How a small school in the Virginia mountains slowly became college football’s most unlikely national title contender

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

(CNN) — Upon arriving at the James Madison University campus in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains in 1999, Jeff Bourne spied a 12,500-seat football stadium on a campus that only started playing the sport a little more than 25 years earlier.

He somehow saw a future.

He ignored the lackluster three-win season from the year previous, tut-tutted the notion that a school that only started to admit men in 1966 could be a pigskin player and dismissed the financial burden that launching an upper echelon football program would bring.

And then the athletic director did something even more audacious than daring to dream big: He waited. College athletics is not made for the patient; it is the ultimate grab and go, dominated by people who want success tomorrow and the financial fruits of their labor yesterday. Planning is for those who want to be left behind, the tortoise gets run roughshod by the hare.

Yet as the College Football Playoff launches this weekend, James Madison is not only part of the plan; the university’s impact is all over the sport.

The Dukes, who played their first football game in 1972 and joined the FBS a whopping three years ago, will play at Oregon, which has been funded largely by a Nike swoosh created a year before JMU football came into existence. When the Dukes’ season ends, their head coach will continue his equally improbable career trajectory. Two years ago, Bob Chesney was the head coach at Holy Cross. In 2026, he will take over at UCLA, continuing the rarely traveled road from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Westwood.

Meanwhile, Chesney’s predecessor, Curt Cignetti – who coached the very first FBS football game at JMU, a win against Middle Tennessee State – is waiting at Indiana, preparing for the Rose Bowl with the Heisman Trophy winner and the top-ranked team in the nation.

And it is all because the university did something no one wants to do anymore – it took its time.

“It really is pretty incredible, and it was not always easy,’’ Bourne, who retired in 2024, told CNN Sports. “Especially when your peers are moving. Your fans don’t want to hear ‘be patient.’ They tell you they’re tired of waiting. You have to ride against the tide a little bit. But I think it was worth it.’’

The slow build of a powerhouse

There was, in fact, always a plan. When Bourne arrived from Georgia Tech, he and then-university president Dr. Ronald Carrier – and, soon after, Linwood Rose – envisioned growing the football program, not just to be a money maker but as a way to make the campus even more inviting for its students.

Which is actually how the whole program started. Founded as an all-women teaching college in 1908, JMU first admitted men in 1966 and upon arriving five years later Carrier, the university president, thought adding football would help the school pivot its image.

Head coach Challace McMillin essentially recruited his roster out of class registration lines. The Dukes played their first game on October 7, 1972, losing 6-0 to the junior varsity from West Virginia’s Shepherd College.

Things were slightly better by the time Bourne got to campus. James Madison transitioned to I-AA (now FCS) in 1980 and even tasted a few NCAA berths through the late 1990s.

But the real catapult came with the arrival of Mickey Matthews. Hired at the same time as Bourne, Matthews led the Dukes all the way to the I-AA championship in 2004, giving both the administration and the fan base a taste of what could be.

The university invested in the infrastructure, building the Plecker Athletic Performance Center a year later and slowly started to distance itself in spending from its fellow FCS peers. By 2010, according to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, JMU was spending $4.2 million on its football team, well above the $1 million average of its FCS peers.

That number continued to grow even with the growing pains of success. JMU cut 10 sports in 2007, in large part to comply with Title IX. That the school had offered 28 varsity teams, seventh most among all Division I teams, did not make the cuts any less painful. Bourne calls it the program’s “dark times,’’ though he understood then and still believes now that in order to thrive across the department, the school had little choice.

Six years later, at the same time it released a feasibility study to move to FBS, JMU dismissed Matthews. Then the most successful coach in program history, he was a victim of both his own lessening returns and the school’s eyes to the future. Thanks largely to Matthews’ success, JMU spent $62 million to expand the stadium to seat 25,000 but his team’s inability to move the needle on the field – they earned just one postseason playoff berth in his final five seasons – made that big stadium feel more like an unfulfilled promise than a sign of hope.

Matthews’ departure begat the start of the Harrisonburg, Virginia, coaching cradle – JMU got exactly what it wanted in terms of on-field success but became unable to keep coaches on the sideline.

Everett Withers lasted two years before jettisoning to Texas State, which had recently made the jump to FBS, and Mike Houston lasted just three impressive seasons (another title and a runner-up finish) before bouncing to another upwardly mobile program in East Carolina, which had moved into the American Athletic Conference.

In essence, the Dukes had become the elite of the FCS, winning or playing for titles, spending more than $10 million on football, enlarging its on-campus stadium and even drawing ESPN’s GameDay to campus.

As the football program grew, so, too, did the JMU enrollment, the front door of athletics helping a purposeful plan to steadily grow the student population. JMU at once became bigger and more selective with its admissions standards. When the Dukes won their first national title, the enrollment hovered around 16,000; when they grabbed the second in 2016, it had topped 21,000.

Bourne and the university side, without apology, tapped into the student body increase to help fund athletics. By 2010, student fees accounted for 84% ($23.9 million) of the department’s revenues, making JMU one of the most heavily subsidized athletic departments in the country. That number only continued to grow – $27 million in 2012, topping $41 million in 2019 and $55.5 million a year ago, according to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database.

