James Madison football is what Georgia Southern once thought it would be and now aspires to be.

The Dukes are in only their fifth year of playing at the FBS level but they have quickly established themselves as one of the top teams in the Group of Six as evidenced by their being one of the 12 teams in last year’s College Football Playoff field.

Since joining the Sun Belt Conference in 2022 James Madison has become the pre-eminent program in the conference, going 45-11 overall, 27-7 in conference play. The Dukes will bring a 5-0 record, 2-0 in the SBC, to Paulson Stadium for Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. meeting. The game will be televised on ESPNU.

James Madison has accomplished this under three different coaches: Curt Cignetti, who won a national championship at Indiana last year, Bob Chesney who has UCLA unbeaten this year through five games and current coach Billy Napier who was hired last December.

The transition to Napier has gone smoothly.

James Madison has suffered no drop off under the former Florida and Louisiana coach who has reloaded his roster with some talented transfers to go with a core group of returnees.

Georgia Southern joined the Sun Belt in 2014 and won the league title in its first year under Willie Fritz who was 17-7 in two seasons, 13-2 in the conference. Since Fritz, now at Houston, left for Tulane the Eagles have been basically a middle of the pack team.

Starting in 2016 under Tyson Summers who was followed by Chad Lunsford and current coach Clay Helton the Eagles have gone 65-68 overall, 40-41 in the conference. That includes this year’s 2-3 start and last week’s 31-24 win at Coastal Carolina to open SBC play.

The Dukes have opened defense of their conference championship in style having first beat in-state rival Old Dominion, 46-20, and last week dismantled a good Marshall team, 45-17, after a slow start in which it found itself trailing for the first time this season.

Marshall took the opening kickoff and drove for a touchdown and was up 17-10 when the Dukes closed out the first half by scoring 28 straight points behind the running of George Pettaway and the arm of quarterback Camden Coleman.

“It took us a little while to get going but again this group settled in and put together a really impressive first half,” said Napier in his post-game remarks. “Coleman continues to impress and we had 12 explosive plays (20 yards or more). We had not hit that number this year.

“I thought defensively we made great adjustments,” Napier said. “After their first couple of possessions we really settled down defensively. We had incredible second, third and fourth quarters.”

Pettaway, who started at North Carolina but is in his third year at JMU, had a career high 206 yards on 14 carries against the Thundering Herd. His 497 on the season leads the conference in rushing.

“He played his best game of the season,” Napier said. “I think he’s starting to see some of the concepts. He’s had better practices as of late. I think he’s learning and we’re playing better around him.

“We’ve talked about getting him to the second and third level but we also talked about making good plays. We did that consistently…206 yards is a good day at the office. We are going to need more of that in the future.”

Coleman is in his second year at James Madison after playing two years at Richmond where he was a third team Colonial Athletic Association pick.

The 6-foot-3, 225-pound Coleman did not start the opener against Liberty, a 20-13 win that is the Flames’ lone loss, but started the following week against Wagner and is justifying his being in the starting lineup.

Coleman did not see any action last year but he caught Napier’s attention last year when the newly hired coach was able to watch the Dukes practice for their first-round CFP matchup with Oregon.

“Cam is distributing the ball and he’s going to get better,” Napier said. “We worked with him on his throwing early in the winter. He’s a worker and he’s got that quarterback DNA through and through.”

Coleman has thrown for 979 yards and 10 touchdowns. James Madison has five receivers who have caught 11 or more passes led by Corey Scott with 21 for 289 yards and four touchdowns. The Dukes are averaging 12.3 yards per reception.

Defensively the Dukes are led by edge rusher Amar Thomas who is a big reason why they have 15 sacks on the season.

Napier is no stranger to Paulson Stadium. As a coach at Louisiana, he was 3-1 against Georgia Southern, going 1-1 in Statesboro. As an outstanding quarterback at Furman, he was 1-3 against the Eagles. The lone win came at Paladin Stadium.

The Chatsworth, Ga., native—Napier played at Murray County High School—is 67-35 as a head coach. He was 40-12 at Louisiana, winning conference championships in 2021 and 2022 before going to Florida. His teams have won 15 straight SBC games.