(04-10-2014 03:31 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  I think many people are thinking that JMU will only come to the SBC When forced, when the reality is JMU probably doesn't have a lot of faculty support for FBS. Faculty at schools can be very strange creatures that can sometimes unintentionally undermine their own employer. (See Liberty Law Professor)

Heck, its everywhere. A couple of years ago, UCA's faculty actually voted in a faculty senate meeting to drop the Bears to D2. The Senate had no actual power over the issue, and they were generally laughed at...but they felt they needed to make their opinion known...so they did. And UCA got negative press for it, despite the fact there was no chance they would ever go back to D2.

Many of the JMU posters on the board were around for a previous school president who took us from college to university, and oversaw our move from no football up to FCS. That president had a reputation for making things happen, either through glad-handing or sheer force of will; it didn't matter who didn't like it, if he thought it was best for the school, it happened. For whatever reason, maybe because JMU's simply too big now for that to work, our new president isn't taking the same approach to trying to get us to FBS. Some see that as a failure of leadership, but I'm of the mind that since a university president can be in the position for a decade or more, they must maintain excellent relationships with the faculty, and currently that means a complicated listening and discussion process. If it looks like we're dragging our feet, it might be that because for reasons of internal politics we simply have to, in order for the final decision to have the least chance of spoiling that relationship.