Why ESPN’s College GameDay must hit up the James Madison Dukes

ESPN’s College GameDay has officially set the standard of paying teams a visit solely out of respect. Some of the games that the crew is present for may not be the best available for a certain week, but hey, sometimes the little guys deserve some recognition.

A couple of more recent examples of such a practice would be when Appalachian State hosted Troy, along with when TCU visited Kansas (though the latter makes more sense, considering that it was at least a ranked matchup).

Neither of those games was the biggest of their Saturdays, but College GameDay gave them the nod nonetheless. This is a concept that I believe many people can get on board with, as it’s difficult to find harm in experiencing the unique atmospheres that come with less-familiar campuses.

Keeping with that mindset, though, one destination has to be on the GameDay radar for the coming weeks: James Madison University.

College GameDay has been the James Madison before

The James Madison Dukes are not exactly strangers to getting game day attention, as the College GameDay crew visited their campus in 2015 and 2017. Both of those instances were back when the Dukes were still an FCS power.

If I were a betting man, I would say that neither of those GameDay installments saw the best football matchup of its week. However, that’s not why the games got noticed — remember, it’s because the little guys matter.

Well, James Madison isn’t much of a “little guy” anymore.

JMU is just about halfway through its first season at the FBS level, participating in the Sun Belt Conference. And while the Dukes are playing a schedule that couldn’t even touch the nation’s toughest, they have wasted no time in establishing themselves as a Group of Five stud.

James Madison is currently sitting with a handsome 5-0 record, with its résumé being headlined by a road win over the aforementioned Appalachian State (that one team that’s known for downing Texas A&M in College Station).

So, if College GameDay cared enough to give JMU some love when it wasn’t even participating at the FBS level, it certainly shouldn’t mind doing so this time around, especially with the Dukes being ranked.

Looking at the three home games that are remaining on their schedule, they have Marshall on Oct. 22, Georgia State on Nov. 19, and Coastal Carolina on Nov. 26.

Each of those meetings will be sharing a day with multiple top-20 matchups between Power Five schools, meaning that they will likely land far down the list of most exciting games, but that hasn’t appeared to mean much up to this point.

Simply put, if College GameDay is truly committed to shedding light on the smaller hopefuls as it has already made a point of doing, then the James Madison Dukes should be expecting a call from the crew any day now.