Alcorn State comes to the ‘burg this weekend to play against our beloved Dukes. The Braves opened the season last Saturday with a 22-21 win over Grambling State in the Port City Classic. JMU showcased a balanced attack (32 pass attempts?!?) in a lopsided 55-7 defeat of St. Francis. The Dukes are battling injuries in the defensive secondary and have a huge game against West Virginia at FedEx looming next week. Will the Dukes pick up with their left off last weekend and steamroll Alcorn State? Or will this be a classic trap game that Alcorn manages to steal?
You know the drill people. Leave a comment letting us know who you think will win and what the final score will be. The person who comes closest to nailing it (winner and score) will get to write a guest post on whatever his or her (although we’ve still never had a girl win…c’mon ladies) heart desires. Good luck and Go Dukes!
Pure hype piece here, but if you’re on the fence, or worse, claim to be BOTH a JMU fan and a college football fan in general, and aren’t making plans for JMU v. WVU at FedEx Field, home of the Skins on 9/15 yet, get the eff on it. Right now!
We’re not going crazy and taking an overly aggressive stance about attendance, at least not in the way we hope to when the playoffs come back to Bridgeforth in a couple months, but for JMU fans, specifically alums within a two-hour drive who may be on the fence, you really need to consider what a great, and rare, opportunity this game is. And here’s the argument. (FYI, this could apply equally to local WVU folks – we’re lookin’ at you Ragtime fans; Dogwood’s Dukes fiesta is going to make you look like amateurs!)
As great as the unchallenged, easy-going experience of attending a home game of your favorite team can be, one thing I’ve found is that most fans hugely underestimate the excitement and intensity created by a split-crowd event. The few games we’ve been to that fall into this rare category are great evidence. Even as a neutral fan, attending the Maryland/Florida ’02 Orange Bowl and the Boise/VT ’11 game at FedEx were fantastic games because of that back-and-forth and pregame jitters created by the mixing of supporters. For the record, that Maryland/Florida game was nearly as lopsided in its pointspread and outcome as this one is likely to be. Still didn’t diminish the thrill of anticipation from either side during the run-up to the games. JMU/Montana in ’04 was incredibly fun before we ever realized we might actually win the thing for the same reason. Even JMU @ W&M that year, most JMU @ GMU hoops games, and pretty much every Philly @ Washington game in any sport (at least when Philly fans have a winner to back), make for fun matchups because the crowd splits. Yes, it’s frustrating when your team loses and all those clowns are in the stadium to point that out, but this is West by God Virginia we’re talking ‘bout here so any post-game bragging on their part is unwarranted at best and moonshine-related, comedic lunacy at worst, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Quietly, the Danny (Skins owner Dan Snyder) has been freaking out about blackouts and the public’s obvious knowledge that his waiting list and sellout streak are Oz-like charades. He’s actually removed more than 10,000 seats and FedEx capacity now stands at only 79,000. Given that quite a few of those are suites that don’t contribute much to the noise level, atmosphere, or look of a decently-filled arena, anything over about 50k would make for an outstanding fan experience that would compare favorable with other non-national college games held there recently. But we’re not there yet. While a) as much or more falls on WVU and b) a bad JMU turnout has zero consequences on potential FBS plans (though a good turnout might turn a head or two and clearly wouldn’t hurt), it still warrants a comment from JMUSB headquarters.
Yes, tickets prices were steep originally, but they’re down to 35 per on Stub Hub now.
Yes, West Virginia may hang 60 on the Dukes, but that’s actually bull shit and you haven’t been paying close enough attention (much more on this to come next week).
Yes, JMU HC Mickey Matthews has taken these payday games against big-name teams “somewhat less than seriously” in the past, using our reserves in a losing cause the same way our FBS opponents have on the other side, but 21-16 changed all that. In fact, we’ll have a lot more on that too next week mainly focusing on the fact that 34 passes against St. Francis and a likely repeat performance against Alcorn St. this weekend is all a ruse for an old-school Mickey, shove-it-down-their-throat-milk-the-clock-run-to-setup-the-run performance he’s about to unleash on the big stage.
