James Madison has request to shorten FBS transition denied: What does this mean for 2023?

BOONE, NORTH CAROLINA - SEPTEMBER 24: Kaelon Black #6 of the James Madison Dukes celebrates in the last few seconds of the fourth quarter against Appalachian State Mountaineers at Kidd Brewer Stadium on September 24, 2022 in Boone, North Carolina. (Photo by Eakin Howard/Getty Images)
By Chris Vannini and Nicole Auerbach
Apr 27, 2023

James Madison’s waiver request to shorten its FBS transition requirement from two years to one was denied by the NCAA Board of Directors on Wednesday, a person with knowledge of the vote told The Athletic. The board decision affirmed a denial by the Division I Council.

The denial means JMU football will not be directly eligible for a bowl game in 2023 and likely not for the Sun Belt championship, either, due to NCAA subdivision transition rules. However, NCAA bylaws state that if there are not enough bowl-eligible teams, an otherwise-eligible team in the second year of its FBS transition can be selected ahead of a 5-7 team.

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The 8-3 Dukes won a share of the Sun Belt East division championship in their first FBS season in 2022, but the Sun Belt didn’t want its champion to be ineligible for a bowl, so division co-champion Coastal Carolina took the spot in the SBC championship game.

Football programs moving from the Football Championship Subdivision to the FBS are required to take a two-year “transition,” during which they are ineligible for the postseason. The idea behind the rule is for schools to spend that time making necessary investments for the jump, and the postseason ineligibility is supposed to be the price of the move, to deter schools from trying to fast-track a leveling up of their program. In most cases, those programs spend one transition year in the FCS and the second in the FBS. Sam Houston and Jacksonville State spent their first transition year in the FCS last fall and will join Conference USA in FBS this summer, ineligible for the postseason.

JMU’s immediate move into the Sun Belt was rare. The conference worked with JMU to get the Dukes into the Sun Belt in their first FBS season, and JMU qualified as an FBS team for 2022 by hosting five FBS home games. JMU went 8-3 overall and 6-2 in Sun Belt play, and quarterback Todd Centeio was the SBC newcomer of the year.

JMU officials hoped the program’s long history of success and investment in football, from coaching salaries to nutrition to facilities, would convince the board to grant a waiver for a one-year transition.

“If the true intent of the two-year transition is to ensure that schools are equipped to operate in a sustainable manner at the FBS level, we believe that we’ve already checked every box,” JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne wrote in a letter to fans released Thursday. “JMU never wanted any part of transitioning with uncertainty or on a whim; we wanted to be fully prepared, and we believe that plan was successfully executed.”

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The issue of NCAA division and subdivision transitions has been a particularly controversial one in men’s basketball in recent years as D-I has ballooned in size.

Fairleigh Dickinson, the No. 16 seed that upset Purdue this March, only qualified for the NCAA Tournament because the NEC tournament winner, Merrimack, was ineligible amid its four-year transition up from D-II. The concern over JMU’s waiver was the precedent it would set for future transition waiver requests.

The Dukes quickly became one of the better programs in the Sun Belt and the Group of 5, but they’ll likely have to wait another year for a postseason opportunity in the FBS unless a few situations break the right way.

“While we are incredibly disappointed, I want to stress that we knew the NCAA reclassification bylaws when we decided to move to FBS,” Bourne wrote. “We knew what we signed up for and at no point were disillusioned to think otherwise. With that in mind, I ask our supporters in JMU Nation not to respond with a negative outpouring against the NCAA or anyone involved in this review process. We knew the rules, we followed established protocol for a waiver request, and apparently will not get the result we had hoped in this particular process. We will certainly continue to do all we can to advocate for our student-athletes as we move forward, both within the Sun Belt Conference and within the NCAA structure.”

(Photo: Eakin Howard / Getty Images)

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