HARRISONBURG, Va. — It doesn’t take lengthy.
Go to James Madison College, and you’ll rapidly discover how keen of us are to carry doorways open for each other. College students for college students. College students for professors. Locals for college students. On this school city, aptly nicknamed the “Pleasant Metropolis,” if they’ll see you coming, they’re holding it open.
JMU’s campus sits within the coronary heart of the Shenandoah Valley, flanked by the Blue Ridge Mountains. Based in 1908 because the State Regular and Industrial Faculty for Girls at Harrisonburg, it didn’t develop into absolutely co-ed till 1966 and didn’t discipline a soccer group till 1972. It now has 22,000 college students.
For a lot of the previous 25 years, the college’s evolution occurred within the anonymity of low-major NCAA athletics, together with the Soccer Championship Subdivision (FCS) — basically the second division of school soccer. JMU gained nationwide titles, upset big-name opponents and invested in its groups, but a lot of the achievements had been far faraway from the most important and brightest phases of school sports activities.
Then in 2022, JMU climbed to the Soccer Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Group of 5 convention stage — nonetheless wanting up on the power-conference penthouse, however not less than within the constructing — and thrived. The 2023-24 season turned the Yr of the Dukes. JMU soccer posted an 11-2 report, rating as excessive as No. 18 within the Related Press Prime 25 ballot and ending with this system’s first bowl sport. Males’s basketball went 32-4, a report variety of victories on its approach to profitable the just lately joined Solar Belt Convention. The Dukes then superior to the second spherical of the NCAA Match for the primary time since 1983, toppling fifth-seeded Wisconsin within the opening spherical. Olympic sports activities comparable to softball, volleyball and ladies’s lacrosse even have surged.
Right here within the foothills of Virginia, a former ladies’s instructing school is rising as the most recent disruptor in school sports activities.
“I believe we’re the very best faculty within the Group of 5,” stated athletic director Matt Roan. “Once you discuss the place we stack up, we’re already on the prime of that group.”
However the brand new perch additionally affords a transparent view of JMU’s ceiling. On Saturday, the 2-0 soccer group will journey to face the 3-0 North Carolina Tar Heels. It’s a possibility for the Dukes to proceed upending the paradigm, to slay a traditional large model from the ACC. The issue is, no matter what occurs on the sector, it gained’t change JMU’s steadiness sheet.
North Carolina’s athletics income was $139.4 million for the final fiscal yr. The largest chunk of that — about $45 million — got here by way of ACC payouts, most courtesy of the convention’s tv take care of ESPN. James Madison’s athletics price range was $68 million. That’s one of many highest amongst G5 colleges, however lower than half what the Tar Heels herald annually, and even farther from the richest power-conference heavyweights that prime $200 million yearly: Ohio State, Texas, Alabama and the like.
“In the event you like profitable and you want success, it doesn’t come low cost,” stated Scooter Renkin, JMU’s affiliate athletic director for improvement.
James Madison has invested in athletics as a lot or extra than simply about each different G5 faculty within the nation. That could be sufficient to tug off an upset Saturday in Chapel Hill, and even to solidify the Dukes as the very best of that second tier within the years forward. However for JMU to proceed its rise, it should shut that income hole at a time when the one sustainable path — membership in an influence convention — is the equal of a steel-bolted vault that nobody is holding open.
JMU has come a good distance. However within the present panorama of school sports activities, is it caught settling for the place it’s? Or can it discover a approach to break via that door?
Mickey Matthews was employed as the top soccer coach of the Dukes in 1999, taking up a program that gained three video games the earlier season and had only one convention championship in class historical past. Bridgeforth Stadium, which opened in 1975, had expanded to a capability of 12,500, however attendance lagged and the amenities had been in disrepair.
“I used to inform individuals you possibly can throw a hand grenade up within the stands throughout video games and it wouldn’t injure anybody,” stated Matthews.
Except for a short stretch of NCAA Match berths for males’s basketball within the early Nineteen Eighties and a shocking discipline hockey nationwide championship in 1994, JMU had little athletics success. However the identical yr Matthews took over in soccer, the college additionally employed Jeff Bourne, a first-time, fiscally minded athletic director empowered to develop the division.
“Athletics was very a lot a college dedication,” stated Bourne. “I used to be instructed after I was employed it might be an extended highway and it gained’t be simple, however they needed that future for this system.”
Bourne and Matthews believed in that imaginative and prescient. And Matthews began profitable video games.
“We had all of the elements: Lovely campus, nice faculty, the marching band was terrific. We simply wanted to place all of it collectively,” stated Matthews. “I used to be satisfied after I took the job that James Madison didn’t know what it was sitting on.”
