Belief pervades the program; circumstances demand a reality check.
Logistics give a damn about neither component. Preparations must be made.
So before James Madison University’s football program wins its Sun Belt Conference title on the first Friday in December and before five-loss Duke sets into motion a cataclysmic chain of events in the College Football Playoff process with the Blue Devils’ ACC Championship, waiting to see how everything unfolds is waiting too long.
While championship Saturday unfolds across college football Dec. 6, at James Madison, Jordan Smith, the program’s director of football ops, and Matt Transue, the school’s assistant athletics director for football administration, are making contingency plans.
Even if the odds — the Dukes’ chances to make the 12-team CFP field hover around 6% in early November — portend an exercise in futility.
“On Saturday, we had a belief after winning our championship game that there was a chance we could make the CFP,” Transue tells FootballScoop. “All the metrics and ESPN were saying we would get in if Duke won.
“As we kind of let the data unfold, waited for that 8 o’clock kick to end around 11 and then midnight (when Duke beat Virginia in overtime), we started putting a plan together during that game about doing a watch party and figuring out a way to execute that that would make sense for both outcomes – whether we got in or not.”
While the CFP’s full-time staff has team manuals, question-and-answer sheets and myriad resources for potential participants, James Madison’s contingent faces an immediate time crunch.
In preparation of a regular season away game, a given program sends its DFO, such as Smith, and perhaps two to three additional staffers to conduct site visits for road hotels, opponent stadiums, locker rooms and dining options months in advance.
The Dukes have approximately 12 days to cement plans for the biggest game in the school’s 50-plus year history that also, yes, includes multiple NCAA Football Championship Subdivision national titles.
Every minute is measured.
“Typically, we do site visits in May when coaches are out on the road recruiting,” says Smith, among Bob Chesney’s initial wave of staffers to come with him to James Madison from Holy Cross. “In the Sun Belt, we don’t get our final schedule (for the upcoming season) until super-late February or early March, which gives us about two months to source hotels and bid out the process.
“And then you have at least three months of advance scout as opposed to 12 days.”
Everyone is nervous. No plans can be actualized without the official selection. Additionally? Inclusion means two site visits in one week for any team not hosting.
James Madison learns it is in the CFP field at approximately 12:31 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7; it’s approximately 11 minutes after contending schools for the field are told to expect the news. The Dukes are the last team into the field and are seeded to travel cross-country to face 11-win, No. 5 Oregon.
JMU officials must fly to the University of Oregon and to Hard Rock Stadium, host site of the Orange Bowl and a quarterfinal-round game, within 96 hours.
By the way, James Madison also is in a coaching transition.
Chesney, after two dominant seasons in quiet Harrisonburg, Virginia, which sits 125 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., and sees Interstate 81 bisect its scenic campus tucked into the Shenandoah Valley, is taking over the UCLA Bruins program whenever this historic ride ends.
“Things got a little chaotic on campus, the Monday after we played Coastal Carolina in the regular-season finale,” Smith recalls of Dec. 1. “That was kind of the day post-practice Coach Ches was like, ‘I have to say something before this whole thing hits twitter. You’re probably gonna see something about me out there. Don’t pay attention to it. We have a championship game to play. Hopefully, a playoff to play.
“So, we’re getting ready to be going through a coaching search here, and Coach Ches is headed out West.”
Barely 24 hours following James Madison’s selection into the 12-team CFP field, so, too, are Smith and Transue heading out West.
The University of Oregon campus sits 2,800 miles away. With time limited, Smith and Transue finalize logistics to depart from Reagan National Airport in D.C. Monday evening to be on site in Eugene, Oregon, to meet with John Ford, the CFP’s assistant director of team operations, by 10 a.m. Tuesday. Travel delays due to heavy rains in the Pacific Northwest are lengthy enough that a car is rented to drive from Portland to Eugene, rather than waiting out a three-delay that features no guarantee of leaving at the just-scheduled departure time.
