Great piece from Mickey in the RTD this morning. Interesting that he wanted to weigh in on the CAA and conference realignment.

He makes several good points in this piece. Now, when can we get him back to JMU for a proper thank you at midfield?!?

https://www.richmond.com/sports/former-j...ba78a.html

(05-30-2020 07:54 AM)DRDukes Wrote:  Great piece from Mickey in the RTD this morning. Interesting that he wanted to weigh in on the CAA and conference realignment.

He makes several good points in this piece. Now, when can we get him back to JMU for a proper thank you at midfield?!?

https://www.richmond.com/sports/former-j...ba78a.html

This is too good! Though I smell a ghost writing, since a real Mickey would have twotted some Dad Gum Its!

I was thinking that too. Someone else wrote down those thoughts!

Very cogent article. Right on, also. Wouldn't it be great to have GMU, VCU, ODU and Richmond back in the fold.

I wish all of the recommendations in the article could come to pass. It’s a sad state when common sense is overruled by institutional egos.

(05-30-2020 08:20 AM)jmuroadwarrior Wrote:  

(05-30-2020 07:54 AM)DRDukes Wrote:  Great piece from Mickey in the RTD this morning. Interesting that he wanted to weigh in on the CAA and conference realignment.

He makes several good points in this piece. Now, when can we get him back to JMU for a proper thank you at midfield?!?

https://www.richmond.com/sports/former-j...ba78a.html

This is too good! Though I smell a ghost writing, since a real Mickey would have twotted some Dad Gum Its!

I like the bus league concept. We have a ton of roadwarriors and this would generate even more away game attendance by the JMU faithful.

Tribe fans are with Mickey as well! Most are washing their hands and brushing their teeth but what a pleasant surprise. Now lets see some leadership from our Presidents, ADs and D'Antonio.

(05-30-2020 10:49 AM)Longhorn Wrote:  I wish all of the recommendations in the article could come to pass. It’s a sad state when common sense is overruled by institutional egos.

Ha!

It’s a sad state when the Mickster is the one with the common sense I’m the room!

I wonder what prompted MM to write and submit an opinion piece to the RTD?

It seems we can’t read the article without subscribing. Doesn’t do much good to attach a link when a subscription is needed to read the article.

(05-30-2020 11:07 PM)JMUNation Wrote:  It seems we can’t read the article without subscribing. Doesn’t do much good to attach a link when a subscription is needed to read the article.

Just close the subscription ad box by hitting the 'X' at top right, the story remains and is accessible without subscription.

It worked this morning. Not sure what was happening last night.

Have to say that I agree with the Mickster on this one. The high school analogy is a good one. People like beating their rivals just down the road.

Many people also have a burning desire to move up in status. They are driven by their egos to do and be something more. Nothing wrong with this just pointing it out because this was in my opinion the driving factor for some schools to move on to other conferences. They hoped to use athletics to change the status of their university. The reality is the big boys will always be the big boys and the ability to join their fraternity is extremely limited if not impossible today.

Mickey has passion for JMU, it is no surprise, he did not do well with accountants running athletics at JMU

“Everyone in Harrisonburg knows it was a very bitter divorce between myself and JMU, and I’m not the first guy it’s happened to and I won’t be the last,” Matthews said. “I probably needed some time to be away from it for a little while, which I did. A lot of my friends had told me to stay out for a year or two." Mickey Mathews (Daily News Record)

JMU becoming a dominant FCS program started with replacing Mickey. I stated for years that he was the one holding JMU back and it was proven correct. Every coach after him has made the FCS playoffs and two of the three played in title games.

Mickey had five good seasons in his 15 years. He always managed to win just enough to keep his job. He was a successful coach but his conservative offensive play calling led to a lot of close losses. He had a way of putting the governor on his players sometimes superior athletic ability.

I have huge respect for Mickey. He brought a lot of stability and built the program over many years. In many ways, BFS is the house Mickey built.

Mickey came from the defensive side of football, and knew how to run that side well. His flaw was that he tended to be very conservative on the offensive side, which often made things predictable and stoppable. End result was we had a lot of tight, low scoring games where we'd grind out a low margin win. He racked up a ton of those wins though, even against VT.

New coaching and better offenses did take us to the next level. Mickey has been around sports a lot of different places and I thought the article was a good read. Agree with a lot of his thoughts, particularly on basketball. On the football side, I agree it makes sense for us to be in a regional alignment with schools like ODU and Marshall. The only thing I don't agree with is the specific set of schools he picked for a football league. Elon and Richmond for instance do not match our schools profile, or bring a lot of long term value. They would be fine for OOC early season tune up games.

Richmond is probably too easy of an OOC opponent. We can at least get a pioneer team to give us a little more of a challenge.

Man, I love those gold helmets.

Totally agree with JMUNation and JMURocks. JMU football is never close to what it is today without Mickey, but it's also not quite what it is today if Mickey were still around. He coached a style that could turn any game in to a near coin flip, he just needed to recognize way more often when we weren't outmatched and needed to keep our foot on the gas. Every time it bit us you'd hope he'd learn from it and he never did.

Akron and especially the last ODU game are the perfect examples. Akron we go up 13-0 and are clearly the better team despite the FCS label, but he decides we should try to run clock for three quarters and we're down 14-13 by halftime. ODU we're up 21-10 on a team that everyone knows has an insane offense and no defense but then played like he thought we could run clock the whole second half.

I also think that even though obviously most of us would agree with a lot of his thinking he's still thinking too small for JMU football. Staying FCS and playing in a conference with W&M, Richmond, ODU, Villanova, Delaware, Elon, Towson... Every year the expectation will be to go undefeated in conference and make the trip to Frisco, still the six foot tall second grader.

Two things I learned from the article. 1) Coach Mathews is a JMU homer. 2) He knows noting about the business of college basketball. I agree with the bus conf. but the CAA and some of the other CAA schools, at the time created their own mess. Does MM have any idea that most JMU fans/supporters want to leave the CAA for the same reasons others have left in the past?

So why did Richmond, VCU, Mason and ODU jump ship? 1) The CAA was mismanaged 2) Most of the CAA schools refused to invest in MBB, including JMU and Yeager didn't force the issue. Because of 1 & 2 the CAA always was and still is a one bid league most years. The potential money involved with the NCAAT is 10X more lucrative than FCS football.

Richmond, VCU, Mason and even ODU in a crappy MBB conf. are recruiting at a much higher level than any CAA school. Dream all you want but Richmond, Mason, ODU and VCU aren't returning the CAA.

(05-30-2020 08:16 PM)Rock House Duke Wrote:  I wonder what prompted MM to write and submit an opinion piece to the RTD?

I think he's angling for the Commish job in the new realigned conference.