JMU Dropped 70 Points On UNC...And The Tar Heels Paid The Dukes $500k To Do It

Holy crap, that can’t be right.

The North Carolina Tar Heels football team put up Big 12-esque offensive numbers today against the JMU Dukes in Chapel Hill on Saturday afternoon. In just 60 minutes of football, the offense:

• Gained 615 yards
• Had four receivers record catches of 30+ yards
• Had a running back (Omarion Hampton) get 139 yards of rushing by himself
• Had a quarterback (Jacolby Criswell) throw for 475 yards
• Scored 50 points

And yet, somehow, the Tarheels left their home stadium with a loss? I get crazy stuff like this happens in college football, but this just seems way too insane, even for this sport.

What in the heck did JMU do?

The Dukes saw North Carolina’s scoring ability, and somehow surpassed it.

The Dukes, my goodness, put up a 70-piece on the Tar Heels. At halftime, they had scored more points (53, a school record) than the Tar Heels would eventually score all game. Quarterback Alonza Barnett III accounted for nearly as many points as North Carolina, since he had a direct role in SEVEN TOTAL TOUCHDOWNS (five passing, two rushing). Technically, the Heels out-gained the Dukes (only by four yards), but the scoreboard is all that matters.

Mind you, JMU had scored only a combined 43 points in its previous two games, and yet put on this masterclass on the road (after being 10.5-point underdogs heading into the game).

As if that weren’t an incredible story in and of itself, here’s the best part. In addition to humiliating the Tar Heels and making them the second ACC team to let up 70 points in non-conference play (joining the 2014 UNC team), the Dukes earned $500,000 in the process.

To be fair, they were walking away with half a million before the game started. The two schools reached this agreement originally in 2018, but the win means that this is the best $500k the Dukes football program has ever earned.

It’s going to be a while before I fully wrap my head around this, and I think it will take even longer for UNC to recover from this psychological blow.