CAA Fans Are United…Against Richmond
One team remains. One #CAAFB stands united! pic.twitter.com/XKDSqlRRbN
— CAA Football (@CAAFootball) December 8, 2015
The powers that be at CAA Football Twitter seem to be implying that all of us are rooting for Richmond. Um, no. There’s no way we’re rooting for Richmond. And we doubt the overwhelming majority of non-Spatter CAA fans will be either. Look, we may be snarky at times, but we’re completely aware of how the rest of the CAA views the JMU fanbase. A small, but very vocal, minority bash the league every chance they get. It’s got to get old if your a fan of another team from the league. We’re quite sure that the entire league wouldn’t line up in unison behind JMU if the Dukes were to make a run. And we’re completely fine with that.
Richmond though, is just Richmond. There are countless reasons why reasonable people won’t support Richmond. I’m struggling to think of a single scenario in which I would ever cheer for Spider football. Short of them lining up on the gridiron against ISIS in some sort of a “loser agrees to vacate the planet” battle, I’m not sure I can come up with one. The sports hate runs deep when it comes to Richmond. And it’s not just us. It’s reasonable fans from across the CAA. You want to make a Tribe fan angry? (ed. note: of course you do) Ask him how excited he is about Richmond making a run.
Yes, the Spiders and Dukes share the same conference. That doesn’t mean we get any satisfaction at all when they win. In hoops it’s a little different. We can get excited when CAA teams pull off an upset. It helps the conference notoriety and lines the pockets of all league members. But in football CAA isn’t an underdog conference. We want JMU to win. That’s it. There’s no joy when some other CAA school wins. Sure, we can be happy for our friends who are W&M fans when they win, but we’re still not cheering for the Tribe. Did you see the way Lehigh fans were carrying on when Colgate was beating JMU Saturday? That was weird, no? JMU stomped Lehigh. Colgate beat Lehigh. Nothing that happened Saturday changed that. At all. Good sportsmanship is important. But screw Richmond.
I’m not opposed to cheering for Rocco I thought he was good at Liberty as well but I will not be buying a spider sweatshirt this week. My “Richmond” in state is VCU. Not sure why but I can’t stand VCU winning basketball games. I’m fine with UVA being good even though I don’t like them, I’m ok with ODU or VT or Liberty or anyone else in state winning in bball but I can’t stand it when VCU wins. Which, now that Shaka has bolted shouldn’t be an issue anymore.
Laughable! At this point I’m a slightly interested observer in the playoffs, but I stopped rootin when that 4th down pass was broken up in the end zone.
Of course I will not, nor ever, be cheering on UR in Football, but since JMU shit the bed last weekend, I am disappointedly turning my attention elsewhere when I would rather be (and should be) buying my tickets to another Home playoff game and tailgate planning. So last night, I started reviewing the upcoming bowl games in preparation for the bowl pools that I will undoubtedly participate in and I quickly started to become upset again when I see that App Stage, GA Southern, and GA State of all teams, are all going Bowling. What has it been, 2 years since they took off their diapers and moved up to the ‘Big Boy’ league? (This directed at those who say if JMU moves up, it will be years and years before they ever sniff a bowl game). I get that App State and GA Southern were perennial powers in the ‘Little Boy’ league so their rapid accent does not shock me, but GA State had a short stint in the CAA just before moving up and were the Elon and Rhode Island of the ‘no so powerful anymore’ CAA. JMU has a lot of positive momentum going on University wide right now and I can’t think of a better time to use that momentum to get a bid and move up. Ok, vent over. Go DUKES and Happy Holidays!
Amen Deacon, if the JMU leadership (ALGER) would get over the notion that JMU is above the SunBelt…..JMU could be bowling this year. ALGER pickup the phone, call the SunBelt commish and tell him you are an idiot and would love to join.
Say what you will about the bowls that JMU could play in…..I will take any one of them over a 4 game run to an FCS title. It would be a nice little winter trip for a long weekend.
Montgomery, AL – App St
Orlando, FL – Ga State
Mobile, AL – Ga Southern
I think it is now time that we cease bashing GaState……their president/AD showed vision and ours chose to monitor.
And my interest in FCS playoffs cease the moment that JMU loses. At that point I could care less and shift interest to bowl season, where I watch parts of almost every bowl game.
However, (warning: other side of the coin comment coming) had we been in FBS this year there is ~0% chance we get GameDay or Vad Lee gets the ESPN Big Man on Campus special.
I’m not opposed to moving but the benefits of this season would not have existed in an FBS world.
Gameday I agree……but Vad Lee could have still gotten BMOC.
We also get that much closer to getting better OOC opponents (ACC or CUSA) to come to BFS.
Also remember, Temple got gameday this year too…..so it really comes down for smaller schools for the P5 programs to screw the pooch for that weekend and you to have an appealing game. Even with Vad, JMU got a lot of help to get gameday.
When you have to stream an away game next year in Maine because we are not on TV and it sucks I will point you in the direction of this post. That’s why you cheer for the conference. You don’t have to like it.. you just do it. Its like eating broccoli…
FBS/FCS, until we can get a strong defensive game to go along with our offense we are practice fodder to real teams. Withers looked good against inferior teams, but when it came to REAL teams, we were awful. Listen to his press conferences, and he doesn’t answer questions, which makes me think he doesn’t have the answers. As for Richmond, heck no I won’t root for them even though they beat the tar our of our defense. Wait……..wasn’t Withers a defensive coordinator at OSU??? Oh well, I am just frustrated.
@ Herb. He was a co-coordinator of the defense at Ohio State here in Columbus and when he was, OSU’s defense was ranked something like 112th out of 125 FBS teams. And he was responsible for coaching the guys who played safety and other defensive backs. Granted he is no longer the coordinator but one can see similarities in problems in JMU’s defense with what occurred when he was at Ohio State. Poor tackling technique and really poor defense back play. He is not remembered fondly here. I am not really a fan of his but have no desire to see him fired and if he leads us further in the playoffs in future years, then good. He does seem a little short with reporters when I have heard him in post game press conferences but Mathews was sort of the same way. As for the main subject of this blog entry…no will not be rooting for Richmond. Ok on to JMU basketball which seems to have some promise. Let’s beat Mason for a change on Saturday.
Mike in Ohio, good info. I had heard from an OSU person that his contract was not going to be renewed. It will be interesting to see what he does with the DC.
Football season is over. Time to move on. I’m tired of chewing this fat. We’ve got what looks like good basketball teams to support.
Amen
You’re not speaking for me on this one. I couldn’t give a crap if Richmond wins it all or not.
Spiders win.
The Spiders were out to cause bodily harm to our players … and they did!
I, for one, will NEVER root for Richmond. 🙁