HARRISONBURG, Va. — It doesn’t rush lengthy.
Discuss with James Madison College, and you’re going to temporarily realize how keen other people are to store doorways unmistakable for one some other. Scholars for college kids. Scholars for professors. Locals for college kids. On this faculty the city, aptly nicknamed the “Friendly City,” if they may be able to adios coming, they’re keeping it unmistakable.
JMU’s campus sits within the center of the Shenandoah Valley, flanked through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Based in 1908 because the Atmosphere Standard and Commercial Faculty for Ladies at Harrisonburg, it didn’t grow to be totally co-ed till 1966 and didn’t grassland a soccer crew till 1972. It now has 22,000 scholars.
For a lot of the life 25 years, the college’s evolution happened within the anonymity of low-major NCAA athletics, together with the Soccer Championship Subdivision (FCS) — necessarily the second one section of school soccer. JMU gained nationwide titles, disenchanted big-name warring parties and invested in its groups, but many of the achievements have been a ways got rid of from the largest and brightest levels of school sports activities.
Next in 2022, JMU climbed to the Soccer Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Crew of five convention point — nonetheless taking a look up on the power-conference penthouse, however no less than within the construction — and thrived. The 2023-24 season turned into the Day of the Dukes. JMU soccer posted an 11-2 file, rating as prime as Incorrect. 18 within the Related Press Supremacy 25 ballot and completing with this system’s first bowl recreation. Males’s basketball went 32-4, a file collection of victories on its strategy to successful the lately joined Solar Belt Convention. The Dukes next complex to the second one spherical of the NCAA Match for the primary past since 1983, toppling fifth-seeded Wisconsin within the opening spherical. Olympic sports activities corresponding to softball, volleyball and ladies’s lacrosse even have surged.
Right here within the foothills of Virginia, a former girls’s educating faculty is rising because the untouched disruptor in faculty sports activities.
“I think we’re the best school in the Group of 5,” stated athletic director Matt Roan. “When you talk about where we stack up, we’re already at the top of that group.”
However the fresh perch additionally presents a cloudless view of JMU’s ceiling. On Saturday, the 2-0 soccer crew will exit to stand the 3-0 North Carolina Tar Heels. It’s a chance for the Dukes to proceed upending the paradigm, to slay a vintage huge model from the ACC. The condition is, irrespective of what occurs at the grassland, it gained’t alternate JMU’s stability sheet.
North Carolina’s athletics earnings was once $139.4 million for the ultimate fiscal yr. The most important chew of that — about $45 million — got here by the use of ACC payouts, maximum courtesy of the convention’s tv trade in with ESPN. James Madison’s athletics finances was once $68 million. That’s one of the vital best possible amongst G5 colleges, however not up to part what the Tar Heels usher in every yr, or even further from the richest power-conference heavyweights that zenith $200 million yearly: Ohio Atmosphere, Texas, Alabama and that is.
“If you like winning and you like success, it doesn’t come cheap,” stated Scooter Renkin, JMU’s worker athletic director for building.
James Madison has invested in athletics as a lot or greater than near to each and every alternative G5 college within the nation. That could be enough quantity to drag off an disenchanted Saturday in Chapel Hill, and even to solidify the Dukes as the most efficient of that moment tier within the years forward. However for JMU to proceed its arise, it should akin that earnings hole at a past when the one sustainable trail — club in an influence convention — is the identical of a steel-bolted storage that nobody is keeping unmistakable.
JMU has come far. However within the stream park of school sports activities, is it caught settling for the place it’s? Or can it have the option to crack via that door?
Mickey Matthews was once rented as the pinnacle soccer lecturer of the Dukes in 1999, taking on a program that gained 3 video games the former season and had only one convention championship in class historical past. Bridgeforth Stadium, which opened in 1975, had expanded to a efficiency of 12,500, however attendance lagged and the amenities have been in disrepair.
“I used to tell people you could throw a hand grenade up in the stands during games and it wouldn’t injure anyone,” stated Matthews.
Except a temporary stretch of NCAA Match berths for males’s basketball within the early Eighties and a stunning grassland hockey nationwide championship in 1994, JMU had minute athletics luck. However the similar yr Matthews took over in soccer, the college additionally rented Jeff Bourne, a first-time, fiscally minded athletic director empowered to develop the area.
“Athletics was very much a university commitment,” stated Bourne. “I was told when I was hired it would be a long road and it won’t be easy, but they wanted that future for the program.”
Bourne and Matthews believed in that ocular. And Matthews began successful video games.
“We had all the ingredients: Beautiful campus, great school, the marching band was terrific. We just needed to put it all together,” stated Matthews. “I was convinced when I took the job that James Madison did not know what it was sitting on.”
