{"id":3951,"date":"2012-05-24T23:18:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T03:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=3951"},"modified":"2012-05-24T23:18:11","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T03:18:11","slug":"last-post-on-realignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=3951","title":{"rendered":"Last Post on Realignment*"},"content":{"rendered":"

With his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Rob thankfully pointed out earlier this week that JMU will, in fact, be taking the field for football this fall regardless of their future conference affiliation.\u00a0 At least for me, it was a great wake-up call.\u00a0 The last two summers, once the final out of the baseball season was\u00a0recorded, we’ve struggled to post for May and June.\u00a0 In the end, we’ve enjoyed ourselves immensely\u00a0with serious\u00a0debates over Luigi’s vs. Gus’ and Puddleduck against everything circa 1997.\u00a0 And of course, we’ve spaced out posts over the summer previewing the Dukes upcoming gridiron opponents and occassionally other high-profile FCS programs.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, this year we’ve had no trouble finding content or wading into controversial, and purely speculative, opinion pieces.\u00a0 And while the pageviews are nice and we’re glad our 11 readers seem to be enjoying a lively comments section, the truth is we’re both a little over all of this conference talk.\u00a0 JMU appears screwed for the time-being.\u00a0 And everytime I hear some report from some podunk paper on Twitter announcing some ridiculous, barely accredited “university” is under consideration for the CAA it makes me want to vomit (actually it makes me want to cry\u00a0a little but I just didn’t want to admit that).\u00a0 So that said, we’re just going to bring up one more point to consider and then hopefully move on for a few weeks in the absence of new hard news about JMU’s future.<\/p>\n

We’ve covered financial risk, media markets, travel\u00a0insanity,\u00a0the medium and long term college football landscape, our alternating hatred and jealously of ODU, and of course\u00a0the “academic standards” email we all got from JMU’s AD Jeff Bourne.\u00a0 And really, “academics” is the last bastion of the true scalawag when you’ve already told your constiutency you’ve been actively looking to move to FBS.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But\u00a0I got to spend last weekend hanging out with our\u00a0one “insider” friend from JMU.\u00a0 And she got me thinking about something I really hadn’t considered in all this craziness.\u00a0 ODU is joining CUSA.\u00a0 CUSA does not even sponsor four of ODU’s current sports, including long-time ODU strongsuits Wrestling and Field Hockey.\u00a0 I have no idea what ODU is planning to do with their orphaned sports (drop them,\u00a0ineffectively beg to keept\u00a0them in the CAA, move them\u00a0to some two-bit nonsense conferece like the Big South)\u00a0and I really don’t care.\u00a0 And the truth of the matter is I probably wouldn’t care for JMU either if we were in that position.\u00a0 But it is kind of insane to think about that.\u00a0 Even when considering the MAC, there’s no doubt for some of JMU’s sports, that conference would actually be a HUGE step backwards in terms of national credibility.\u00a0 And that’s just for the sports they actually have.\u00a0 Our soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, and track programs have all enjoyed very solid “high mid-major” status.\u00a0 So while after further consideration, I’m just not sure I can buy the academics argument, this is definitely another fly in the ointment of my best-laid FBS plans and it nearly brings us back to where we were at this time last year: Be Careful What You Wish For<\/p>\n

*Last post on realignment – for a little while.<\/p>\n