One of the best games was the last one.
North Dakota State held on for dear life after taking a 20-14 lead over James Madison in the fourth quarter of the playoffs. The Bison advanced after Talbert picked off a Cole Johnson pass. They beat Montana State 38-10 in the final to win their ninth national title.
It was no surprise that JMU was the toughest title test. Aside from perhaps South Dakota State, JMU was the only program that had proven it could hang with the bison. JMU was an obvious choice as the second most popular program.
Was it true?
James Madison's last game was a loss in Fargo. The Dukes will become a member of the Sun Belt this fall. JMU is signing up for a run of.500 seasons as they build depth and try to compete in the Sun Belt East, the toughest division in the group of five conferences. Their fans are thrilled.
The football career of Cignetti was going well. After working as a quarterbacks coach at Pitt and NC State, he was given the chance to become part of the first coaching staff at Alabama, and he took the job. He helped to build the recruiting apparatus that is so important to the success of the program. Alabama won the national title in 2009, and he oversaw both the development of stars and the recruitment of new ones.
After four years at Alabama, Cignetti moved back to western Pennsylvania to take over the IU football program.
IUP is a strong program. Between 1987 and 2002 the Crimson Hawks reached the Division II playoffs 13 times and twice reached the championship game, losing once to North Alabama and once to the mighty North Dakota State University.
Cignetti left his job as a bus driver to work in the Division II football offices. What's the reason?
The JMU coach said that he was tired of being an assistant coach. I was just ready to be a head coach because I had learned so much from a lot of people.
It was an unusual risk. When I woke up, I thought I was crazy for doing what I did. Not a lot of people have ever done that in this profession. It did work out.
Cignetti got IUP rolling again after a good first season. The Hawks won at least nine games in three of the next four years and went 12-2 in his second season. He moved up to the top of the ladder. The Phoenix had won a total of 11 games from 2012 to 2016 but he immediately turned the program around, winning 14 games and making back-to-back playoffs.
The only win over the mighty Dukes in 10 tries was by the program's only win of the year. Cignetti was hired to replace Mike Houston. JMU has gone 33-5 in Cignetti's three seasons in charge, with the five losses coming by a total of 25 points. The opportunity presented itself at a perfect time, and both Cignetti and JMU were prepared for it.
He brought his own experience to the table as well. Before taking over as JMU's athletic director in 1999, he served as Virginia Tech's senior associate athletic director and Georgia Tech's senior associate athletic director. He knew there would be a chance for JMU to make the jump to the top level.
He said that the move was something they had prepared for. There would be a point in time when an opportunity would make sense to the university. Once we made the move, we felt like we could compete. Our infrastructure was modeled after a lot of Power Five institutions. The Atlantic Union Bank Center is the home of their basketball programs, and it includes a practice facility and full support operations.
The domino effect was created when Oklahoma and Texas decided to join the SEC. Three schools were removed from the American Athletic Conference by the Big 12. In C-USA's moment of vulnerability, the Sun Belt pounced. It became an attractive landing spot for JMU when it was added to the C- USA ranks.
It would be beneficial for JMU to explore options after what happened with Texas and Oklahoma. It wasn't feasible up until this year because there wasn't an ideal landing spot.
The chance to work with the Sun Belt was a good one. The timing was right and we were prepared. It was attractive to us because they wanted to align with us.
Were there any doubts? Cignetti wasn't as concerned as he was.
He thinks it was a slam dunk. We felt like we had outgrown theColonial Athletic Association and were ready to move to the Bowl Championship Series. There are a lot of titles here. We felt like we had a great brand as an athletic department and a football program, and other sports as well.
JMU's move up didn't come as a big surprise.
According to Matt Brown, publisher of the Extra Points newsletter and contributor to D1.ticker, JMU's total athletic department and institution share more in common with many other schools. That is a peer to App State in many ways. It is easy. It isn't always the case for a school that is good at football to be good at anything else.
Cignetti said that he felt more at ease with the transition than he did in the past.
A recent NCAA rule change may help the Dukes make a safe and competitive jump. It can take time to build depth and get to the 85-scholarship limit in the NCAA. Cignetti said that they played about 74 scholarships because of the extra year of eligibility. Most of the Group of Five schools are having a hard time getting 85, but over the summer they were hovering around 80.
