Robert Morris, Duquesne football teams ready to open spring season

As recently as 1978, Duquesne was playing college football as a club team, signing up students from every corner of the campus. Robert Morris didn’t even offer the sport until 1993, when Beaver Falls native Joe Walton, after whom the school’s football stadium is named, agreed to oversee the proposition of a start-up program.

Today these schools aspire to be among the heavy hitters, bumping heads with the big boys in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) while sprinkling in some household names from the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).

Duquesne announced last week it would open the 2022 season at Florida State. While not the first FBS school to face Duquesne, Florida State would represent the Dukes’ highest-profile opponent.

For those not in tune, the FBS formerly had been known as Division I-A and the FCS as Division I-AA.

“It’s a great experience, a tough challenge, obviously,” said Duquesne coach Jerry Schmitt, who couldn’t resist cracking a joke about the mismatch on paper.

“All I want is a police escort, like Bobby Bowden got.”

Bowden, the Hall of Fame former Florida State coach, traditionally would be accompanied by police officer to the opponents’ sideline for the usual postgame handshake.

While the 2020 FBS schedule went on throughout the coronavirus pandemic, most FCS schools held off until now, opting to play an abbreviated spring schedule.

Robert Morris, which last season left the Northeast Conference for the fully funded Big South Conference, opens a five-game slate Saturday at No. 2 James Madison.

Duquesne opens at home a week later with a Sunday game March 7 at Rooney Field against NEC opponent Sacred Heart.

Central Connecticut State, which edged Robert Morris for the 2019 NEC championship, ended the year ranked No. 23. Duquesne, at No. 21, won the 2018 title and gained its first FCS playoff victory by beating No. 16 Towson in the first round.

“We’re trying to build our program,” Schmitt said. “Obviously, you’re trying to make your program better every year. Slowly, the scholarship totals are getting bigger. The budget is getting bigger. Hopefully, all of it prepares you for the conference schedule.”

Despite finding some of its schools in the national rankings, the NEC is among a handful of FCS conferences that, while having increased its scholarship numbers in recent years, does not offer full funding.

“The great thing about it is it’s not just the programs advancing, but the athletes are advancing,” Robert Morris coach Bernard Clark said. “We’re getting a lot of athletes in right now that are able to function at those higher schools.”

While it’s still a tall order to “play up,” it’s been done for years in Division I basketball and other sports. But to say Robert Morris’ first game will be a tough test seemingly would be a gross understatement.

“We’re going to have our hands full,” said Clark, who was voted MVP of the 1988 Orange Bowl as a middle linebacker for Miami and two years later later was a third-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Bengals.

James Madison, with former Pitt and Pine-Richland quarterback Ben DiNucci leading the offense, lost to North Dakota State in the most recent FCS championship game in 2019.

DiNucci played in three games, including one start, this season as rookie with the Dallas Cowboys.

Clark is realistic about the Colonials’ chances against a team coached by former IUP coach Curt Cignetti, whose staff includes ex-Pitt and Norwin standout wide receiver Mike Shanahan, who serves as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at James Madison.

“It’s not about beating James Madison,” Clark said. “It’s about you winning your individual battle and trying to make some things happen for our team.

“We’re not trying to go in there and conquer a monster. We’re trying to go in there and win our individual battles and play hard as a football team and compete against these guys. That’s what it boils down to more than anything else.”

Redshirt junior quarterback George Martin, a Ringgold product, said having faced several BCS schools and some similar FCS programs since then will aid Robert Morris’ outlook for Saturday’s opener.

“Sometimes it’s easy to get into these big games and lose your focus,” he said. “Then you lose your fundamentals, and that can hurt you. I think we’re going to be locked in.”

Martin said playing games since then against such teams as FBS Buffalo gives the Colonials some added perspective for the rematch with James Madison.

“We didn’t know how to compete against them. We didn’t know the kind of level, intensity and hard work it would take to really stack up against a team like that,” he said.

In Clark’s first season in 2018 as coach of Robert Morris, the Colonials were overwhelmed, 73-7, by James Madison, where Clark began his coaching career in 1998, spending two seasons as defensive ends coach.

He’s certainly hoping the experience was a positive one for what comes next.

“The fact that we’ve added scholarships and added quality athletes, and what Joe Walton did here,” Clark said. “The way he brought the program up by winning six NEC championships and making people recognize that Robert Morris is a good football team, he gave us an opportunity to play a James Madison, to play a Youngstown State, to play (various FBS opponents).”

Youngstown State, like James Madison, has won multiple FCS championships.

Spring football is nothing new to college players. But playing in actual games?

“We’ve just been trying to stay healthy through this crazy year,” Schmitt said. “When our guys were finally able to get into pads, it was like we were in the Super Bowl. Our camp is doing a good job, doing protocols. To me, the biggest thing is hope. Whatever happens, happens.”