In two months and some change, 6-6 teams will flock to Southern locales to play before crowds of hundreds to fulfill weeknight programming on ESPN and to sell insurance.
That's a crude way to boil down the college football bowl season, but at it's core, that's what the games outside the College Football Playoff are, and right now James Madison is locked out of that system.
Bowl season exists outside of the NCAA's purview -- bowls are independent entities surviving on contracts between conferences, TV partners and title sponsors. In fact, the bowls themselves have their own association called Bowl Season. The NCAA is not involved in the FBS postseason except to approve games and the teams eligible to play in them, and right now one of the top teams in the country is not allowed to play.
On Monday, James Madison sent a letter to Georgia president Jere Morehead, chairman of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, arguing for an exception to let the Dukes play in the postseason.
The letter came one day after James Madison, 9-0 on the season, moved up to No. 21 in the AP poll, one spot above Notre Dame, and well above traditional powers such as USC, Clemson and Florida.
Though JMU is not eligible for the College Football Playoff poll because they are not eligible for a bowl game, the Dukes' AP poll positioning indicates they'd be in the running for a New Year's Six game, sitting one spot below No. 20 Tulane. This current James Madison team is good enough to make their FBS bowl debut in the Cotton, Peach or Fiesta bowls.
The rebuttal to James Madison's argument is that the NCAA is simply applying the rules that were in place when JMU transitioned from FCS to FBS -- rules the Dukes were well aware of when they made the move.
The rebuttal to that rebuttal is that the rules are stupid.
The rules were in place to prevent instability, written out of fear that teams would move back-and-forth from FCS to FBS depending on the state of their roster. The NCAA is changing the rules to make it more costly to move up to college football's top subdivision, but JMU's serious rebuttal is that this is more than just a good team, it's a bowl-eligible level program.
Fortunately for James Madison, the Dukes (17-3 since joining FBS last season) will complete their 2-year probationary period after this season, which means in 2024 their first FBS postseason game very well could be a playoff game in the CFP's new 12-team format.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.