Transue paints a brief-but-detailed canvas of the Oregon trip:
“The CFP does a phenomenal job, just a great job of being incredibly detailed and organized. They have thorough manuals for each game, not just specific to the round but to the location. So, we already had a manual built specific to Oregon if they were to host. We go through the manual and then go through with the hotel staff and see the hotel; visit the local bus company, for our charters, meet the lead driver, they bring a bus drive us around the route in the bus, then a stadium tour, which really is a traditional site visit to away stadium.
“Once that ends, we go to the FBO (fixed-base operator) to make sure that will work for us, plane-wise, since we’ll be bringing in a larger jet than normal at that airport.”
The plan is a redeye-flight back cross-country to return to the JMU campus Wednesday morning, as early as possible.
The reasoning is twofold: the Dukes are formally beginning their CFP preparations for their Dec. 20 game at No. 5 seed Oregon.
The school also is introducing new head coach Billy Napier – at around the same time Chesney is flying out to be introduced as the top Bruin in Hollywood.
Oh, right. Flight options being limited on such short notice, Smith and Transue fly back into Washington’s Dulles International Airport, take a rideshare back to their JMU car awaiting them at Reagan National and then hustle to complete the drive to campus.
“We were really running on no sleep and pure adrenaline, got there about 8:20 and got to work for Coach Napier’s first day at JMU,” says Transue, a college administrative veteran with stints at Tennessee, Virginia Tech and Triple-A baseball’s Memphis Redbirds stones along his current path. “We beat him to the office, he landed around 10, we ended up having a quick team meeting around 10:45, and then off to Miami.”
Staffing is about as limited as time; with the Orange Bowl site visit mandatory, Transue flies south while Smith stays to handle on-campus operations.
Napier is transitioning, practice is ongoing and Chesney is returning to lead the remainder of this season.
“We have a semblance of a plan Sunday morning of what the rest of the week is going to look like, starting with what’s the messaging first thing Thursday morning,” says Smith, just four years into college athletics after landing his first full-time job at Holy Cross. “Not only did you make history, but guys also met a new head coach who isn’t coaching you through this.
“Focus on what we are making our message to be, to go shock the world and beat the Oregon Ducks. I pride myself on that, helping Coach Ches making that power point and what that messaging is week to week.
“On top of that, we’ve got two additional practices; it’s not totally a bye week but we’re talking to our strength coach, sports scientists, nutritionists, seeing what we need to see in practice and building around the finals schedule for exams this past week, which that’s entirely different than a class schedule.”
The 96-hour logistics that went into the planning of James Madison’s College Football Playoff trip to Oregon, shared with FootballScoop from JMU officials.
The goal is normalcy in an altogether abnormal, historic present. The CFP provides players up to $3,000 stipends for family members to attend games; JMU pays for its own team expenses on flights, lodging, travel now and then is reimbursed later via the CFP’s guaranteed $4 million payouts to participating schools.
Smith seeks to channel ‘Coach Ches’ but allows one moment of reflection.
“It’s funny you say that, because it’s two-fold: ‘It’s not special, it’s just important,’ is one of Coach Ches’s favorite quotes,” says Smith. “He doesn’t want them to feel different. It’s just important, but every road game to home game from the team to the coaching staff to the administration to the fans to the support staff is important.
“When it’s over is the time to say, ‘Hey, that was special. But at same time, there are definitely some conversations in our office.
“Dean (Kenny, JMU offensive coordinator), I picked him up from the airport his first day at JMU in February 2022. I said this week, ‘If I told you in February 2022, in three years you’re coaching in the College Football Playoffs’ … and he shook his head. It took minute to realize how far we’ve come.”
How far the Dukes might still be going.
Transue lands in Miami around midnight, conducts meetings and site visits throughout the morning into mid-afternoon and then prepares for his Miami-to-Charlotte-to-Charlottesville sky-tour home.
Belief supersedes exhaustion, even as three-touchdown underdogs inside Autzen Stadium where the host Ducks are 20-1 in their last three seasons.
“James Madison University is the model of success,” Transue emphasizes. “We’re not just ‘punching above our weight class.’
