Could JMU, Jax State & Sam Leave Conferences a Year Earlier?

[TexasTerror]

I recently listened to the radio interview that JMU AD Bourne did with ESPN in Harrisonburg.


Quick synopsis:

• James Madison is seeking to eliminate one year from the FCS to FBS transition along with Sam Houston and Jacksonville State
• JMU is being offered eight games (four home / four away) by the Sun Belt for '22 season if they can get assistance from NCAA with this transition which would make them bowl eligible in '23 instead of '24
• JMU AD indicates that they need to have five FBS home games as part of the transition (did not verify if fellow transitioning schools Sam Houston/Jacksonville St would count)
• JMU AD felt very confident that they would be in the Sun Belt in July '22 in all sports and mentioned football is basically what would get them over the hump

My general and ideal scenario on this from a Sam Houston perspective.

• Sam Houston is able to do similar.
• The Kats would play an eight game CUSA schedule which for a year may actually include games against UTSA, North Texas and Rice who would still be around.
• The ninth game would be Texas A&M.
• For the 10th and 11th games, JMU engages in a round robin with Sam and Jacksonville St. This would give each a fifth FBS home game. Got to presume the NCAA would count this.
• The 12th game (if this is counted as the second year of a transition and not the FCS Independent year) would be Northern Arizona at Bowers to finish the home and home.

Seems that there’s a lot of “ifs” scenarios here but if James Madison can do it and three programs are leaving CUSA a year early, why not? Sam should do whatever it can to take advantage of any efforts JMU is.


And that’s my two cents!


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CUSAbbs

[ysubigred]

I recently listened to the radio interview that JMU AD Bourne did with ESPN in Harrisonburg.


Quick synopsis:

• James Madison is seeking to eliminate one year from the FCS to FBS transition along with Sam Houston and Jacksonville State
• JMU is being offered eight games (four home / four away) by the Sun Belt for '22 season if they can get assistance from NCAA with this transition which would make them bowl eligible in '23 instead of '24
• JMU AD indicates that they need to have five FBS home games as part of the transition (did not verify if fellow transitioning schools Sam Houston/Jacksonville St would count)
• JMU AD felt very confident that they would be in the Sun Belt in July '22 in all sports and mentioned football is basically what would get them over the hump

My general and ideal scenario on this from a Sam Houston perspective.

• Sam Houston is able to do similar.
• The Kats would play an eight game CUSA schedule which for a year may actually include games against UTSA, North Texas and Rice who would still be around.
• The ninth game would be Texas A&M.
• For the 10th and 11th games, JMU engages in a round robin with Sam and Jacksonville St. This would give each a fifth FBS home game. Got to presume the NCAA would count this.
• The 12th game (if this is counted as the second year of a transition and not the FCS Independent year) would be Northern Arizona at Bowers to finish the home and home.

Seems that there’s a lot of “ifs” scenarios here but if James Madison can do it and three programs are leaving CUSA a year early, why not? Sam should do whatever it can to take advantage of any efforts JMU is.


And that’s my two cents!


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CUSAbbs

I believe the 1 year transition is to help with the additional scholarships to the school to get a better recruiting class/players.. Although JMU, Sammy and Jax St. should already do well in their new conferences with out the additional schollies LOL!!

Good luck to all!

[TexasTerror]

I believe the 1 year transition is to help with the additional scholarships to the school to get a better recruiting class/players.. Although JMU, Sammy and Jax St. should already do well in their new conferences with out the additional schollies LOL!! Good luck to all!

All three schools can get up to 85 scholarships when they want. It does not make sense in many regards due to wanting to balance the classes and things of that nature...

In JMU's case, the desire to expedite the transition has everything to do with the Colonial not allowing all their sports teams to compete for postseason tournaments, automatic qualification. Football would not be a qualifier anyway (FBS or FCS) in '22 though JMU is hoping that they can get a waiver in light of circumstance(s) to speed up their move to the Sun Belt. The problem with moving to the Sun Belt in all sports is that you are then jeopardizing your Colonial football schedule in '22 so there's the problem the Dukes have, thus necessitating what they are seeking.