Yes, FedEx is a dump for an NFL Stadium, but it’s a great game atmosphere given how close the stands are to the field, especially in a split stadium situation (e.g. VT/Boise St.)
Yes, FedEx is a dump owned by the Danny, but the tailgate lot is still NFL caliber in size and really creates pre-game excitement by having everyone essentially in one huge location in a way that Bridgeforth, MilanPuskar (WVU’s stadium), and most other college stadiums just can’t pull off. The on-campus stadiums and lots were built AFTER the universities and towns grew up around them, forcing the lots to spread out and meander a bit more. That’s awesome in its own way and I wouldn’t trade the variety of P-Lot, baseball lots, even Convo and ISAT lots for anything as the usual JMU gameday experience, but this setup creates a level of communal debauchery that’s tough to top absent a time machine that can take you to a Newman Lake Boat Race officiated by Uncle Ron and won by AST’s on a sinking turtle-ship thingy made out of kegs that defies all logic and laws of physics!
Finally, and we’re not [really] encouraging overdoing your tailgate by reverting to junior-year-in-the-Burg form, we are talking about an absolutely unprecedented matchup of the Princeton Review’s Top 1-A Party School against the Top 1-AA Party School. Seriously, #1 v. #1 in a tailgating barnburner of epic pyrotechnic potential. Bring your spare liver and your own damn sofa and show these bumpkins how it’s done! (Just don’t turn this into a Forest Hills block-party situation, please, at least not on our bus, please!).
First and foremost, let’s all remember there’s nothing to get carried away with about a win over St. Francis, a team that worked hard and appeared decently coached and prepared, but in all reality probably couldn’t keep it within two touchdowns of JMU’s full backup squad. Nonetheless, there is VERY little to complain about in JMU’s 55-7 win over the Red Flash this weekend and really they looked crisp and efficient which is exactly what we all hoped for. Full game story here, but our Good, Bad, and Ugly as usual below.
The Good
As opposed to last year’s NEC opener, there was a whole lot of Good in this one.
– Special teams! JMU kicked off a ton in this game given the points, and the coverage when the game was in doubt was nothing short of spectacular. With the new rule in college that touchbacks on kickoffs come out to the 25, the premium on touchbacks is diminished if you can cover and JMU was outstanding when the game was in doubt (i.e. the first half). The first three kicks of the game the ball was kicked to the goalline and the Dukes pinned St. Francis around the 15. Even if that’s the 20 against faster returners, that’s a win. Also exactly the kind of little thing that’s been hurting the team the last couple seasons. If that’s a sign of attention to detail, we love it. Also, Cam Stark absolutely drilled a 47 yard FG at the first half gun. He probably would’ve been good from 55 and that’s the type of game-situation practice coaches can only dream of in the offseason. Bodes well for him and let’s hope it’s just a sign of things to come after kicking a gamewinner against EKU in last year’s playoffs.
Part of Saturday's pass-heavy gameplan!
– Thorpe, Durden, Mickey! – The Dukes threw 34 times. Let’s repeat that once more for the full magnitude of that to sink in. The Dukes threw 34 times. If you look out your window and see dogs and cats living together in harmony, it would surprise me less than that statement’s veracity. First, credit to the coaching staff, particularly frequent fan (and JMUSB) punching bag Jeff Durden and Mickey, for a gameplan that has to put some serious fear into JMU’s future opponents when they see this film. Everyone knows JMU can win “most” of the time hardly throwing at all (including zero completions in the win over then top five W&M two years ago), but watching Justin Thorpe throw down an extremely crisp 15-27, 177 yard, 1 TD, performance, has to freak people out. Not to mention those totals might have been a good bit higher if Brian Barlow (not knockin’ him, just sayin’) doesn’t cold drop a wide open huge play. Seriously, after years of up and down play, not to mention off-field “issues,” JT looked a hell of a lot like some of the Dukes legends that preceded him at QB1. Still not willing to say their names in a sentence, but we’re hopeful.
