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Conference realignment is both a complete drag and sort of fascinating at the same time. Nobody likes seeing old rivals depart for new opportunities, but at the same time it’s fun to speculate about what’s next and created dream scenarios for the future. JMU and the CAA got to experience both sides of the coin last week as there was plenty of hand-wringing over GMU’s pending departure, and a whole lot of speculation about JMU “moving up” to go along with it. And the hot rumor of the week centered on the Sun Belt Conference’s reported interest in adding JMU if Western Kentucky departed for Conference USA. Western Kentucky is now going and the JMU to the Sun Belt rumors haven’t let up. Actually we should probably refer to them as rumors of the Sun Belt’s interest in JMU, because we have yet to see anything at all the leads us to believe the interest is mutual. The school and the league might have a deal in place for all we know. We just haven’t seen reports of anything even approaching that.<\/p>\n
Of course the timing of the rumors caused a whole bunch of people (including us) to quickly gloss over that fact. It really picked up just after Bourne and Alger stepped up and formally killed the “monitoring the situation” strategy. Todd and I have discussed it though, and we really don’t see JMU making this move. We have no inside sources on this (or anything else for that matter), but it just doesn’t pass the smell test for us. We truly believe that JMU is ready and willing to make the jump, but something tells us they’re just letting this Sun Belt rumor hang out there as an attempt to woo other suitors.<\/p>\n
The CAA is hardly stable right now. And quite frankly the instability probably has a lot to do with a certain $60+ million stadium that has led everyone to believe a certain program is in FBS or bust mode. But (and Todd and I disagree about this) it’s not dead. Not yet at least. So JMU probably doesn’t have to jump ship right now and settle for whatever it can get. And to us, the Sun Belt seems like settling. It’s a geographic hodgepodge of schools that JMU has little in common with. The league footprint spreads throughout the South, in areas that JMU draws few students from and has a lower concentration of alums compared to the mid-Atlantic or Northeast. Yeah, many fans probably don’t care too much about a school’s academic alignment with conference mates. I disagree, but I get that. You know who does care though? University presidents. And no matter how badly some folks might want JMU to jump to FBS, President Alger might get cold feet about his first big move being taking the school out of a league with academic institutions like William & Mary, Delaware, Villanova, and others just for the shot to play in a “big time” bowl game. Plus a move to FBS will cost money. In all likelihood it’s going to be a loss leader, so JMU better do what it can to get some serious intrinsic value from a move. Jumping to league with no television exposure, a lesser collective academic reputation that the CAA, and no regional rivalries to speak of doesn’t do it.<\/p>\n
So while we’re trying to stay positive and will do our best to support whatever decisions JMU makes, we don’t think the Sun Belt is a great move. And we have a hunch that Alger and Bourne might agree. But we’ll see. The Dukes probably are not long for the CAA. In the short-term though, they might be better collecting the NCAA money they earned, working the phones, and searching for a better offer than the Sun Belt.<\/p>\n