Listen, we intermittently get all fired up on this topic. Actually mostly I get fired up for this topic. Rob and I both want the best for JMU, but as we’ve been trying to clarify without much success on our shared @jmusportsblog account, we’re not exactly of the same mind what would constitute the best outcome for JMU’s future in athletics (and what that means to the university as a whole). Just to clear it up, Rob’s more patient and a little more risk averse. He also has more faith that those in positions of power at JMU are their for a reason and given all the turmoil in college sports right now, maybe just “monitoring the situation” really is alright for the time being. I usually am more aggressive in my thinking. Maybe I just love football more and no what fall Saturdays have done to bring me and quite a few of my friends old and new back into the JMU community after years of apathy, but I also have a little less rationality on the financial side of the house and a little less faith in an administration that has blown a playoff bid, allowed Matt Brady to become a eunuch in the recruiting world due to his lame-duck contract status, and is teetering on the edge of having spent $68 million on a stadium we can’t fill by playing heated conference rivalries with “peer” institutions like Albany. But just know that for all our back-and-forth we’re really both just a degree or two on different sides of center and it seems more and more a fools errand to let the larger realignment news of the day or the week sway you one way or the other.
And sometimes I’m like, I just, I mean…this is exhausting, you know? Like today for example. Seems like we’ve been saying for years that eventually all the realignment would trickle down to the CAA level. We just didn’t know it would happen in a torrent instead of a trickle. One thing I have to give Rob’s more cautious approach on a day like today is that I certainly wouldn’t want JMU to become one of the growing list of schools experiencing serious buyer’s remorse after jumping too early from the perceived frying pan into the now raging fire.
What a ripoff! What the hell kind of conference is this?!
Take ECU for example. All these years they’ve been pining for a nibble at the Big East or ACC. But when their super-secret decoder ring finally arrived last week, it only took a hot minute to realize the result is nothing more than an ad jingle for a fowl-tasting bit of nothingness that is the Big East with nary an actual Big East member. Or UMass, whose faculty, while actually powerless in this area, is raising a stink and asking to move back to FCS.
But not to worry, I’ll be fired up again next week when College of Charleston inevitably announces they’ll be skipping out on the CAA without the ball ever being tipped on their way to join the remnants of the A-10 or Big East hoops-only schools and picking up Mason on the way.
All I know is we’ll be rethinking just how in-depth we really want this realignment series to be when it usually just makes both of us want to vomit like we’ve stayed too long on Cantrell again.
But hey, in better news, the CAA hoops tourney is still limited to seven teams this year so the Dukes won’t have to play on play-in day, the tournament is mercifully leaving the dump that is the Richmond Mausoleum for the much more celebratory confines of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor (we were going to write more about this, but really, is the CAA going to exist in 2014 and is JMU going to be in it? – not worth the worry just yet), and one of our favorite Dukes’ football players of the recent era, DJ Bryant, signed with the Ravens practice squad this week.
Also, senior OG Earl Watford made first team All-American and LB (and junior!!!!) Stephon Robertson made the 2nd team.
Lastly, look out next week for some non-athletics related JMU material here for a change.
The tweet and picture above came from Senator Mark Warner last week in response to a funny little mix-up made by a JMU student. As reported in the Washington Post, JMU junior Eric Davey was caught off guard when he received an email from Mark Warner wishing he and the rest of JMU’s student body good luck on exams. Davey tweeted that he mistakenly thought the email was from US Senator Mark Warner at first, before realizing it was actually from JMU VP for Student Affairs and University Planning Mark J. Warner. A short time later Senator Mark Warner tweeted the above response actually wishing Davey good luck on exams and throwing in a “Go Dukes” for good measure.
Three years ago today we published our very first JMUSB post. I guess that means that today is our blogiversary or birthday or whatever we’re supposed to call it. We’re not pointing this out as some cheap ploy to encourage you to leave comments telling us how great we are (although by all means go ahead and do that). We thought it was worth mentioning because 1.) we never thought the blog would survive this long and 2.) we wanted to sincerely thank each of you for reading.