– Birdsong looked an awful lot like that crazy giant cracker QB for Kansas St.! Seriously, the kid is a damn monster and he did way more than gain experience in this game. He looked fully capable of contributing if needed in spots this year. And as the least heralded of the THREE stud freshman QB’s the Dukes brought in this year, not to mention Vanderbilt transfer Lafonte Thourogood, we’re encouraged about the play, and potential, under center.
– Titus Till is huge for an FCS safety. Given that St. Francis could do basically nothing in the passing game, it’s hard to evaluate his play, but the Maryland transfer sure does look like a potential difference-maker at this level.
– Injury-free game. Other than an unknown nick to RB2 Jordan Anderson, the Dukes appeared to make it through the opener in decent shape. This team is full of promise and getting through the next two games in good shape is really the key to a potentially monster season.
– New uni’s for the team and the MRD’s. Both looked solid – fresh but traditional.
The Bad
Obviously we’re just picking nits here, but the fourth down call in the second quarter was odd. At 4th and 11 on the St. Francis 37 up 21, we LOVE going for it, so it’s not the decision, but rather the call and the execution. Thorpe threw for what appeared to be his first option, a receiver only 7 yards downfield. Pass was incomplete, but either the call should’ve been for something with a chance at more yardage or JT should’ve kept the play alive till he had a chance for something beyond the sticks (he had plenty of time). Again, we love going for it, just seemed like a wrinkle in need of steam.
We were not entirely convinced along the defensive line. Stats looked good because the game got out of hand, but St. Francis seemed to be able to pick up positive yardage at will in the running game early and their QB was hardly ever under serious pressure. JMU’s ridiculously strong back seven will gloss over these items in a blowout like Saturday, but come WVU, Towson, and UNH, improvement will be needed.
Maybe we missed it during an admittedly less-than-attentive fourth quarter, but we didn’t hear the MRD’s throw out their version of Start Wearing Purple. Still hopeful.
The Ugly
Unnecessary personal fouls. We don’t like to call out individual players and we’ll leave it at that here, but they need to be aware of the situation (huge lead against an inferior, and understandbly disappointed, team). To be fair, it appeared both players were baited and possibly unfairly penalized, but check your head.
HELL YEAH! Football is back and we can only assume from the uptick in comments this week here and over @JMUSportsblog that you all agree this is the best time of the year. While we all wish men’s hoops mattered, it’s become even more painful to cover Brady’s Bunch than slogging through the summer the last couple years. But it’s a Presidential Election year, which means Mickey Matthews’ team is primed for big things (’04 Champs, ’08 Semi-Finalists, ’12 ???). Also, that’s the last mention you’ll hear of hoops in a football column this season. We don’t want whatever plagues basketball to spread from the Convo under the tunnel and into Bridgeforth.
The Dukes are stacked this year! The talent was there a year ago, but there were all kinds of questions about leadership, experience, and off-field distractions when the season started. No such issues this year.
Ahhh, August tailgaiting!
As always, we’ll be previewing the matchup each Friday, usually with a little bit of serious X’s and O’s talk we either stole from others or pulled out of our asses and a lot of good-natured ribbing of the opposition and their fans (except for ODU of course where the ribbing will be vitriolic, bitter, and dismissive). This week though, it’s really tough to find anything to get ornery about mainly because it’s really tough to find anyone who will get riled up about St. Francis. Therefore, we’ll just skip straight ahead to bashing West Virginia fans and hope the JMU players don’t skip ahead like us.
The Basics
St. Francis is called the Red Flash. Yes, that’s Flash, not Flashes. They are from what appears to be a beautiful town on top of a mountain called Loretto, PA. That town is likely just a small outpost where people talk about how you should’ve seen it when the mine was working. St. Francis is one of the smallest schools in Division 1 athletics and someday they’ll probably make a great story for March Madness. But limited scholarship FCS participation in the NEC is a tough way to go (ask URI) and they were terrible last year and are likely to be terrible this year. This is not CCSU from last year. Last year, we assumed a blowout was inevitable and were sorely disappointed when the Dukes opened New Bridgeforth in underwhelming style. This year, a blowout is inevitable. Wait – what, you mean St. Francis beat CCSU last year after we barely scored on them?! Nahhh, forget that. This team is terrible. If you want a more thorough examination, you’ll have to go over to JMU Sports.
