Week 4 Performance QB Camden Coleman - JMU • 243 Passing yards 4 TDs • 17 Rushing yards

The real mistake is failing to understand that pouring your energy and ambition into building the Sun Belt may be the best path to improving your own program. Constantly making overtures to conferences that are your competitors—especially conferences whose institutional profiles look very different from yours—is strategically self-defeating. The American has historically valued markets, institutional reach, and television value. The ACC has a much more research-intensive academic profile: large research enterprises, substantial graduate education, major endowments, and numerous AAU/R1 institutions. By those measures, JMU isn’t some obvious ACC or American institutional fit. JMU is R2, not R1, has a comparatively modest research enterprise and endowment, and in many of the institutional characteristics prized by those leagues looks much more like a Sun Belt university than JMU fans sometimes want to admit. But here is the great news: Media markets, AAU membership, research expenditures, and billion-dollar endowments do not score touchdowns. The Sun Belt’s strength is something different: regional rivalries, passionate fan bases, geographic coherence, competitive football, and schools whose fans actually care whether they beat the school down the road. That is a GREAT formula. Instead of treating the Sun Belt as a waiting room, all 14 schools should be asking: How do we make THIS league stronger? And if the powers that be eventually try to lock us out of the playoff using SOC, SOR, SOS, or some other metric? Fine. Adapt. Expand to 20 with the strongest available programs. Organize into pods. Preserve regional rivalries. Then structure late-season scheduling so the league’s highest-ranked teams and strongest playoff contenders play one another. Whatever the solution is, solve it together. Constantly looking for the next conference isn’t ambition if it weakens the conference you’re already in. Denigrating the Sun Belt or treating it as a stepping stone is counterproductive because every time you diminish the league, you diminish the value of your own wins, your own schedule, and ultimately your own program. JMU’s rise doesn’t require escaping the Sun Belt. It can help lead the Sun Belt’s rise.

JMU is having their once in a generation moment. They will soon follow Coastal Carolina into obscurity. Don’t blame them for trying to capitalize on their moment in the sun though

How's this?

My opinion is both that : There are JMU fans who need to recognize the regionality and rivalries in the Sun Belt make it a good place to exist -AND- There are other Sun Belt fans who need to recognize it’s okay to have institutional aspirations higher than this league.

The American Conference releases a statement that it is not proactively seeking expansion members in light of overtures from programs in other leagues.

How do Sun Belt universities stack up academically? The 2027 U.S. News & World Report data show a conference of very different institutions—from large national research universities to regional universities focused on undergraduate education and workforce development. Among the Sun Belt’s National Universities, James Madison stands out. JMU ranks #137 nationally, the highest in the conference, and also leads this group in four-year graduation rate at 64% and median graduate salary six years after graduation at $57,438. Georgia State has the largest undergraduate enrollment among the National Universities at nearly 26,800 students, while several other Sun Belt schools bring different strengths to the table. Old Dominion, Georgia Southern, Southern Miss, Louisiana, Arkansas State, and others all appear in nationally ranked undergraduate programs such as business, engineering, nursing, and computer science. The conference’s three Regional Universities (South) are evaluated on a separate scale, so their rankings should not be directly compared with the National Universities. Within that category, Appalachian State is the clear standout at #4 in the South and #2 among public regional universities, while also posting a 55% four-year graduation rate. Louisiana Tech ranks #16 regionally and #6 among publics and leads the regional group in median graduate earnings at $44,903. The program rankings are especially interesting because they show that overall institutional rank tells only part of the story. JMU has highly ranked undergraduate engineering, nursing, and business programs. At the same time, schools such as Old Dominion, Marshall, Louisiana Tech, Georgia Southern, Southern Miss, Arkansas State, Louisiana, and South Alabama also have nationally recognized specialties. The larger takeaway is that the Sun Belt is far more academically diverse than a simple conference-wide ranking would suggest. JMU leads several headline institutional measures, App State is exceptionally strong within the regional-university category, and individual Sun Belt schools have significant academic strengths that their overall rankings can obscure.

I would just love to see that fan base have to eat some crow.

OFF, DEF, & NET (OFF-DEF) Points Per Drive Leaders G6 - Through Week 3