Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Editor
In simply its 2nd season as an FBS soccer program, James Madison has completed an extraordinary 6-0 get started, turning into the primary crew to take action age making the transition from the FCS to the FBS.
The Dukes have already defeated 5 FBS combatants this season, probably the most via a crew in the second one yr of transition, they usually’ve gained 9 consecutive video games courting again to latter season, the sixth-longest energetic profitable streak within the FBS.
However except there aren’t plenty 6-6 or higher groups to fill 82 spots in 41 bowl video games on the finish of the habitual season, the Dukes it is going to be sitting at house once more this postseason. Underneath NCAA regulations, groups making the transition from the FCS to FBS are ineligible for the postseason the primary two years.
The NCAA denied the varsity’s enchantment to finish the two-year transition in just one yr on April 27. James Madison used to be the primary faculty to enchantment the two-year duration.
“It was a very difficult decision to have to take, even though we did know ahead of time that we had two years in front of us,” James Madison athletic director Jeff Bourne stated. “The reason I say that is that things change, right? Circumstances change, environments change. I think there are waivers that are out there and put in place for a reason, and they’re put in place for teams just like where JMU was this year.
“I will be able to’t recall to mind any other establishment that’s been in a position to do what we’ve been in a position to do or used to be actually as ready as we have been to advance into this transition, so I do believe us very a lot an exception in that sunny.”
The Dukes also aren’t eligible to play in the Sun Belt Conference championship game, despite being the only team that’s still unbeaten in league play. Sun Belt bylaws don’t permit teams ineligible for a bowl to compete in the league championship game.
James Madison tutor Curt Cignetti is preserving out hope that “usual sense prevails,” and an NCAA committee — or the Sun Belt Conference — eventually changes its mind about not allowing the Dukes to compete in the postseason.
In his first team meeting before this season, Cignetti told his players, “Glance, we’ve were given to tug keep watch over of what we keep watch over, keep watch over the controllables, and if we take charge of that, next a dozen can occur.”
“I’m a company believer that usual sense overrides all of the regulations,” Cignetti said.
Cignetti also realizes the odds of the NCAA reversing its denial of the Dukes’ bowl waiver request are probably longer than Iowa’s offense scoring 30 points in a game, USC’s defense making back-to-back stops or Texas A&M winning a road game.
“I need to play games within the convention championship recreation,” Cignetti said. “That’s our purpose — to be the convention champ. We already beat latter yr’s champ [the Dukes won 16-14 at Troy on Sept. 16]. We need to play games for the convention championship at JMU. However there’s a dozen of soccer to be performed, so let’s no longer get too a long way forward of ourselves.”
The Dukes certainly can’t look past Thursday night’s game at Marshall (7 ET/ESPN, ESPN App), which has never lost to James Madison. The Thundering Herd are 3-0 in the series, including a 26-12 victory last season in which James Madison led 12-2 after the first quarter. The Dukes still play road games against surprising Georgia State on Nov. 4 and Coastal Carolina on Nov. 25.
“I think like we wish to keep grounded, by no means get too top and not get too low,” JMU quarterback Jordan McCloud said after last week’s 41-13 rout of Georgia Southern. “Stock on dealing with what we will keep watch over and indubitably avoid the out of doors noise.”
Regardless of what happens at the end of the regular season, one thing is clear: James Madison has already proved itself as an FBS program, and it’s just getting started.
The Dukes have won 14 of their first 17 games as an FBS team, including nine of their first 11 Sun Belt contests. This season, they defeated Virginia 36-35 on the road, throwing the winning touchdown with only 55 seconds left, and won 45-38 at Utah State.
JMU’s defense leads the FBS in run defense, allowing only 42.8 yards per game, and is tied for third in sacks with 26. Senior Jalen Green is third in the FBS with eight sacks.
“More than likely the most efficient protection that we’ve discoverable, and that’s together with NC Surrounding,” Marshall coach Charles Huff said. “They’re strengthening. That’s no longer a pump-’em-up, make-’em-feel-good factor. You have a look at their stats, you have a look at their consistency. You have a look at the gamers they have got on all 3 ranges. You have a look at the scheme. It’s taking to be a problem.”
After suffering a three-game slide in the middle of the 2022 season, the Dukes haven’t lost since.
“There’s been a superior custom right here, an impressive profitable custom,” Cignetti said. “I believe there’s an expectation degree, a way of duty some of the gamers, to uphold and conserve that custom. I believe we’re in a position from a facility viewpoint, a budgetary viewpoint, and actually a skill viewpoint. There have been unknowns. How can you dimension up towards Appalachian Surrounding and the ones family? However our guys compete withered they usually consider they’ll win.”
Cignetti points to the 2022 opener against Middle Tennessee, a 44-7 victory, as the turning point that gave his players the confidence that they could compete at the FBS level. Three weeks later, the Dukes fell behind 28-3 at Appalachian State but rallied for a 32-28 victory.
