(PHOTO: JMU ATHLETICS)
With the end of every college football season, there is movement. There are players that graduate and those who decide to enter the transfer portal. There are staff members, assistant coaches, and head coaches that for one reason or another also move. With this comes the process of Athletic Directors (ADs) finding a new head coach for their football team. The James Madison Dukes needed to find a Head Coach after Curt Cignetti decided to move on to Indiana at the end of this past season. He did this after bringing JMU to the FBS level within three seasons. He also led them to their first bowl game this past season. With Cignetti moving to Power 5 Indiana, the Dukes and AD Jeff Bourne were tasked with finding somebody to fill in these shoes. Their search led them 551 miles Northeast and they found Bob Chesney.
Growing up in a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania, Chesney was surrounded by football. His father was the head football coach of the local high school, with his grandfather and uncle both on that staff. It seems to be a common theme that coaches both at the collegiate and professional level were surrounded by football from a young age.
In his introductory press conference with the Dukes, this is how he described his introduction to football:
“To me, when I first saw what football was, I never saw that as a profession, I didn’t see it as a job. I saw it as a way of life.”
Seeing it as a way of life may be something he shares in common with other Head Coaches, but his path certainly is not. In recent years we have seen the traditional ‘move up the ranks of Division I football’. Start as a GA (graduate assistant), move on to a position coach, become a coordinator, and then become a head coach. These 20 words make it sound much more simple than it is. This isn’t baking a cake. Each of these steps takes years and can be at several stops. That being said this has become the traditional route.
If we were to compare the journey to baking a cake, Chesney started by putting icing in the bowl. His journey has been different from what we typically see. In the year 2000 at the age of 23, he became an assistant coach at Division III Norwich. After two seasons here he moved from the state of Vermont to Delaware Valley where he was the Defensive Coordinator. A step upwards but still in Division III football. After a season there and a season at King’s College in PA, he found his next home in 2005 at Johns Hopkins, his fourth Division III school.
Five seasons here as Associate Head Coach under Jim Margraff prepared Chesney for his future endeavors. He credits Coach Margraff with preparing him for being a Head Coach. By 2010 it was year 10 of his professional coaching journey and he was leaving to go to his 5th Division III school but first as the Head Coach. He got this opportunity at Salve Regina in Newport, Rhode Island. Chesney took a program that had 8 losing seasons in a row before his arrival to one with three consecutive winning seasons. It was here when the narrative of him being a ‘winner’ was born. After the three winning seasons, he was offered the Head Coaching job at Division II Assumption, a major step in his journey. Assumption, a program with 2 winning seasons in their previous 17, looked to turn a new leaf under Chesney. In 5 seasons he posted 5 winning records with 2 conference titles. He ended his tenure as a Greyhound with a 44-16 record.
It was during his time here that he started to gain more recognition. He was named the conference coach of the year in both 2015 and 2017.
His next and first Division I stop was as the Head Coach of Holy Cross in 2018. He spent 6 seasons here, winning 5 straight Patriot League Titles. Although an FCS program, Chesney did not treat it as such. His belief is that if you practice with a professional schedule, it would help you play like a professional team on Gameday. From lifts to practice schedules, he mimicked what he had seen and heard from long-tenured coaches in college football and the NFL. This was one of the contributing factors to the team's success at Holy Cross.
On December 7th, 2023, Bob Chesney was named the Head Coach of James Madison, a Division I FBS program, the highest Division attainable in college football.
His roots began in Kulpmont, PA where he was surrounded by a family of coaches, and now at the age of 46, he takes on his biggest challenge. Keeping JMU as a successful program at the highest level.
Who is Bob Chesney? He is a winner. A winner at every level he has been at. He shows us that it doesn’t matter what level you start at, the top is a possible place to reach!
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