RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has hired a law firm to represent James Madison University regarding the NCAA’s decision Wednesday night not to grant the school’s football program a waiver from a rule that prevents the unbeaten Dukes from an automatic bowl berth.
In a three-page letter, the law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth LLC argues for JMU’s inclusion in bowl consideration based on its 10-0 record, No. 18 national ranking and unprecedented success in its two-year process reclassifying from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier of NCAA Division I competition.
The Dukes are 6-0 in Sun Belt competition and first in the conference’s East Division standings. They went 8-3 overall and 6-2 in the Sun Belt in 2022, their first year of FBS transition.
Six overall wins are required for bowl eligibility. The Dukes met that mark by mid-October this year.
“We fully hope and expect that the various Committees and the NCAA as a whole will do the right thing and allow JMU to compete in whatever bowl game its performance warrants,” the letter reads. Failing that, “JMU is prepared to promptly file a lawsuit in the Western District of Virginia asserting that the bowl ban violates the antitrust and, potentially, other laws.”