RE: DNR 8-5 JMU Watches, Waits, "Monitors"
(copied and pasted the entire article)
JMU 'Monitoring' Conference Moves
NICK SUNDERLAND Daily News-Record
6 hrs ago
HARRISONBURG — James Madison athletic director Jeff Bourne said he spent last week vacationing in Jackson, Wyo., a picturesque town located just south of Grand Teton National Park and east of the fabled Snake River.
The calm, tranquil setting gave Bourne a much-needed chance to relax, he said.
With the Big 12’s expected conference expansion, in the words of Bourne, “likely to happen sooner rather than later,” the 17th-year athletic director won’t figure to have much downtime in the coming months.
Speaking publicly about conference realignment for the first time since the Big 12 announced its plans last month, Bourne offered few details in regards to Madison’s interest level in making a football-driven move from FCS to FBS.
“We’ll be monitoring very closely as changes continue to happen here in the future,” Bourne said Thursday inside Bridgeforth Stadium’s Club Room.
Most of the 12 schools in the middle-tier American Athletic Conference have expressed interest either publicly or privately in joining the Big 12, according to the Associated Press. First-year Colonial Athletic Association commissioner Joe D’Antonio has said he would be “naïve” to not expect a “trickle-down effect” to impact his league.
“We certainly, again, all acknowledge what’s happening at the national level — and there’s going to be a lot of change,” Bourne said. “I think it’s very difficult for anyone today to predict what that is.”
With its state-of-the art, 25,000-seat football stadium and robust $45 million athletics budget, Madison has the features of an FBS school. And in recent years, JMU has flirted — to varying degrees — with lower-tier FBS leagues Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference and the Sun Belt.
Madison officials have repeatedly stated — without further clarity — that their school is weighing its options in regards to a move to FBS. Bourne declined to say whether talks with other conferences have picked up again since the Big 12’s announcement.
“I’m not going to get into that,” he said. “I’m not going to get into any level of detail, other than just to say we continue to work diligently on our end.”
Under NCAA rules, a move to FBS would require an invitation to join an existing FBS league. Bourne has publicly maintained Madison has never received an FBS invitation.
But what if the Dukes were to get an invite this time around?
“We have done our work and are well prepared to take our information to the board [of visitors] and have them evaluate that, if that opportunity ever arose,” said Bourne, who declined to offer a yes-or-no answer.
The Carr Report, an independent study JMU commissioned to examine the feasibility of a potential move to FBS, concluded in 2013 that the school is ready to make the jump. The much-anticipated report described Madison’s facilities as “among the FCS elite and comparable to its FBS benchmarks.”
JMU is also in the fundraising stages of its push to build a proposed new $88 million basketball arena. The 8,500-seat, campus-friendly facility would replace the aging Convocation Center — and increase Madison’s FBS appeal.
A new state law, which went into effect on July 1 and caps student funding for athletics, complicates a potential move to FBS for JMU, however.
State schools that wish to make the jump to FBS must now first receive approval from the Intercollegiate Athletics Review Commission. Bourne said vice president Charlie King is the JMU legislative representative who would work directly with that committee, should Madison receive an invitation to join an FBS league.
“It’s a requirement that the state legislature be engaged with that process,” Bourne said. “And so, that would certainly be one of the steps that we would be taking and looking at. Whereas four, five years ago, that didn’t exist.”
Schools such as East Carolina and Houston have been aggressive in their pursuit of a Big 12 invitation. Officials from those schools have publicly touted their institution’s candidacy, and each university has mounted visible social-media campaigns.
Bourne was asked why Madison hasn’t taken a more proactive approach in marketing itself publicly to FBS leagues.
“I think there’s a lot of moving parts to that. I think the state legislature is a key part of that,” Bourne said. “We have our approach. … We feel very confident in what we do and how we do it, and we’re going to continue to do that.”
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