As it stands now, JMU would be a FCS Independent playing a CAA schedule in '22 while Sam for instance would be a FCS Independent playing a WAC schedule in '22.

[MSUBobcat]

I recently listened to the radio interview that JMU AD Bourne did with ESPN in Harrisonburg.


Quick synopsis:

• James Madison is seeking to eliminate one year from the FCS to FBS transition along with Sam Houston and Jacksonville State
• JMU is being offered eight games (four home / four away) by the Sun Belt for '22 season if they can get assistance from NCAA with this transition which would make them bowl eligible in '23 instead of '24
• JMU AD indicates that they need to have five FBS home games as part of the transition (did not verify if fellow transitioning schools Sam Houston/Jacksonville St would count)
• JMU AD felt very confident that they would be in the Sun Belt in July '22 in all sports and mentioned football is basically what would get them over the hump

My general and ideal scenario on this from a Sam Houston perspective.

• Sam Houston is able to do similar.
• The Kats would play an eight game CUSA schedule which for a year may actually include games against UTSA, North Texas and Rice who would still be around.
• The ninth game would be Texas A&M.
• For the 10th and 11th games, JMU engages in a round robin with Sam and Jacksonville St. This would give each a fifth FBS home game. Got to presume the NCAA would count this.
• The 12th game (if this is counted as the second year of a transition and not the FCS Independent year) would be Northern Arizona at Bowers to finish the home and home.

Seems that there’s a lot of “ifs” scenarios here but if James Madison can do it and three programs are leaving CUSA a year early, why not? Sam should do whatever it can to take advantage of any efforts JMU is.


And that’s my two cents!


For similar threads, discussions on other boards...

KatFans.com
Dukes' Domain
CUSAbbs

No idea how this would be handled, but would seem to be an odd end-around the rule to allow a non-counter become a counter in effort to turn the non-counter into a counter. Kind of a chicken-or-the-egg situation.

[KPSUL]

It will be interesting to see what happens.

The Sun Belt committing to JMU 8 conference games - how might that effect the 8 team chosen? Does JMU count as an FBS or FCS win for them? Doesn't only one FCS win count towards their 6 Div 1 wins to be bowl qualified? Most will already have an FCS game scheduled.

How easy will it be for JMU, SHSU and JSU to at least schedule 11 games? I don't see CAA teams stepping to fill JMU's schedule. With 11 teams remaining - no problem getting everyone 8 conference games, and most already have their 3 OOC games scheduled. It might also be hard to schedule G5 team, particularly at JMU. Of course UMass, UConn and Liberty may not have filled their dance cards - but they'd likely be looking for home games, and will playing and beating JMU qualify as a bowl qualifying win? Playing JMU might be a no-benefit proposition - lose and negatively effect bowl eligibility or win and gain virtually nothing.

[Libertine]

Y'all are revving the engine before putting gas in the tank. There's a reason that the provisional year exists and it's not just for adding 22 scholarships. It's about upgrading logistics, increasing budgets and numbers of personnel, adjusting for the adjusted Title IX ratios and, when necessary, adding sports. All of this has to be meticulously documented and then verified by the NCAA. The provisional year is the reason that FAMU only nearly bankrupted the school instead of completely bankrupting it when trying to make the FBS jump in '04.

Incidentally, on the point about adding sports, FCS only requires schools to offer 14 varsity sports but FBS requires 16. At the moment, JMU (18 sports) and Jacksonville State (17 sports) already meet that requirement but --<checks SHSU athletics website>-- Sam Houston (15 sports) does not. Sam needs to add a rifle team or something.