Since we started this blog three years ago, we like to think that things have gotten if not much better, then at least progressively less terrible. And over the past year, we feel like we’ve grown a little more comfortable in our own skin and have carved out a nice little (and we mean little) spot for JMUSB in the world of online sports. And that is largely due to each of you who read, comment, or share the link with friends. Because without a doubt, the most exciting thing that has happened to the blog over the past year has been the huge uptick in comments. And not just any comments, but insightful, funny, and engaged comments. It’s not exaggeration to say that often the comments have become more interesting and thought provoking that the posts they go with.
While we appreciate the accomplishments of each and every student who puts on the purple and gold and plays for JMU, we’re primarily focused on football and men’s hoops. And both programs have been mediocre (or worse) since last December. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have plenty of personal highlights surrounding JMUSB. First and foremost, it was exciting for us to venture outside of the world of sports and get such a terrific response to our Q&A With Matt Bondurant, the JMU who’s book was the basis for the movie Lawless, and our little tongue in cheek advice column for the class of 2012. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention all of the great guest posts, which put the spotlight on some of our very talented readers for a while.
We could go on and on (trust us), but we’ll cut it short and just say thank you again for reading. We appreciate it and look forward to the day we actually get to blog about the Dukes return to March Madness or run to a FCS Championship…or maybe a bowl game.
By now you probably know that Jeff Durden and Chris Malone were fired by JMU on Friday. Durden was the Dukes’ offensive coordinator for the past 9 seasons and was also serving as the assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach. Malone coached the offensive line and had been on the staff for 6 years. He was also the coach who lead recruiting in Northern Virginia, a region that has become increasingly important for JMU in recent years. In addition to Malone and Durden being let go, JMU announced that QB Justin Thorpe, RB Jordan Anderson, and WR Renard Robinson will not be returning to the team next season. read more…
Our good friend and reader, Tedward, was at the Convo last night for the Dukes 83-82 OT loss to Richmond. As a former coach, he knows the game really well. And he has a unique perspective as JMU alum with real family ties to Richmond hoops. He agreed to write this guest post for us about the game.
JMU was favored over East Tennessee State tonight. The Buccaneers weren’t a particularly strong team to begin with, and due to injuries and various off the court transgressions they’re down a few players. But nothing is certain and there probably weren’t too many people who thought JMU would cruise to a 25 point win. They did though. JMU beat ETSU by the final score of 70-25.
There is no rational reason to get too excited about JMU beating an overmatched and undermanned opponent. Except that JMU doesn’t always defeat overmatched and undermanned opponents. Which means I’m excited anyway. Mock me if you must, but for the first time in a while I really enjoyed something JMU sports related. I’m sick of hearing folks call for Matthews to be fired, or Brady to be fired, or Bourne to be fired. I’m tired of listening to fans complain that JMU is screwed if it doesn’t move up to FBS. And tonight, my boys and I got to tune in to Madizone (which is awesome by the way) and watch the Dukes roll over ETSU for an easy win. And it was a hell of a lot of fun. read more…
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: More Realignment Discussion!
Maybe we’ve just become to fanatical ourselves, but we’ve been going round and round here at JMUSB HQ the last few weeks with all of the conference realignment talks and our thoughts on JMU’s future place, or lack thereof, in college athletics. We may be wrong that you all care about this issue as much as we do, and it’s certainly possible that many JMU fans, at least those of our era, are still “casual” enough that all of this isn’t causing them heartburn. But one thing we are sure of is this issue is ready for a slow, somewhat detailed, hopefully somewhat objective, and certainly rational treatment. Our own shared Twitter account @JMUsportsblog, the writers that cover the program day-to-day, and the message boards are all too lurching and anxious and generally too minute-to-minute at times to really stop and cover all the angles that need mentioning when it comes to the stay-or-go debate in the CAA and FCS as a whole.
