How a small school in the Virginia mountains slowly became college football’s most unlikely national title contender

By Dana O’Neil, CNN (CNN) — Upon arriving at the James Madison University campus in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains in 1999, Jeff Bourne spied a 12,500-seat football stadium on a campus that only started playing the sport a little more than 25 years earlier. He somehow saw a future. He ignored the lackluster three-win season