[TexasTerror]

Y'all are revving the engine before putting gas in the tank. There's a reason that the provisional year exists and it's not just for adding 22 scholarships. It's about upgrading logistics, increasing budgets and numbers of personnel, adjusting for the adjusted Title IX ratios and, when necessary, adding sports. All of this has to be meticulously documented and then verified by the NCAA. The provisional year is the reason that FAMU only nearly bankrupted the school instead of completely bankrupting it when trying to make the FBS jump in '04.

Incidentally, on the point about adding sports, FCS only requires schools to offer 14 varsity sports but FBS requires 16. At the moment, JMU (18 sports) and Jacksonville State (17 sports) already meet that requirement but --<checks SHSU athletics website>-- Sam Houston (15 sports) does not. Sam needs to add a rifle team or something.

Libertine, as a longtime poster - I figure you would know how fans routinely get hung up on the sport sponsorship situation. Sam Houston has 17 sports. I am going to presume that you failed to count track & field twice (indoor and outdoor) for both men's and women's sports. Not all schools list the sport(s) similarly on their website but traditionally if schools have track and field, they have both indoor and outdoor components.

[TexasTerror]

It will be interesting to see what happens.

The Sun Belt committing to JMU 8 conference games - how might that effect the 8 team chosen? Does JMU count as an FBS or FCS win for them? Doesn't only one FCS win count towards their 6 Div 1 wins to be bowl qualified? Most will already have an FCS game scheduled.

How easy will it be for JMU, SHSU and JSU to at least schedule 11 games? I don't see CAA teams stepping to fill JMU's schedule. With 11 teams remaining - no problem getting everyone 8 conference games, and most already have their 3 OOC games scheduled. It might also be hard to schedule G5 team, particularly at JMU. Of course UMass, UConn and Liberty may not have filled their dance cards - but they'd likely be looking for home games, and will playing and beating JMU qualify as a bowl qualifying win? Playing JMU might be a no-benefit proposition - lose and negatively effect bowl eligibility or win and gain virtually nothing.

Your third paragraph nails it.

James Madison cannot leave the Colonial until all sports including football have a home. Leaving the Colonial without football having a home will make it a challenge to get to 11 football games and as you said, the Colonial schools won't feel any obligation to help the Dukes fill their schedule.

I believe this is why James Madison is actively pushing to a) play in the Sun Belt next year and b) get a transitional year removed so that they will count as a FBS counter and not a FCS game.

Their AD felt confident enough and if Sam Houston & Jacksonville State are in a similar place, the trio (JMU/SHSU/JAX) can use each other to add on top of the conference games in a mechanism that gets them all five FBS home games and to fuller schedules (see my post above about a 'round robin' between the schools). In Sam Houston's case, if the schools heading to the American from Texas have not left, would love if C-USA did the Kats a favor and put at least two of the three (Rice, UNT and UTSA) in Bowers Stadium to help with attendance, excitement surrounding FBS as those would be attractive games.

[KPSUL]

Y'all are revving the engine before putting gas in the tank. There's a reason that the provisional year exists and it's not just for adding 22 scholarships. It's about upgrading logistics, increasing budgets and numbers of personnel, adjusting for the adjusted Title IX ratios and, when necessary, adding sports. All of this has to be meticulously documented and then verified by the NCAA. The provisional year is the reason that FAMU only nearly bankrupted the school instead of completely bankrupting it when trying to make the FBS jump in '04.

Incidentally, on the point about adding sports, FCS only requires schools to offer 14 varsity sports but FBS requires 16. At the moment, JMU (18 sports) and Jacksonville State (17 sports) already meet that requirement but --<checks SHSU athletics website>-- Sam Houston (15 sports) does not. Sam needs to add a rifle team or something.

Women's Beach Volleyball.

[TexasTerror]

Women's Beach Volleyball.

Sam Houston is apparently on track to add women's beach volleyball (pending who you ask) but yet again, Sam Houston is over the threshold with 17 total sports offerings. Of the sports, 16 presently are in the WAC with a 17th (bowling) competing in the Southland Bowling League.