Over the next few weeks, or so long as Men’s Hoops gives us nothing but crap to write about and/or no new news is announced about JMU’s future, we’ll be coming back to certain issues surrounding the larger topic. Just to prove how serious we are about all the issues, we apologize in advance that we’re kicking off the series with one of the ultimate “inside baseball” subtopics that needs addressing, mainly so we can have something to reference back to when this issue inevitably surfaces in debate
A Brief Explanation of the Student Fees Issue
This is an admittedly non-expert report on the subject, but regardless of our individual and ever-evolving positions on moving up and leaving the CAA, one of the most frustrating items that needs correcting is when those, in this case usually those opposed to moving up, raise the issue of high student fees in opposition to the move. Yes, non-tuition student fees at JMU are among the highest in the nation and they would likely increase were JMU to move up. In large part, these student fees subsidize athletics,and yes, it’s incredibly valid to raise concerns over how athletics subsidies should compare to everything else on campus that requires financing from faculty salaries to study abroad programs to infrastructure improvements like IT or parking. But simply citing the national lists often published by a lazy media and outright opponents in commentary about the FCS/FBS issue is just crap.
Without wading too deep into the muddy waters of state law/higher ed transparency, those numbers mean NOTHING to a Virginia public school. If you’ll notice, there are a disproportionate number of Virginia schools on all of those metrics. The simple version is this: Virginia is one of the only states (Commonwealth actually) that has a law that actually prohibits burying or hiding the percentage of money paid by students for athletics in the tuition figure. Basically in most states a college or university can say “tuition is 25k” and you just have to pay it without actual knowledge that X dollars are subsidizing athletics. In Virginia, a school can only place that subsidy in the “student fees,” where it stands out clearly that much of that fee is actually subsidizing athletics. Only two things can be gleaned from this. First, Virginia seems to have taken a reasonable and responsible position on this matter. And second, even when you add that substantial student fee to the cost of tuition, most Virginia schools are still among the best bargains in the country, in particular James Madison as we all know. Oh yeah, and in many cases (definitely not all, but quite a few), there’s nothing “student” about who is paying the student fees.
As we move forward with this series, let’s all try to keep this in mind.
Lastly, please continue to check out this new blog specifically covering a team we can all be proud of, Kenny Brooks’ Women’s Hoops team, despite a tough loss to Liberty tonight. Just another great JMU fan taking it upon himself to fill a gap in coverage and we are grateful for that!
Well that was quick. After being suspended Saturday morning for a violation of team standards, A.J. Davis has been reinstated. Coach Brady said he and Davis discussed the issue and came to the conclusion that Davis has earned the right to rejoin the team. There has been a lot of teeth gnashing over Davis and Brady and Davis’ seemingly poor attitude and Brady’s struggles to connect with players, etc, etc. For now though, it appears that the head coach and his arguably most talented player are ready to move forward. And that is a good thing.
The JMU Dukes picked up their second win of the season with a 71-61 defeat of Winthrop. After a back and forth first half that saw Winthrop lead for a stretch, JMU took over in the second half and cruised to a double-digit win. After Wednesday’s performance agains George Washington, we were touting Andre Nation and the younger Dukes. Yesterday however, it was the seniors who stepped up and led the way. Andrey Semenov returned from a back injury that had kept him out since the opener and was his typical scrappy, long-distance shooting, loose ball getting, high-energy self. Andrey finished with 17 points and Rayshawn Goins had a team high 19 on 6 or 9 shooting. The big story of the day came before tipoff however, when JMU announced that senior A.J. Davis had been suspended indefinitely for a violation of team standards. read more…
In what has become somewhat of annual ritual for me this time of year, I’ve been slow to transition from college football to college hoops. Instead of jumping in with both feet, I’ve sort of watched this year’s JMU team from the fringes so that I could convince myself their was reason for optimism. Of course this strategy went out the window on Wednesday night when the Dukes played against the George Washington Colonials in a nationally televised game that I felt I had to watch. And I’m assuming that by now you know that JMU lost. And they lost to a, hmm, not very impressive GW team. And they lost in a fashion that was brilliantly described on Twitter as “just so outstandingly JMU-ey“. Yes, JMU-ey. Given the past two decades or so of relative futility in hoops, JMU-ey is the perfect word to describe a loss in which JMU couldn’t even attempt a shot to tie because two seniors (5th year seniors by the way) failed to connect on an inbounds pass. And while we’re at it, the fact that many fans appeared to be legitimately cheering a meaningless buzzer beating three pointer that resulted in the Dukes still losing by one, should probably be described as JMU-ey as well. But all is not lost. In fact I’m here to tell you that it’s way too early to throw in the towel for your 2012-2013 JMU Dukes. And it’s too early because JMU has a least a couple things going for it. And here are two of those things.