Beer of the Week
Back by popular demand (or because we love this item), Beer of the Week returns in style. First, don’t bring Pumpkin anything. At all. It’s played out, most all of it is garbage, and it’s not even Labor Day yet. It’s not cool, it’s just an excuse to throw orange labels on things and make it stand out in the market. And it’s crowding out all of the old fall seasonals and Octoberfests that used to be good, really leaving us with only three seasons worth of quarterly beers. Just stop.
Second, find somewhere selling beer from the Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City. Slowly working your way through their catalog will bring great happiness, but we’re kicking off this year with Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale from their Smokestack Series. It’s a ridiculously good saison that is easier to just enjoy than to explain. This sounds stupid I know, but it’s also one of the most beautiful bottle/label combos you’ll see on a beer anywhere.
Lastly, don’t forget to check out the Saturday Blitz, a great national college football site that also happens to treat FCS with the respect we all think it deserves. We’re contributing all season to the FCS roundtable and we got lead billing in the column this week. (Thanks Kyle!)
Prediction
Nothing to see here, Dukes 45, Red Flash 7. That said, we hope to see consistent, solid play from Thorpe, a few flashes from QB2 Birdsong later, and solid play along the lines. The seven-on-seven players are great for JMU this year, but we need good health on the O-Line and to find a pass-rush on the D-Line before we get to CAA play. This team’s season will be determined by those two things. Lastly, really looking forward to seeing if Maryland transfer Titus Till can provide a spark in the return game and save DQ Scott from having to do so much this year.
We had so much fun with our weekly JMU football prediction contest last season that we’re running it back this year. Here’s how it’s going to work. A few days before each JMU game, we’ll publish a predictions contest post asking readers to pick the winner using the comments. If there is a tie, the person who comments first wins and we’ll take predictions right up until kick-off. The reader who comes closest to nailing it (winner and score) will get to write a guest post on anything his or heart desires the following week. And we really will let you write about anything…provided whatever you write doesn’t make you (or more importantly either of us) look like an asshole. The bar was set pretty high last year with some terrific guest posts. We’re expecting more great things this year. Maybe we’ll even discover the next member of the JMUSB blogging team.
And in case you were wondering, this does not in any way take the place of our game previews. We’ll continue to post those on Friday of every game week. Expect a blend of somewhat serious analysis with plenty of snark thrown in to rile up the opposing team’s fanbase. This week’s post might be a little more on the serious side on account of the fact that St. Francis doesn’t appear to have any fans to rile up however.
Which brings us to this. The JMU Dukes open the 2012 football season with plenty of high expectations. Lots of fans are thinking this team has what it takes to win the CAA Championship and make a deep run in the playoffs. But before they can begin the CAA campaign, they’ll need to work some things out in 3 out of conference games. The first of which is this Saturday against the St. Francis University Red Flash (love that name btw). JMU is picked to contend in the always tough CAA. St. Francis is looking to improve upon last year’s 2-9 record and last place finish in the NEC. Who wins and by what score?
There is a game at Bridgeforth Stadium at 6 p.m. this Saturday night!
That’s really all we want to say in this post, but here are a few link to tide you over until our CAA preview and picks Wednesday and our game preview (with Beer of the Week of course) this Friday. Needless to say, we’re excited to be writing a game preview.
Most Fall sports kicked off their seasons this past weekend. Read all about them over at JMU Sports. Not sure what the hell is wrong with Men’s Soccer so far or what SIU-Edwardsville is, but Field Hockey, Women’s Soccer, and Volleyball all got their first victories in the last few days.
Don't Cross the Damn Moats!
Former Dukes stud Linebacker Arthur Moats appears to have won a starting spot for the Buffalo Bills defense after playing in a reserve role the last couple of seasons.
