EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a three-part series on the Alpha Dogs, a football specific booster group at James Madison University, and the way it aided the Dukes in its FBS transition. Almost exactly 10 years ago, in late July of 2014, the beginning of the modern era of James Madison football began in earnest with a six-hour film session. The Dukes’ new coaching staff, headed up by Everett Withers, was tucked away in a dark room breaking down video of the JMU team they had just inherited, pointing out strengths and weaknesses and explaining how this new regime planned to change things up.
Only, they weren’t in the Plecker Center, the relatively new football headquarters erected on the James Madison campus adjacent to Bridgeforth Stadium. And there wasn’t a player around for miles. Withers and his assistants were 15 miles east of Bridgeforth, inside a conference room at the Massanutten Resort, treating a half dozen of the Dukes’ biggest supporters to an in-depth look at the program, where it stood and where Withers and Co.
hoped to take it. “He had each coordinator, including special teams, come in and show us film,” said Steven Brown, one of the original “Alpha Dog” JMU football boosters. “They had obviously never coached our defense, but they had film from other places saying this is what our defense is going to look like.
They were diagramming plays and going through all kinds of really complicated stuff. They put on a clinic for us. It was really f.