Vintage JMU Ticket Poster Is the Most 80s Thing Ever

That right there is a picture from an actual JMU Football ticket poster back in the day. And we’re quite confident in saying it’s the most 80s thing we’ve seen in ages. Maybe ever. Seriously. If you stare at it long enough, we swear you’ll actually hear REO Speedwagon in the background.

If there were three more appropriate people to build an 80s era football ticketing campaign around, we’d be shocked. If there were three more appropriate people to build an 80s era campaign for anything at all, we’d be shocked. The head cheerleader, captain of the football team, and um, I don’t know, girl ready to party? It’s almost too perfect.

But don’t be fooled. If the 80s (or more appropriately 80s movies) taught America anything, it’s that everyone is different than they appear. The cute head cheerleader who’s the most popular girl on campus and engaged to Mr. Perfect? Yeah, she’s actually miserable and won’t find her true self until she flees graduation with some John Cusack like plucky little underdog dude. Yes, that guy in the middle plays football, drives a Camaro, drinks all the beers, and beats up nerds. But deep down inside, he just wants to write poetry. And party girl on the right with a chip on her shoulder and a bad reputation? Wrong. She’s actually a straight A student who’s crafted that bad girl image to hide her elegant beauty. We just won’t notice it until the cheerleader gives her a makeover.

Yeah, at first glance this poster might look a little dated. Some might go so far as to say it’s kind of wrong by today’s standards. But if this picture is wrong, then we don’t want to be right. We don’t know if it helped sell tickets decades ago. But we’ll be damned if we didn’t renew our JMU football season tickets today. So it works now.

h/t @MikeChatburn who posted this picture of the poster he actually has