In 2004, Matthews led the Dukes to a 13-2 report and Division I-AA (now FCS) nationwide championship. After flirting with an off-campus stadium, the college doubled down on Bridgeforth and the prevailing footprint, constructing the Plecker Athletic Efficiency Middle behind the south finish zone in 2005 and finishing a $62 million growth in 2011.
The Dukes gained a second soccer nationwide title in 2016 and had been runners-up in 2017 and 2019, convincing FBS-quality expertise to return to JMU and play for championships as a substitute of driving the bench elsewhere. ESPN introduced “School GameDay” to city for the primary time in 2015, as 12,000 sturdy packed the Quad and launched the Dukes to followers nationwide. Lee Corso dressed up as founding father James Madison, powdered wig and all.
The college helped finance these bootstraps alongside the best way. JMU’s athletics price range of $68 million in fiscal yr 2023 ranked highest amongst Solar Belt members by a margin of $14 million, and prime 5 amongst all G5 colleges. Greater than $53 million got here by way of the obligatory charges which can be a part of tuition funds for each JMU pupil — making JMU essentially the most closely backed athletic division of any public college within the nation.
It’s not a one-year blip, both. Over the previous decade, JMU athletics has had a mean annual price range of $52.6 million, with pupil charges (a regular a part of tuition prices for practically each school) contributing a mean of $41.3 million per yr.
That security internet allowed JMU to develop its athletics applications patiently and intentionally. Regional friends like Appalachian State, Marshall and Previous Dominion made the leap from FCS to FBS years sooner, lured by the upper revenues obtainable by way of ticket gross sales, licensing and, most importantly, media rights from the conferences, NCAA and bowl payouts. However regardless of curiosity from G5 leagues such because the Mid-American Convention (MAC) and Convention USA, JMU stayed put, leaning on these pupil charges to translate soccer’s success to different sports activities and ready for the best FBS match.
“Our charges are on the upper finish, and we do get some criticism for that,” stated Charlie King, a longtime JMU tutorial administrator who beforehand oversaw athletics and presently serves because the college’s interim president. “However we make no apologies for it, both. I wager a complete lot of different colleges want they may very well be the place we’re athletically.”
Girls’s lacrosse gained a nationwide championship in 2018. Softball went to the Girls’s School World Collection in 2021, upsetting top-seeded Oklahoma. Practically each athletics facility obtained a facelift, headlined by the brand-new, $140 million Atlantic Union Financial institution Middle, an 8,500-capacity basketball enviornment that opened in November 2020.
In summer season 2021, within the wake of Texas, Oklahoma and the SEC setting off one other wave of convention realignment, JMU determined the second had lastly arrived. It accepted an invite to the Solar Belt, becoming a member of the likes of App State, Marshall and ODU.
Because of this, the scholar price subsidy is already shrinking — as a result of it has to. In 2015, the Commonwealth of Virginia handed a invoice that capped the proportion of college pupil charges that may go towards athletics spending. For in-state G5 applications, the cap is 55 p.c. JMU needed to current a professional forma to the state legislature as a part of its transfer to the Solar Belt, exhibiting how it might get beneath that threshold by 2029. The division is already under 60 p.c as soon as it components in allowable deductions comparable to pre-existing debt and sure auxiliary providers, in line with Kevin Warner, JMU’s affiliate AD for communications.
JMU made its transfer to FBS with out a budget-altering windfall. The varsity has but to obtain any income from Solar Belt media rights, and when it does, it is going to be about $2 million a yr, max. Nor does JMU have the extent of personal funding that exists at Liberty, one other Virginia college and potential G5 disruptor, or SMU, the place big-money donors helped bankroll the Mustangs to the ACC. In lieu of that, pupil price help will stay important.
“The onus is on us to proceed speaking why the help we get from the establishment and our college students is an effective funding,” stated Roan, who succeeded Bourne in Might. “The entire front-porch metaphor: Athletics do shine a lightweight on this establishment.”
Even with out a billionaire booster or tens of millions in TV income, membership within the Solar Belt has made a distinction. Nobody tailgates or storms the courtroom for low pupil charges. At JMU, the place charges cowl pupil ticket prices, pupil attendance for dwelling soccer video games averages about 8,500. That’s practically 40 p.c of the college’s complete enrollment — what Roan describes as college students “voting with their toes.”
In the meantime, JMU has steadily transformed that rising pupil curiosity into grassroots alumni funding. Soccer’s common attendance was north of 25,000 in 2023, season tickets bought out for a second straight yr, and mid-level fundraising has elevated markedly, conserving JMU among the many most well-funded and aspirational G5 colleges.