And in case you haven’t noticed from the massive ad campaign unleashed this week, JMU Alum Matt Bondurant’s book The Wettest County in the World, has been turned into the movie Lawless. This is going to be something of a big deal and it comes out this Wednesday!
Really, that’s the only title for this Old Guys Leave Roundup Post.
Said Mickey after what he called the worst practice of the preseason on Wednesday, coincidentally the day many students started arriving back in the ‘Burg: “The sundresses were all out today and their mind just wasn’t at practice.”
Lawless comes out in less than a week (8/29). Based on the novel The Wettest County in the World by JMU alum Matt Bondurant. Also check out what looks to be a damn good soundtrack here.
We are also incredibly pleased to announce we’ve sold out the first ever JMUSB tailgate extravaganza bus trip to the WVU game at FedEx. Thanks for the overwhelming response and can’t wait to celebrate what should be an awesome day of Dukes!
As you all know, the FedEx game will feature the newly awarded #1 FBS v. #1 FCS (WVU/JMU) for best party schools in the nation. Needless to say, Bring Your Own Sofa!
Also very cool, honorary captains for the game will be ex-Skins Sam Huff (WVU) and Gary Clark (JMU).
Hard to believe the Class of 2016 is all moved into the ‘Burg and we’ll all be opening Bridgeforth Stadium in 8 days.
Lastly, an enormous good luck going out to JMU Field Hockey as they open their season at a tourney in Ohio against the University of Vermont tomorrow! As you all know, HC Antoinette Lucas is a great friend of the blog and we wish her and the squad the best. If you’re heading down early for the opener against St. Francis, feel free to stop by their game up in the ISAT tailgate earlier in the day.
Go Coach L! Hopefully your team has a better sense of direction than I do.
The Princeton Review released its list of Top 20 Party Schools and sure enough our beloved alma matter checks in at number 18. So, yay! I mean, I think that’s how the cool kids want us to react, right? Wait, what’s that? They’d really just prefer that my friends and I politely refrain from joining their quaint social gatherings get the f*ck out. Well, that’s fair I guess. But by doing so, they’ll miss out on a whole bunch of cool stories that Todd and I could tell them about “back in our day”. Cool stories about how we and our “bros” drank $26 kegs of Beast Lite on partied every night of the week. On second thought, the mere fact that our tired old asses would even attempt to use the word party as a verb is oddly pathetic. And sort of creepy. And telling college kids about $26 kegs is like my grandparents telling me about how they used to go to the theater to watch the “talkies” for a nickel. But anyway, well done JMU students. Well done.
And it’s worth mentioning that West Virginia is number 1 on the list. That makes perfect sense considering you can major in drinking moonshine while walking around in bare feet and overalls at WVU. It also means that the tailgating for the JMU vs WVU game at FedEx is probably going to be a whole lot of fun. So join us on the bus people.
Rob and I have been alternating vacations the last few weeks so we’re a little later than we meant to be with this, but we are pleased to announce the first official JMUSB Tailgate Extravaganza and officially extend an invitation to our readers. Here are the details.
We’ve reserved one of the big ole 55-person “motorcoaches” for this one. We hope you’ll agree that the prospect of not having to worry about driving to this rare and exciting game is more than worth the extra freight, not to mention this is just going to be a ridiculously good time!
RSVP: If you would like to join us, please drop us an email at jmusportsblog@gmail.com or better yet, FB message us. Include the your name, the number of seats you’d like to purchase and the email address where you’d like a PayPal invoice sent (likely set this Thursday evening).
It’s pretty simple really. Everyone who watches the video above will immediately fall into one of two groups. People in the first group will find it 100% relatable as their stomachs fill with joyful butterflies in anticipation of copious amounts of drinking and illicit encounters with the opposite sex that await them in the coming weeks. Those of you in the second group however will slam your laptop closed, shake your fist muttering something about how “this sort of thing never would have happened in my day”, and then go yell at the neighbor’s kids until they get off your lawn. The choice is yours.