“Certainly, we were concerned about the fee,’’ Bourne says now. “But talking to parents and students, sports was an important part of the college experience. Never in my time at JMU did I run into a staunch group of individuals who were against it. They more or less understood, this is what it takes here to succeed.’’

The numbers back him up; even before JMU moved to FBS, it routinely filled its stadium, with the student population accounting for upwards of a third of the 22,000 fannies in the seats.

Keeping to the plan

But, they were still an FCS program, sitting still while – beginning in 2008 – 16 other schools transitioned to the bigger payouts and exposure of FBS. Yet JMU waited.

JMU could have moved earlier. Plenty of conferences made overtures, but rather than itching to keep up with the Joneses, Bourne studied his peers. He watched Appalachian State move to the Sun Belt and succeed, and watched Old Dominion stutter.

“There was tremendous pressure to move up, but we watched from a distance,’’ Bourne said. “We looked at what went well and what didn’t. It would have been easy to make the jump and then go back and say, ‘Oh wait. Do we have the resources to finish it?’ We decided to be calculated.”

Their biggest calculation came in 2019 when Bourne hired Cignetti.

Bourne had a simple checklist – he wanted someone with head coaching experience – and Cignetti had it. Bourne did not overpromise the coach. Though their finances were good, the $10 million JMU spent on football the year Cignetti arrived barely scratched the surface of FBS. Undeterred, Cignetti signed on – not just for the program but the transition. In 2022, the Dukes finally moved to FBS.

There is no good time to make the move, but when JMU finally did jump it was into a vat of tar.

The Dukes joined FBS just as NIL and revenue sharing came into existence, only exacerbating the gap between their financial starting point and their big-boy peers.

“We concentrated on what was needed,’’ Bourne says. “What’s truly important? What will really move the needle for you? That’s where we sent our resources.’’

In 2023 JMU”s long road to FBS finally found its pay off. The Dukes finished 11-1, worked their way into the AP Top 25 and even circumvented an arcane rule that would have made them bowl ineligible, earning a spot in the Armed Forces Bowl after the bowl committees essentially ran out of teams.

“Patience,’’ Bourne says, “can pay off.’’

Lightning in a bottle

It is easy to say JMU caught lightning in a bottle with Cignetti – except the bolt struck twice. When Cignetti left for Indiana, Bourne went back to his checklist, searching for someone with a successful head-coaching resume.

Bob Chesney is not Cignetti’s clone; it took Cignetti 50 years to even get a head-coaching chance anywhere; Chesney got his at 33. But they are cut of the same cloth, born in blue-collar Pennsylvania towns where their fathers starred as high school coaches.

Neither took the silver-spoon route, Cignetti working at Indiana University of Pennsylvania – located in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and not affiliated with his current employer – and Elon before JMU, Chesney at Salve Regina and Holy Cross.

“That probably tells you the type of culture and person we feel like we can be successful with,’’ Bourne says. “We interviewed a lot of good coaches, but when you look at Curt and you look at Bob, inside that shell is what we want our JMU football coach to be. They are both very similar in how they go about their work.’’

Hiring Chesney was one of Bourne’s last moves. He retired in May 2024, and then sat back as Chesney did the seemingly impossible: He took what Cignetti built and made it better.

While critics might crow about the Group of Five’s inclusion in the playoffs, JMU earned its way via a 12-1 record and a Sun Belt title.

But the school, at least for now, remains a stepping stone. UCLA poached Chesney on December 6, though JMU opted not to make like Ole Miss; Chesney will stay on for the playoff run.

“While it’s awkward and a little unprecedented, we felt like we could model the way,’’ said athletic director Matt Roan, who took over for Bourne. “If you prioritize the right things, not just this team but this program and protecting its future, we can make this happen.’’

The big question, of course, is: What is the future of JMU? It is a lovely thought to be the cradle of coaches, but that only means your successes fly the coup. Chesney’s departure marked the fifth head coach opening in the last 11 years.

Roan went slightly off script with Chesney’s replacement, hiring Billy Napier, who, earlier this year, was fired at Florida. Napier is another son of a coach, though his roots sink into Tennessee and – while he cut his teeth as a head coach at Sun Belt member Louisiana – his resume is largely littered with stops at far more high-brow football schools: Clemson, Alabama, Arizona State and finally Florida.

“It was a big hire, no question,’’ Roan admits. “We had to have complete confidence that the guy we selected could continue our upward trajectory. This isn’t about two times or three times in the playoffs. We want to be a program that is perennially relevant year after year.”

So long as the current playoff rules are in place, JMU will always have a clear path to the selection process but it is fair to question if the Dukes have a ceiling. Resources always matter, now more than ever. The state of Virginia passed a bill capping the percentage of student fees that can go toward athletics and JMU has steadily been moving toward reaching that cap (55%), and must be under it by 2029.

Instead the school this year altered its ticket pricing, asking for a nominal $10 entry fee to be considered for season tickets, and introduced tiered premium seating options.

Financially, JMU continues to invest in football but in 2024, that investment topped off at $15.8 million. Its opponent this weekend, Oregon, spent more than that – $21 million – on its coaching staff.

“The most important thing is what happens on Saturday night,’’ Roan said. “We’re going to shock the world.’’

Bourne will be there, tucked somewhere in Autzen Stadium, as the big dream he patiently cultivated finally comes true.

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