“Everybody needs to be a part of it while you’re profitable, but it surely’s greater than that,” stated Bob Chesney, employed in December as JMU’s new head soccer coach. “Once you get into the Valley right here, there are not any skilled sports activities groups, so that you begin to develop into that for these individuals.”
JMU soccer coach Bob Chesney was employed away from Holy Cross in December after Curt Cignetti left for Indiana after 5 seasons. (Barry Chin / The Boston Globe by way of Getty Photographs)
Bridgeforth Stadium sits on the older west facet of the Harrisonburg campus, flanked by Newman Lake and the cherry blossoms that line its shores. It’s a becoming time capsule for JMU athletics.
The 50-year-old facility has been renovated on three sides, however the fourth continues to be the unique concrete slab from the mid-Nineteen Seventies, lined with steel bleachers. You’ll be able to see the progress, but in addition the work left to be performed. King estimates it might value one other $100 million to finish the stadium replace and surrounding redevelopments.
That’s a large dedication for a faculty in JMU’s place, as soon as once more considering what comes subsequent. The place does it go from right here? Are we nearing the top of JMU’s rise — or is that this someplace within the center?
The Yr of the Dukes begat an offseason of change. Soccer coach Curt Cignetti left for Indiana after 5 seasons, with 13 former JMU gamers following him by way of the switch portal. Basketball coach Mark Byington was employed away by Vanderbilt after 4 seasons. It’s the acquainted scourge of a thriving mid-major, stripped for components by the power-conference cartel.
Bourne is gone, too. After 25 years on the helm for JMU, he retired in April to a home on Lake Norman, simply exterior Charlotte, N.C. When the college acknowledged his profession at halftime of the spring soccer sport, greater than 10,000 followers joined the celebration.
Earlier than he set sail, Bourne did his greatest to maintain JMU on the right track, bringing in Holy Cross’ Chesney and former Morehead State males’s basketball coach Preston Spradlin, two coaches with a well-known resume of punching up and overachieving. Then he hand-picked Roan as his predecessor.
“’Don’t mess it up’ was my prime precedence,” stated Roan. “And it was extra colourful than that.”
The 40-year-old grew up a few hours from Harrisonburg earlier than enjoying soccer at Virginia Tech and Southern Utah. He matches the JMU mould, shepherding large strides as AD at Nicholls State and Japanese Kentucky, two tough locations to flourish. However JMU presents a brand new problem.
The Dukes waited for the best second to raise from FCS to the G5, however did in order the hole between the G5 and energy conferences was widening. TV offers for the highest leagues proceed to extend, all whereas tens of millions of {dollars} in athlete income sharing and different monetary burdens linger on the horizon within the proposed Home v. NCAA settlement. It leaves JMU in a purgatory of types, vying for second-tier supremacy however priced out of competing with the ability conferences, trapped between its ambitions and monetary limitations.
Within the newly expanded 12-team format, JMU has a legit shot yearly to make the School Soccer Playoff out of the Solar Belt, a path that wasn’t beforehand obtainable to the Group of 5. The latest NCAA Match win for males’s basketball confirmed second-weekend runs are equally attainable. Identical for the WCWS upset of Oklahoma and a nationwide championship in lacrosse. All of these echelons at the moment are in play.
“We discuss being an ‘all the pieces faculty’ — we need to be good in all the pieces,” stated Roan. “We’ve individuals which can be shopping for into that.”
Sustaining it’s the tough half. The natural progress this system has achieved over the previous twenty years — constantly hitting on teaching hires, stretching each greenback, doing extra with much less — is a troublesome job made more durable by higher competitors, irrespective of how dedicated JMU is.
Nonetheless, the college and neighborhood have seen the advantages of these ambitions, and consider it is going to in the end be sufficient to crack that vault.
Convention realignment by no means rests in school sports activities, evidenced by the latest rebirth of the Pac-12, or the continued uncertainty within the ACC, the place Florida State and Clemson saber-rattling for a approach out has the remainder of the league on edge. If JMU can stay viable lengthy sufficient for chaos to strike, might the Dukes slip via the subsequent time that door pops open?
“The place JMU matches on this entire make-up of school sports activities within the subsequent decade or so, I don’t know. However I do see us being a program that continues to prevail,” stated Bourne. “Generally there may be future in place, time and folks.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; pictures: Barry Chin / The Boston Globe; Ben Solomon / NCAA Pictures; Scott Taetsch, Sarah Stier, Mitchell Layton / Getty Photographs)
