JMU request for football bowl waiver in 2023 denied by NCAA: Door not completely shut

JMU won’t have a direct path to a football bowl game in 2023 after having its request for a waiver denied by the NCAA on Wednesday.

The program can still receive a bowl bid in 2023, but only if there aren’t enough bowl-eligible teams – basically, not enough teams with 6-6 records to fill out the bowl schedule.

JMU Athletics had applied for a waiver from the required two-year FBS transition, citing its preparation for its move to the Sun Belt Conference, which saw the Dukes finish its first season, in 2022, with an 8-3 record and a share of the Sun Belt East Division championship.

“JMU planned for this move to the Sun Belt for a decade, and no part of the success is a mistake,” Athletics Director Jeff Bourne said in an email to program supporters on Thursday. “We’ve built our infrastructure – support staff, facilities and financial resources – to be poised for success. The key was to find the right fit in FBS and JMU found that fit in the Sun Belt Conference.”

In the email, Bourne stressed that “while we are incredibly disappointed, I want to stress that we knew the NCAA reclassification bylaws when we decided to move to FBS.”

“We knew what we signed up for and at no point were disillusioned to think otherwise,” Bourne said. “With that in mind, I ask our supporters in JMU Nation not to respond with a negative outpouring against the NCAA or anyone involved in this review process. We knew the rules, we followed established protocol for a waiver request, and apparently will not get the result we had hoped in this particular process. We will certainly continue to do all we can to advocate for our student-athletes as we move forward, both within the Sun Belt Conference and within the NCAA structure.”