The apparent inevitability preceding a James Madison and North Dakota State FCS Championship isn’t just a process that began in the 2019 season — nor did it start in their playoff meetings in 2016 or 2017. 

Trace the progress of JMU and NDSU back to their roots, before either participated in Division I football, and the course to Frisco began there. 

“Both programs are unique and positioned to be successful. And when you look at the Division I level, there's not many schools that can say that, even at the FBS level,” JMU coach Curt Cignetti said. “You look at Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia. There's very few schools really positioned to be successful year in, year out.”

Craig Bohl earns plenty of credit for helping build North Dakota State into the most dominant dynasty in present-day team sports, and successors Chris Klieman and Matt Entz for continuing the standard. 

But for current Bison coach Entz, he cites Darrell Mudra in the 1960s for laying the foundation. 

“There are certain things in this program that are non-negotiable, and they have been that way ever since I've been here and probably going back to the '60s with coach Mudra.”

The similarities in those teams more than a half-century ago and today are uncanny. 

Mudra coached North Dakota State from 1963 through 1965, when the university’s athletic department participated in the forerunner to Div. II and Div. III, the College Division. 

Mudra’s final Bison team before he left for Arizona went a perfect 11-0, capping the season with a Pecan Bowl win over Grambling and coaching legend Eddie Robinson. It was the second undefeated season in North Dakota State football’s 125-year history, a milestone the 2019 Bison aim to reach for the 11th time. 

The 1965 Bison capped their perfect run against legendary Hall of Fame coach Eddie Robinson’s Grambling Tigers, using an imposing defense to hold them under 100 yards of offense in the Pecan Bowl. 

Does that kind of performance sound familiar? 

Another of the Bison’s undefeated campaigns came in 1990, which culminated in a Div. II national championship. North Dakota State routed Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the title game, 51-11. 

Coaching the Crimson Hawks that December day in Florence, Alabama, was Hall of Famer Frank Cignetti Sr. In attendance was a 29-year-old Curt Cignetti. 

“I was working at Temple [as quarterbacks coach]. And I was fortunate enough to be able to make the game.” the current James Madison coach Cignetti said. “North Dakota State, they had a great football team. Had a couple of guys play in the pros.” 

Defensive end Phil Hansen, a second-round selection in the 1991 NFL Draft, led the contingent of pro Bison that year. He continued a tradition of highly-picked NDSU alumni like Stacy Robinson and Steve Nelson before him, and that has continued in the modern era with such Bison as Kyle Emanuel and Carson Wentz. 

That the North Dakota State of three decades ago so closely emulated the current product, and vice versa, isn’t lost on Cignetti. 

“Really IUP, as the game went on, was kind of overmatched," he said. "But I think it's a testament to their program that dominate at that level and then move up a level and dominate.”

Like North Dakota State, James Madison’s run to its third FCS championship game in four seasons speaks to the solid foundation established over several years and different coaching regimes. 

Like Bohl and Klieman before Entz, James Madison enjoyed recent success under Cignetti’s recent predecessors. 

“All the people that have been here in the past, Mickey Matthews and Everett Withers, have done a great job of building this program to the point where it is today,” Cignetti said.

And, like NDSU, JMU’s history is marked with long-term success. Every Dukes head coach has made at least one Div. I-AA/FCS Playoffs in his tenure, starting with Joe Purzycki’s 1987 team. 

However, James Madison followed a less direct path from its early days of football to today’s status as a Div. I powerhouse. North Dakota State traces its football history back to 1894 — 77 years before JMU launched the sport as a Div. III program in somewhat ragtag fashion. 

Challace McMillin, James Madison’s coach from the inaugural ‘72 season through 1984, explained the origins in an interview culled at Hampden-Sydney’s official athletic website: 

Dr. Carrier didn't announce we would have a football team until the end of May, which meant that most of the faculty weren't around, so they couldn't be opposed. Once I found out that we were going to do it then, I had to send out letters to the male students at Madison. Then, when they came in to register, I was there at the registration line telling them we were going to have a program and seeing if they had any interest. Fifty turned out at the first meeting, and we lost twenty of those before we could check out equipment.

Saturday’s championship game airs on ABC, more than 40 years after the Dukes first appeared on the network opposite Hampden-Sydney.

The forerunner to the JMU juggernaut of today was in just its fifth season, and four years removed from a winless, inaugural season — but one year after going undefeated. 

The 1975 Dukes ran the table for the first, and still only, time in program history. 

James Madison football may have been in its fledgling stages then as a non-scholarship, Div. III program, but those early-to-mid-70s seasons set the groundwork for what exists today. 

And what it is today is a perennial contender, a program that sends players like Arthur Moats, Earl Watford, Dean Marlowe and Jimmy Moreland onto the NFL. John Daka and Ron’Dell Carter are next, and likely some other members of the 2019 squad. 

It might well reach a point in the next few years that there are as many Dukes in the NFL as those who hung around through McMillin’s first practice in 1972. 

Words Cignetti offered reflect on the sustained success that have led both James Madison and North Dakota State back to Frisco. 

“Once you build that tradition, you know the thing just sort of keeps running as long as you keep investing in the program,” he said.