Do you really believe this?

(11-01-2021 10:50 AM)DMadison Wrote:  I realize I am in the minority here, and my thoughts might be poorly-received - but count me among those unexcited by a move to FBS. My mind may certainly change in time, if and when we succeed - but currently, I'm unenthused.

I've had football season tickets for 10+ years, and in that time, I've attended the vast majority of home games, and Frisco 3 times. I think the novelty of football home playoff games and Frisco will never be equaled by a non-BCS bowl appearance.

I'm glad JMU leadership did not move to FBS sooner, because this SBC opportunity does seem to make much more sense in terms of travel and rivalries than have past rumors. My biggest concern is academic/admissions rankings of our new peers in the SBC.

Out of curiosity, I recently compared some of these metrics from US News & World Report (who I guess is still the best source for comparisons?) I used many different metrics, but to summarize - JMU's overall score from USN is 90 (best in CAA), Richmond 83, W&M 74, Villanova 70, and so on until Maine at 48. In SBC, App State is 82, next closest is Troy at 54, and about half the conference is bottom 25% - meaning they don't get an overall score from USN. I'm a little scared that folks who were previously unaware of JMU, will naturally think our academics are on par with the rest of the SBC - when in reality, we are the standout.

(11-01-2021 03:02 PM)Longhorn Wrote:  

(11-01-2021 10:55 AM)Dignan Wrote:  Longhorn, I hesitate to bring this up as I don’t want to open up a can of worms but a friend of mine was not enthused about the Sun Belt move because he felt that the academic fit wasn’t right. He was especially worried that the faculty would be upset and we would lose good professors as a result. I didn’t think there was that big of a gap academically but after I looked up the stats I did see there was at least a pretty large difference in graduation rates, amongst other somewhat less glaring differences.

I personally am psyched about our new conference home. I’m looking forward to playing with a group of schools that I see as peers athletically. As a faculty member, do you perceive his fears as unfounded?

JMU will be at the top, or near the top in the SBC when looking at retention and graduation rates. Those two markers of academic excellence are important, however, App State is in the neighborhood. Hopefully JMU won’t use the excuse of disassociating the university from W&M and UD to continue a softening of JMU’s admission profile. Only time will tell.

Do you really feel that JMU is far superior Academically to your peers in the Sunbelt?


Funny this is, I responded:

What's Missing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_re...ted_States

Alluding to the fact that JMU is not an R1 or R2 institution and received yet another reputation hit from you guys.

So for being far academically superior, how come JMU is not a Research University?

Anyone?

Is that Dolly?

Well Dolly, if your US News rankings are telling you that JMU is superior academically to W&M then I think you have an answer to their worth.

https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/c...university

From the link:
ASU vs. JMU Admissions Difficulty Comparison
Which college is harder to get into, ASU or JMU? Average SAT and ACT scores plus acceptance rates offer good insight into the difficulty of admission between JMU or ASU .

The average SAT score at Appalachian State University (1157) is 23 points higher than at JMU (1134)
Incoming ASU students have a 1 point higher average ACT score (26) than students at JMU (25)
ASU has a higher acceptance rate (76.8%) than JMU (76.8%)

JMU will fit in the SBC just fine academically and athletically. They are the norm, not the exception.

Seems like JMU fans were unaware that regional and national universities are two different classifications on USNWR. Most of the universities in the Sun Belt are national universities. JMU joined App State, Troy, and Coastal in the regional universities category.

In typical fashion of course, Johns completely overlooks that the majority of our posters are also saying academic profile is mostly irrelevant to athletics and that we couldn't be happier to join the Belt.

He was also saying until the 11th hour on Friday that JMU was going to stay in the CAA and cited random twitter users who clearly knew nothing.

When you see someone that has a -21 rep, your troll-o-meter should go off...

(11-02-2021 10:27 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  Seems like JMU fans were unaware that regional and national universities are two different classifications on USNWR. Most of the universities in the Sun Belt are national universities. JMU joined App State, Troy, and Coastal in the regional universities category.

We're very aware of this actually and it becomes a big point of discussion during slow times of the year on the boards.

(11-02-2021 10:28 AM)All Dukes_All Day Wrote:  In typical fashion of course, Johns completely overlooks that the majority of our posters are also saying academic profile is mostly irrelevant to athletics and that we couldn't be happier to join the Belt.

He was also saying until the 11th hour on Friday that JMU was going to stay in the CAA and cited random twitter users who clearly knew nothing.

When you see someone that has a -21 rep, your troll-o-meter should go off...

Good point. JMU is a good university and a good fit for the SBC. But we have other good universities in the SBC as well :)

Weird that he picked only two posts from that thread and didn't post the entire thread... Dude is pretty bad at being a troll.

(11-02-2021 10:30 AM)Goronic Wrote:  

(11-02-2021 10:28 AM)All Dukes_All Day Wrote:  In typical fashion of course, Johns completely overlooks that the majority of our posters are also saying academic profile is mostly irrelevant to athletics and that we couldn't be happier to join the Belt.

He was also saying until the 11th hour on Friday that JMU was going to stay in the CAA and cited random twitter users who clearly knew nothing.

When you see someone that has a -21 rep, your troll-o-meter should go off...

Good point. JMU is a good university and a good fit for the SBC. But we have other good universities in the SBC as well :)

Agreed and it also makes more sense to be affiliated with mid-sized public universities that care about athletics vs smaller, urban private schools that still aren't anything special academically (with W&M as an exception).

I'm closing this thread. There is no reason to add posts from JMU's home board here with the sole intent of targeting posters and arguing. Do that there if they'll let you.

Thread is closed, but I want to go behind and point out that the comments posted do not represent the actual full thread on the JMU Board (The guys suggesting it were pretty much shut down immediately) and its unfair to our future conference brethren to cherry pick posts to paint them in a negative light

Please avoid doing that in the future.