“That recreation there, I believe if there have been any doubts in any of our guys’ minds, that erased the remains of the doubts,” Cignetti said.
There were also doubts about Cignetti when he arrived at James Madison in December 2018. A former quarterback at West Virginia in the early 1980s, Cignetti seemed to be on the path of a career assistant. From 1983 to 2010, he coached at Pittsburgh, Davidson, Rice, Temple, NC State and Alabama, where he was part of Nick Saban’s first staff.
At the age of 50, Cignetti decided to make the leap in becoming the head coach at Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2011. His father, Frank Cignetti Sr., had a 182-50-1 record at the school from 1986 to 2005. Frank Cignetti Sr., who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2013, died in September 2022 at 84.
Cignetti’s brother, Frank Jr., is the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Pittsburgh.
“I didn’t need to travel out as a occupation associate,” Cignetti said. “I at all times felt like I generally is a actually a success head tutor. I had discovered a dozen, clearly, from my dad. I discovered from Johnny Majors, everyone I labored for, however discovered a ton from Nick [Saban], and it used to be simply age for me to tug that prospect. And there have been a dozen of mornings I aroused from sleep and concept I used to be insane and, ‘What did I do?’ Since you’re taking a heavy pay scale down, too, nevertheless it labored out.”
Cignetti inherited an IUP team that had lost 10 of its last 14 conference games the previous two seasons under former Illinois coach Lou Tepper. The Crimson Hawks went 7-3 in his first season in 2011, then won a Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference title and reached the Division II playoffs with a 12-2 mark the next year. His teams went 53-17 over six seasons.
Cignetti jumped to another challenge at FCS program Elon in North Carolina in 2017. The Phoenix went 2-9 in 2016, their fifth straight losing campaign. They went 8-4 in Cignetti’s first season, defeating four nationally ranked teams and reaching the FCS playoffs. The next year, Elon upset No. 2 James Madison 27-24 on the road, ending the Dukes’ record 20-game winning streak in the Colonial Athletic Association and a 19-game home winning streak, the longest in the FCS at the time.
When East Carolina hired James Madison’s Mike Houston as its coach in December 2018, Bourne had a pretty good idea of who he wanted to replace him.
“He’s a person with extremely deep soccer acumen,” Bourne said of Cignetti. “I cruel, he grew up in a soccer people. His dad used to be an attractive tutor, each sons are actually strengthening coaches. I noticed how well-prepared they have been once they performed us previous. He’s a man that simply loves the sport of soccer and is actually well-prepared for video games. I believe they’re strengthening lecturers, however boy, they’re magnificient at getting ready for the opposition.”
The Dukes went 37-6 and won the 2016 FCS national championship under Houston. Cignetti guided James Madison to CAA titles in each of its last three seasons in the FCS, reaching the FCS national championship game in his first season in 2019. The Dukes lost to North Dakota State 28-20.
Since the start of the 2019 season, James Madison is 47-8, winning 85.5% of its games. Only two-time defending national champion Georgia (91.7%), Ohio State (88.7%) and Alabama (88.3%) have a higher winning percentage over the past five seasons.
Only one of those programs is in danger of missing the postseason this year. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a JMU alumnus, even weighed in on the Dukes’ plight, writing a letter last month to NCAA president Charlie Baker, imploring him to allow James Madison to play in a bowl game.
The letter didn’t work.
Baker responded to Miyares in a letter on Wednesday, congratulating him on JMU’s 6-0 start and writing that the Division I Transformation Committee ordered a review of the FBS membership requirements over the past several months, which led to the “adoption of considerably greater monetary help necessities and an greater charge to reclassify from FCS to FBS.” The increased fees will not apply to JMU, according to Baker.
“The Section I Board of Administrators and council consider cloudless requirements and timelines for reclassification processes will advertise strategic club enlargement and make allowance for a uniform enjoy for all reclassifying establishments,” Baker wrote. “The board and council assuredly that if adjustments to the FCS-to-FBS reclassification procedure are warranted, those must be treated via regulation that applies to all faculties reclassifying from FCS to FBS.”
Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said, “The Lawyer Basic is disillusioned with the NCAA’s reaction and stands by the time in his letter.”
If the Dukes keep winning, they won’t be afraid to call themselves Sun Belt Conference champions, even if they can’t play in the postseason. Last season, James Madison and Coastal Carolina tied for first in the Sun Belt East with 6-2 records in conference play. The Dukes couldn’t play in the championship game, but still declared themselves “Kings of the East” because they crushed the Chanticleers 47-7 in the regular season.
“We’ve were given to simply take charge of the year,” Cignetti said. “The children had been actually centered, the group’s centered. Keep centered, keep humble, keep hungry, have strengthening practices, put it at the ground on Saturday. Play games bodily, canny and with a dozen of power and poise, conserve getting the end result we wish and let’s see what occurs. You understand what I cruel? There’s refuse telling.”
