Why James Madison deserved more respect in preseason coaches' poll

James Madison did not necessarily deserve a spot in the preseason coaches' poll. That part is debatable.

The six votes it received are not.

Those six votes left JMU behind 19 teams in the “others receiving votes” section. That is a strange landing spot for a program coming off a 12-win season, a Sun Belt championship and its first College Football Playoff appearance.

Leave the Dukes at No. 26 if the coaching change makes you nervous. Drop them to No. 30 if you need to see what the new roster looks like. But placing them well down the list of unranked teams suggests last season hardly counted.

JMU has earned more trust than this

The Dukes are 40–11 since joining the FBS four years ago.

They went 8–3 in 2022 despite playing their first Sun Belt schedule. NCAA transition rules kept them out of the conference championship game and a bowl, even though they tied for the best record in the East.

JMU started 10–0 the following season and reached No. 18 in the AP poll. Its 11–2 finish showed that the first year was not some beginner’s luck nonsense.

Then Curt Cignetti left for Indiana. Several players went with him, giving everyone a convenient reason to predict a drop-off.

Bob Chesney instead won nine games in 2024. JMU also beat Western Kentucky in the Boca Raton Bowl. The Dukes were even better last season, finishing unbeaten in conference play before defeating Troy for the Sun Belt title.

Their playoff trip ended with a loss at Oregon. It was still an outrageous accomplishment for a program playing only its fourth FBS season.

Apparently, the reward was six votes.

Voters leaned on familiar names again

There are questions surrounding JMU entering 2026. Chesney left for UCLA, Billy Napier took over and another group of productive players departed. Ranking the Dukes based entirely on last year’s accomplishments would have been lazy.

Acting as though the program has no track record is worse.

Nebraska received twice as many votes as JMU. Virginia Tech received twice as many. Florida State also finished ahead of the Dukes despite going 3–9 last season.

Those teams may improve. Maybe one of them makes voters look brilliant. For now, their biggest advantage appears to be that coaches recognize the names without checking the records.

JMU does not have decades of major-conference history or a helmet that causes voters to become nostalgic. It does have four consecutive winning seasons at the FBS level. The Dukes have survived two coaching departures, transfer-portal losses and NCAA rules designed to slow their rise.

They kept winning.

Nobody had to rank James Madison in the preseason Top 25. There is enough uncertainty to justify leaving the Dukes outside it.

Putting 19 unranked teams ahead of them is another story. JMU did not need a free pass into the poll. It just deserved more acknowledgment than six lousy votes.