Ark St has a fan who writes tongue in cheek articles periodically.
The latest one is quite interesting:
https://howlraiser.com/2023/05/18/howlra...-sun-belt/
If his calculations are correct, JMU has the largest SBC population center in a 27 mile wide area at 6,686,721 people. That's actually quite impressive if true, and a nice population base to grow on as a FBS team.
That's larger than what he calculates for Georgia St (5,704,109) in Atlanta or ODU (4,226,647) in Norfolk and they have far more competition from other schools, particularly Atlanta.
I'm not sure if this is getting into suburb type areas of Richmond or Charlottesville, or just Shenandoah Valley, but it's a bigger number than I expected. It also discounts the sizable fanbase we have in Northern Virginia.
Perhaps our "market" isn't quite so small after all.
Honestly, I'm just a little suspicious he screwed up the location or calculation in this article, ha