. The MAC is more realistic and may have enough long-term vision to try again on their east-coast expansion even if it means splitting playoff revenue 14 ways instead of 12, but they seem extremely unlikely to add JMU without a partner and there just isn’t a viable option out there. Hoping for UD to change their mind in the next year could be about as worthwhile as wishing on the unicorn that has always been an east coast conference. I hate the CAA, I hate that I’m so down about my beloved JMU, I hate that I’m so emotionally invested in this, and I hate most of all that Rob and I continue to argue about this. But my overriding emotion is clearly becoming sadness. In all the years I’ve had season tickets and been a Duke Club member, I’ve always looked forward to renewing. It’s the easiest large purchase I make all year. This year it feels the same way my Skins tickets used to – an awful check I’m writing to something that makes me miserable. And oh yeah, I no longer have Skins tickets.
I think everyone saying “Well thi sis good because we don’t need the administration making any hasty decisions” needs to pull their head out of the sand.
I think the Slum Belt and the MAC are jokes. I don’t want to go to either of them. That being said…. the CAA is NOT the late Atlantic-10. Even horrible A-10 teams like Hofstra still fielded top-level talent like Marques Colston. What kind of scrub is Stony Brook putting on the field? Albany? The CAA is a has-been conference. That’s the truth. Even the top CAA teams like Towson are not anywhere close to the talent level of UMass, Delaware or Villanova from 1998-2008.
The reality is that we are on a sinking ship and all we can do it watch it go down. We can’t go to a horrible FBS conference. We can’t go to a good conference for a number of reasons, among them our abysmal basketball program and our dithering administration who watched the music stop with no chair to sit in. Our only option is to wallow in the mudhole we are currently sitting in.
A lot of us are emotionally invested. In addition to donating stacks of money to build the purple palace….in hopes that my University would go “big time”… and donating my health and body parts for 4 years helping 84 other guys literally build the program from conference dootmat to national champion…I’m a little pissed off to pass the torch and watch the entire thing collapse in front of my face.
It kind of makes me want to take my ball and go home.
And I’ll just go ahead and say it:
What ODU did…going from literally nothing to C-USA… in JMU’s home state and recruiting territory…. was the knockout punch to our administration. They straight up humiliated JMU, and we are STILL standing there with our thumb up our butts.
Finally some sanity on this front from you.
I don’t see any real difference between the MAC, CUSA, and the Sun Belt from here on out. In fact, the Sun Belt is poised to pull even with the other two pretty soon, IMO. The Sun Belt has four bowl agreements now. They have a nice stripe of teams throughout the south, where football is strongest. They have some interesting teams, like U of Louisiana, Texas State, Ark St, App St, Georgia Southern, and Georgia State.
But the biggest reason is stability. They have been picked on by the other conferences so much that they can’t get anything going. But now that should stop. Everyone is full and can’t take any Sun Belt teams anymore. They can relax and afford to not be hasty. They don’t need an Idaho anymore (like UMass).
If I were the Sun Belt, I would wait out JMU for another year. By then, it will be clear to everyone that we have no other FBS options, that the CAA really does suck, that the Sun Belt is actually a pretty good conference, and then we will be happy to join the Sun Belt. I just wish we were smart enough to see that now.
After the last few football years I’m not sure that JMU deserves an FBS “promotion.” Add in basketball and we surely don’t. I went to games when the CAA/A10 were whooping us week in and week out but I thought the crowd enjoyed it more and I’m sure the players did. Since the Nat’l Championship run I think everyone is expecting a great team when in reality JMU was a middle of the road team for all of its existence until that season (yes we made the playoffs a few times but usually got booted in the first round). FBS may just be a stretch that we can’t make and the administration doesn’t want to be part of.
Maybe not the CAA, but FCS is still the best place for JMU. Don’t forget that people used to talk about JMU the way the teams that have recently joined the CAA. 1 National Championship and a myriad of playoff losses doesn’t make JMU an FCS power. App State & NDSU winning 3 in a row each makes those schools FCS powers. Im not taking anything away from the 04 team. Those guys worked their asses off and pushed through blood, sweat, and tears to conquer Chattanooga. But since then we’ve made it to the National Semifinals once, and thanks to a freak athlete. JMU SHOULD be competing for FCS titles year in and year out… but they’re not. Why go to the FBS and get our asses handed to us and be forced to be proud of a birth in the Belk Bowl?
As a current freshmen at this school it’s so frustrating to hear all of this speculation of jumping up to FBS only to hear political speak from Alger and Bourne. I agree that it is a disgrace that JMU couldn’t jump to C-USA but programs that have started from scratch such as Charlotte and ODU have been extremely pro-active in developing their programs. If JMU wanted to keep building their reputation and put its name on a more national scale they should’ve seized the opportunity when they could’ve. Now all JMU football has come to is playing the likes of Saint Francis and Stony Brook while reminiscing on 1 national championship and a win over the hokies. I truly believe we could compete at the FBS level but after everything that’s happened in the past 2 years I don’t see a jump to the FBS any time soon and that’s extremely irritating for me to fathom. I want an athletic program that this school can actually get behind that has success. Women’s Basketball is the best we have to offer right now and from a students perspective no one will ever care about that.
2017Duke nailed it…..
“….but programs that have started from scratch such as Charlotte and ODU have been extremely pro-active in developing their programs.”
UNCC didn’t even have a football stadium.
Agreed, nice summed up 2017Duke.
The standing around a watching thing as a JMU administration strategy really doesn’t surprise me. They did the same thing while schools like Richmond left to go to the A-10. JMU was invited to that conference back in the mid-90s and declined out of loyalty to the CAA. At least they are consistent, I guess.