JMU got a good look at how the transfer portal works when stars like Wells Jr. and Tucker-Dorsey left for power conferences. Cignetti wasn't happy that they weren't getting any trophy for that.
He added his own portal additions. Todd Centeio, a veteran quarterback from Colorado State, is one of the players that JMU brought in.
You're going to play the same schools week in and week out now. We won the last two times we played Virginia and Virginia Tech, we played East Carolina in my first game, and we took West Virginia down to the last play. We'd have a few games. This is where the importance of depth begins. You can't play your C+ game if you want to win. Every week, you have to play your A game.
Cignetti has reason to be more positive about his roster situation than most of his peers. One box was checked. Facilities is the next box.
"We're stretched this first season -- we're stretching as far as we possibly can -- but I think some additional changes to our football offices and complex will happen over the next two or three years" There are 17 programs we have to make sure they have the resources they need.
One of the worst things I've seen is that programs get two or three years in and they can't fund what they've started. We aren't going to operate that way.
These types of changes take time.
He said that the biggest thing was the cost of the move. You want everything right now because you want to win. There are other things you want to do, but they take time. It takes a couple years before you have your organization in place and where everyone else is.
Nick has had to deal with bored fans. Alabama fans leaving easy wins early has been a problem for the greatest coach in college football. This is the most college football first-world problem imaginable, and a version of it seems to be afflicting North Dakota State. The Fargo Dome hosted some of the largest crowds in the country, but it's difficult to ignore the fact that the average number of fans at each game has gone down. It was 17,450 in 2019. It was 15,101 in the year 2021.
Nobody will say anything on record. You weren't able to get a ticket in the past. Now is the time to get a ticket.
JMU is about to set a program record for season ticket sales this summer. The home slate doesn't include the two states.
The powers-that-be, to the extent that there are powers-that-be in college football, are discussing major structural changes to the top of the sport's pyramid. Powerful people have been left to gossip. A top division of 40-50 teams is what the coach wants from his team. The programs that can offer 85 scholarships should be the focus of the umbrella suggested by Gene Smith. The court system will have a large say on how things come together, with quite a few cases challenging the basic tenets of amateurism.
Every level of the sport will be affected by whatever happens. That made it even more important to align with strong programs.
He said that the future of college football is going to be dictated by resources. There are two or three conferences around the country where those resources can be found. It is possible that the resources that are available elsewhere will be limited. We want to be competitive in the Sun Belt.
Simple geography may have put JMU in a better place than it is up north.
One of the issues that you have to consider is the geographic footprint for competition. "Boone added." It takes travel to get there. The Sun Belt was a good partner for us. What is the league look like for the athletic director at North Dakota State? Being in the east makes it more feasible for us to consider some options since we are close to institutions.
The most sensible conference for North Dakota State would be the Mountain West. Northern Illinois is 600 miles away from the former. The closest school to the Mountain and Pacific time zone is Wyoming. Conference USA would likely take the school in a heartbeat, but the geography isn't any better, and it has some stability issues at the moment.
"This is the most successful program, with the best infrastructure and one of the most developed fan bases," Brown said. They're going to make a bowl game if they put them in the MAC tomorrow. If you're a major booster, you have to realize that you shouldn't take something just to take it. You have good basketball and are good in other sports. Do you want to increase your financial burden and commitment for something where there's a lot of uncertainties?
North Dakota State University has decided to not change its stance. JMU did the same thing until something happened. It will be interesting to see what will happen if the attendance continues to decline.
This isn't the same as it was a decade ago. They are leaving a peer program. The app state left. Long ago, Marshall left. Some of the perennially strong programs in the Missouri Valley are facing some institutional challenges, like Youngstown State, because of the continued expansion of the Football Championship Series.
I don't think it's irrational for a fan to notice that everyone is leaving and the title is becoming less meaningful.
It's no longer a problem for JMU. The Dukes have decided to trade annual contention for a second-division national title for a focus on fun, regional rivalries, the chance to occasionally trade blows with the sport's biggest powers and a bigger pocketbook. Regardless of whether the Dukes win big or pay their dues with a.500 record, Bourne knows the course ahead.
He said that he had to keep his headlights on and drive in his own lane. We're going to do what it takes to compete with the Sun Belt schools and work with them to help navigate our future.
Building sustainable programs with great rivalries is what it is about. I've always kept that in mind, no matter where we were or what we were doing.
Football is fun and sustainable. The sport can use a lot of that.
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