This weekend, UNC faces a dangerous non-conference opponent that hails from the Sun Belt Conference. This program also recently made the transition from FCS to FBS football after winning multiple national titles in the lower minors. When this team comes down from their relatively remote mountain town, the Tar Heels will have to be on high alert to avoid an upset.
Oh, you thought I was talking about App State? No, Mack Brown will avoid them like the plague if he can avoid it. This is about James Madison, which bears striking similarities to the Mountaineers. Aside from the reasons previously mentioned, JMU boasts a robust, travel-happy fan base that no doubt helped sell out Kenan Stadium for Saturday’s game. Brown admitted as much earlier this week.
“James Madison has great fans,” Brown said. “They’ve all bought their tickets. And they’re going to be very, very excited to come here.”
Just ask Virginia about the JMU fans who practically took over Charlottesville when the Dukes beat the Cavaliers last season. It was part of a 10-0 start for JMU, which hosted College GameDay on campus and even entered the national rankings.
All of these things speak to a healthy football culture in JMU’s hometown of Harrisonburg, Virginia, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains just west of Shenandoah National Park. Catie Harper is a JMU alumna who covers the Dukes for the city’s Daily News-Record. She told Chapelboro that the local love for the team extends well beyond university affiliates.
“Fans live and die for JMU football. And it’s not just the alumni of the school that love this program,” Harper said. “It’s so big in Harrisonburg as a town. (On) Saturdays, the stadium will fill up, and it might not even be filled with people who went to the school — it’s just people from the surrounding town. Because it’s a mountain town, there’s not much outside the city limits.”
Looking at the bigger picture, the state of Virginia has no professional sports teams. For Harrisonburg residents, the major cities of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore are a two-hour drive away. So when the city’s residents join what is by far the most successful college football program in Virginia in the 21st century, the Dukes naturally take on a mythical personality, according to Harper.
“A lot of these JMU football players are professionals in the eyes of professional athletes when you walk past a little kid,” she said. “They’re larger than life here.”
Winning certainly helps. James Madison won FCS national titles in 2004 and 2016 and hasn’t had a losing season since 2002. The university itself is also experiencing growth. It has a student body that rivals UNC’s and a vast alumni network that extends far beyond the school’s geographic sphere of influence.
JMU head coach Bob Chesney has also emphasized the importance of community involvement, regularly engaging his players with fans in and around the city. As if the Dukes weren’t already popular enough, Harper said this has only made the fan base more passionate.
“There are players that people like to follow because they’re fun to watch on the field or because they’re nice off the field and people know them,” Harper said. “It’s just a lot of different things that I think have piled up and been the perfect setting for this program to grow and take this community and this state by storm.”
And speaking of that alumni network, the Triangle is only a three-and-a-half hour drive from Harrisonburg. In other words, for the traveling JMU brigade, it’s a breeze.
“Many of these fans and alumni would probably travel for hours just to see a football game,” Harper said. “And especially against a UNC-level team.”
The message is clear: The Dukes are not afraid of any program, no matter how big or small. They certainly aren’t afraid of a Carolina team still searching for stability at the quarterback position. The Tar Heels’ coaches have said they need to play their best game of the season to turn 3-0 into 4-0. Otherwise, they risk finding out what others already know all too well: James Madison is one of the founding fathers of this college football upset.
Featured image via James Madison Athletics
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