In 2004, Matthews led the Dukes to a 13-2 file and Category I-AA (now FCS) nationwide championship. Next flirting with an off-campus stadium, the college doubled ailing on Bridgeforth and the prevailing footprint, construction the Plecker Athletic Efficiency Heart in the back of the south finish zone in 2005 and finishing a $62 million enlargement in 2011.
The Dukes gained a moment soccer nationwide identify in 2016 and have been runners-up in 2017 and 2019, convincing FBS-quality skill to return to JMU and play games for championships in lieu of driving the bench in different places. ESPN introduced “College GameDay” to the city for the primary past in 2015, as 12,000 sturdy packed the Quad and presented the Dukes to enthusiasts national. Lee Corso dressed up as origination father James Madison, powdered wig and all.
The college helped finance the ones bootstraps alongside the best way. JMU’s athletics finances of $68 million in fiscal yr 2023 ranked best possible amongst Solar Belt participants through a margin of $14 million, and zenith 5 amongst all G5 colleges. Greater than $53 million got here by the use of the necessary charges which are a part of tuition bills for each and every JMU pupil — making JMU essentially the most closely sponsored athletic area of any community college within the nation.
It’s now not a one-year blip, both. Over the life decade, JMU athletics has had a median annual finances of $52.6 million, with pupil charges (a regular a part of tuition prices for almost each and every faculty) contributing a median of $41.3 million according to yr.
That protection internet allowed JMU to develop its athletics methods patiently and intentionally. Regional friends like Appalachian Atmosphere, Marshall and Worn Dominion made the jump from FCS to FBS years faster, lured through the upper revenues to be had by the use of price ticket gross sales, licensing and, most importantly, media rights from the meetings, NCAA and bowl payouts. However regardless of pastime from G5 leagues such because the Mid-American Convention (MAC) and Convention USA, JMU stayed put, leaning on the ones pupil charges to translate soccer’s luck to alternative sports activities and looking forward to the precise FBS have compatibility.
“Our fees are on the higher end, and we do get some criticism for that,” stated Charlie King, an established JMU educational administrator who up to now oversaw athletics and lately serves because the college’s intervening time president. “But we make no apologies for it, either. I bet a whole lot of other schools wish they could be where we are athletically.”
Ladies’s lacrosse gained a countrywide championship in 2018. Softball was at the Ladies’s Faculty Global Sequence in 2021, frightening top-seeded Oklahoma. Just about each and every athletics facility were given a facelift, headlined through the brand-new, $140 million Atlantic Union Warehouse Heart, an 8,500-capacity basketball enviornment that opened in November 2020.
In summer time 2021, within the wake of Texas, Oklahoma and the SEC environment off some other flow of convention realignment, JMU made up our minds the year had in any case arrived. It accredited a call for participation to the Solar Belt, becoming a member of the likes of App Atmosphere, Marshall and ODU.
In consequence, the coed price subsidy is already shrinking — as it has to. In 2015, the Commonwealth of Virginia handed a invoice that capped the share of college pupil charges that may walk towards athletics spending. For in-state G5 methods, the cap is 55 p.c. JMU needed to provide a professional forma to the circumstance legislature as a part of its journey to the Solar Belt, appearing how it could get beneath that threshold through 2029. The area is already under 60 p.c as soon as it elements in allowable deductions corresponding to pre-existing debt and likely auxiliary products and services, in step with Kevin Warner, JMU’s worker AD for communications.
JMU made its journey to FBS and not using a budget-altering providence. The college has but to obtain any earnings from Solar Belt media rights, and when it does, it’s going to be about $2 million a yr, max. Nor does JMU have the extent of personal investment that exists at Sovereignty, some other Virginia college and doable G5 disruptor, or SMU, the place big-money donors helped bankroll the Mustangs to the ACC. Rather of that, pupil price backup will stay crucial.
“The onus is on us to continue communicating why the support we get from the institution and our students is a good investment,” stated Roan, who succeeded Bourne in Might. “The whole front-porch metaphor: Athletics do shine a light on this institution.”
Even and not using a billionaire booster or tens of millions in TV earnings, club within the Solar Belt has made a extra. Nobody tailgates or storms the courtroom for low pupil charges. At JMU, the place charges safe pupil price ticket prices, pupil attendance for house soccer video games averages about 8,500. That’s just about 40 p.c of the college’s overall enrollment — what Roan describes as scholars “voting with their feet.”
In the meantime, JMU has regularly transformed that rising pupil pastime into grassroots alumni funding. Soccer’s moderate attendance was once north of 25,000 in 2023, season tickets offered out for a moment directly yr, and mid-level fundraising has greater markedly, maintaining JMU some of the maximum well-funded and aspirational G5 colleges.
