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JMU Football’s Biggest Home Game Evar!
By Jamie Mottram | September 19, 2008
In case you didn’t know, I went to JMU. And because you almost certainly didn’t know, JMU is playing a mega-huge (for them) football game tomorrow. Here to prepare you and me for that is a fellow Dukes alum and someone who’ll be purpling out for his fraternity’s 70-person tailgate, Mr. Irrelevant’s new JMU sports correspondent and my friend, Rob Abbott.
LSU at Auburn? Blah. Tebow and the Gators against Tennessee? No thanks. The real college football game of the week takes place Saturday night in Harrisonburg, Virginia. That’s right, the Dukes of James Madison University take on the Appalachian State Mountaineers in what is easily the most anticipated home game in JMU football history. Alright, so maybe Fowler, Herbstreit, and Corso won’t be setting up shop outside Bridgeforth Stadium, but the game features two of the top FCS teams in the country and the winner will emerge as the likely favorite for this season’s championship.
The Dukes (2-1) find themselves ranked #5 in this week’s FCS coaches poll and are eager to avenge last year’s 28-27 playoff loss suffered at the hands of App State. JMU controlled that game, rushing for over 313 yards and dominating time of possession only to see questionable coaching decisions and untimely fumbles cost them the game. To clarify, by “questionable” I mean mind-numbingly idiotic, as in going for it on 4th down from your own 31 with 2:35 left and a 5-point lead, and by “untimely” I mean on the Mountaineers five-yard line with 22 seconds left. Ugh. Suffice to say JMU has plenty of motivation heading into the game.
The JMU offense is kind of like Entourage. You’ll basically see the same thing every time you tune in to watch. Unlike Entourage however, it’s actually entertaining. The Dukes’ powerful rushing attack is led by Senior QB Rodney Landers. In last weeks’ 52-38 victory over then #3 ranked UMass, Landers rushed for 206 yards and two touchdowns. He also threw for a touchdown. For the 2007 season, Landers threw for 13 touchdowns and rushed for over 1,200 yards and 12 scores. The Dukes employ a running back by committee approach and essentially just go with whichever back gets hot. Last week Griff Yancey was the most effective and he found the endzone 3 times. Yancey is kind of like Tiki Barber, because he’s talented but has had trouble holding onto the ball at times. Unlike Tiki though, as far as I can tell Yancey is not a total dick. On special teams, Scotty McGee is averaging almost 30 yards per kickoff return. For the defense, redshirt senior Marcus Haywood leads the Dukes in both tackles and interceptions. Linebacker D.J. Brandon and safety Gerren Griffin are other players to watch.
What can you say about Appalachian State? They are led by current FCS wonderboy QB Armanti Edwards who rushed for 21 touchdowns and 1,588 yards last season. He ran for 313 yards against Richmond in the playoffs last year. They beat Michigan in the big house. They are back-to-back-to-back national champions. All meaningless crap. Go Dukes!
Topics: Guest Posts, JMU, College Football |
11 Responses to “JMU Football’s Biggest Home Game Evar!”
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September 19th, 2008 at 9:13 am
“Mr. Irrelevant’s new JMU sports correspondent and my friend, Rob Abbott.”
Was TBL busy? Don’t you guys know that he wrote the single most popular newspaper article in JMU history?
September 19th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Hey, to his credit, The Big Lead did write for The Breeze, which I totally would have done myself, had I not been fat, drunk and stupid.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Fortunately you’ve lost weight and cut back on the drinking.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Unfortunately, his head is still the same size.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
oh crap I read “Return of the Mac” right before I did the crossword puzzle in every Breeze they had in 1998. Jamie probably wanted to do a sports talk radio show on WXJM but was to drunk fat and lazy to do that either.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Oh god, please tell me “Return of the Mac” is what TBL’s column was called.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I actually wanted to host a classic rock/reggae/ska show on WXJM, but, yeah, I was too fat, drunk and stupid for that as well.
And I don’t recall this “Return of the Mac” column, but I do remember “Darts & Pats”, which ruled.
September 19th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I graduated in ‘04…the Breeze got completely neutered around ‘01; every article that hinted at party atmosphere/drinking/humor/sarcasm was removed and the paper became a mouthpiece for the administration.
They also switched from the tabloid-style horizontal format to a regular newspaper vertical format, which made it 10 times harder to hide the fact that you were reading the paper during class.
Anyways, GO DUKES
September 19th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I have nothing personal against JMU or its alumni (even Buckhantz), but I didn’t really get why* the VA Beach ESPN station had a deal to broadcast JMU football and baskebtall?
*why is because the owner of the station was a Duke and forced it down the throats of people in a market that really shouldn’t care.
September 19th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
jlewis: I was livin’ in the Burg in ‘01-’02, getting my fine Blue Ridge education. You probably partied at my house a few times; anyone who was cool did. It’s no big deal. 303 Liberty St. ring a bell? Yeah, figured it would.
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
yeah it definitely was “return of the mac”. Darts and Pats and the crossword puzzle the only real reason the Breeze was ever published.
Fox Hill was the place to be man that south main area was for BW3 only.