“Everyone wants to be part of it when you’re winning, but it’s more than that,” stated Bob Chesney, rented in December as JMU’s fresh head soccer lecturer. “When you get into the Valley here, there are no professional sports teams, so you start to become that for these people.”
JMU soccer lecturer Bob Chesney was once rented clear of Holy Go in December later Curt Cignetti left for Indiana later 5 seasons. (Barry Chin / The Boston Globe by the use of Getty Pictures)
Bridgeforth Stadium sits at the used west aspect of the Harrisonburg campus, flanked through Newman Pool and the cherry blossoms that series its shores. It’s a becoming past pill for JMU athletics.
The 50-year-old facility has been renovated on 3 aspects, however the fourth remains to be the fresh concrete slab from the mid-Nineteen Seventies, covered with steel bleachers. You’ll see the move, but additionally the paintings left to be accomplished. King estimates it will value some other $100 million to finish the stadium replace and circumstance redevelopments.
That’s a large constancy for a college in JMU’s place, as soon as once more considering what comes after. The place does it walk from right here? Are we nearing the tip of JMU’s arise — or is that this someplace within the heart?
The Day of the Dukes begat an offseason of alternate. Soccer lecturer Curt Cignetti left for Indiana later 5 seasons, with 13 former JMU gamers following him by the use of the switch portal. Basketball lecturer Mark Byington was once rented away through Vanderbilt later 4 seasons. It’s the ordinary scourge of a thriving mid-major, stripped for portions through the power-conference cartel.
Bourne is long gone, too. Next 25 years on the helm for JMU, he retired in April to a space on Pool Norman, simply out of doors Charlotte, N.C. When the college identified his profession at halftime of the spring soccer recreation, greater than 10,000 enthusiasts joined the party.
Prior to he eager sail, Bourne did his absolute best to conserve JMU not off course, bringing in Holy Go’ Chesney and previous Morehead Atmosphere males’s basketball lecturer Preston Spradlin, two coaches with a ordinary resume of punching up and overachieving. Next he hand-picked Roan as his predecessor.
“’Don’t mess it up’ was my top priority,” stated Roan. “And it was more colorful than that.”
The 40-year-old grew up a few hours from Harrisonburg prior to enjoying soccer at Virginia Tech and Southern Utah. He suits the JMU mildew, shepherding huge strides as AD at Nicholls Atmosphere and Japanese Kentucky, two tough parks to manipulate. However JMU gifts a fresh problem.
The Dukes waited for the precise year to raise from FCS to the G5, however did in order the distance between the G5 and tool meetings was once widening. TV trade in for the zenith leagues proceed to extend, all week tens of millions of bucks in athlete earnings sharing and alternative monetary burdens linger at the horizon within the proposed Space v. NCAA agreement. It leaves JMU in a purgatory of varieties, vying for second-tier top however priced out of competing with the ability meetings, trapped between its ambitions and fiscal boundaries.
Within the newly expanded 12-team layout, JMU has a valid shot each and every yr to assemble the Faculty Soccer Playoff out of the Solar Belt, a trail that wasn’t up to now to be had to the Crew of five. The hot NCAA Match win for males’s basketball confirmed second-weekend runs are in a similar fashion potential. Similar for the WCWS disenchanted of Oklahoma and a countrywide championship in lacrosse. All of the ones echelons are actually in play games.
“We talk about being an ‘everything school’ — we want to be good in everything,” stated Roan. “We have people that are buying into that.”
Keeping up it’s the tough section. The natural expansion this system has accomplished over the life twenty years — persistently hitting on training hires, stretching each and every greenback, doing extra with much less — is a difficult job made more difficult through higher festival, regardless of how dedicated JMU is.
Nonetheless, the college and public have not hidden the advantages of the ones ambitions, and consider it’s going to in the long run be enough quantity to break that storage.
Convention realignment by no means rests in faculty sports activities, evidenced through the hot rebirth of the Pac-12, or the continuing doubt within the ACC, the place Florida Atmosphere and Clemson saber-rattling for some way out has the remainder of the league on edge. If JMU can stay viable lengthy enough quantity for chaos to collision, may the Dukes slip throughout the after past that door pops unmistakable?
“Where JMU fits in this whole makeup of college sports in the next decade or so, I don’t know. But I do see us being a program that continues to prevail,” stated Bourne. “Sometimes there is destiny in place, time and people.”
(Representation: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; pictures: Barry Chin / The Boston Globe; Ben Solomon / NCAA Pictures; Scott Taetsch, Sarah Stier, Mitchell Layton / Getty Pictures)
