HARRISONBURG — He has a military background, but John Williams isn’t militant.

The burly James Madison strength coach that goes by “Big John” only knows one way.

“I do things a little differently,” Williams said. “I think in my profession there are a lot of really talented people that are sports-related, science-oriented and can transition movement to improve an athlete.

“But what’s happened in the sport of football is that we allow ourselves to be put into this box. We’re responsible for mental toughness. We’re responsible for physical challenge, and we’re supposed to be painted as these tough guys, right? But who’s the last strength coach you’ve seen play a snap?”

His father, John Williams Sr., served tours in Vietnam in infantry and first cavalry. Stints as a member of the military police, a drill sergeant and assignments with special forces to find AWOL soldiers followed.

“He would always reference his soldiers,” Williams said of his father. “I got to see how involved my dad was. He was hands-on and just a powerful influence in that mindset, so a lot of what I do today was heavily influenced by that structure growing up.”

John Williams Jr. was in ROTC all the way through graduation and said he would’ve taken a military path afterward had he not suffered an injury on the football field at North Carolina A&T that prevented him from passing a physical.

Like his dad maintained strong bonds with the men and women he led in uniform, Williams cultivates the same deep relationships with football athletes he trains at JMU.

He said it’s how he’s able to pull the best from them and why the verbal and physical abuse that reportedly went on with the strength staff at Maryland earlier this summer is unlikely to ever happen in Harrisonburg under his watch.

“If you yell and scream all the time it becomes conditioned,” Williams said. “I’m a behavioral guy. That’s my niche.

“People say marginalism doesn’t matter, social economics doesn’t matter, but it all matters. And in today’s time, it’s more predominant especially in big football. There are more predominant athletes that come from dysfunctional homes — whether it’s social economics, or an affluent background where the parents are divorced. These are all males that play this game of football, so they’re preconditioned to come in being yelled and screamed at, so it doesn’t affect them.

“But they’re not conditioned to somebody caring about them. They’re not conditioned for when they do fall, that you reach out your hand and pick them up and challenge them to go again. That’s the difference.”

Williams said he doesn’t have to alter who he is or how he teaches because his boss, third-year Dukes coach Mike Houston, holds values that align with his and that has allowed the program to flourish into what it’s become today.

Over the last two seasons, Houston and company are 28-2, have won consecutive outright Colonial Athletic Association crowns, captured the 2016 FCS national title and were back in the championship bout last year.

The Dukes open their new season on Saturday at N.C. State, and expect themselves to return to Frisco, Texas, again come January.

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“I started out as a high school coach,” said Houston, who initially took a job at Forbush High School, frankly, because he needed one.

When he was done playing at Mars Hill College he tried to get into medical school, but East Carolina University and North Carolina University wait-listed him, so he opted for a coaching and teaching gig.

Yes, the fiery pregame-speech-giving Houston once taught chemistry and AP physics, and was a prep football defensive coordinator and a basketball assistant. When he moved to T.C. Roberson in Asheville, N.C., where he eventually became a head coach for the first time, he developed the formula that is the foundation of his JMU program today.

“I really, really just enjoyed the kids,” Houston said. “I loved practice. I loved the weight room. I loved being around them with just their energy and youthful innocence. We had a great turnaround there and it was just such a feel good story.

“We based it all on that we’re going to work hard, do things right, act right and it just was the way I had been taught, and I’ve never really gotten far from that.”

As Houston led T.C. Roberson to a 42-18 mark over a five-year span, his biggest rival was his alma mater, Franklin, a team led by coach Fred Goldsmith, who eventually hired Houston to run the defense at Division II Lenoir-Rhyne.

Goldsmith, previously the headman at Duke and Rice, became Houston’s mentor and friend.

“He was accepted eventually into medical school at East Carolina,” Goldsmith said. “But probably it was around [August] and he was already committed and coaching. He was enjoying it where he was and then they called him and said you could come, but by that time he didn’t want to leave where he was, and it’s paid off for him.

“He’s smart. He does things the right way, he’s a competitor, but he knows how to treat kids right. They respect him and the thing about it, too, is he demands that out of his coaches. Nobody is going to work for Mike that doesn’t treat kids well. He’s not going to have a staff that’s out there cussin’ kids out or doing it the wrong way.”

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Houston calls his first season, a championship-winning one, at JMU “the perfect storm.”

Dukes athletic director Jeff Bourne calls Houston, “the right coach at the right time” for the school.

When Bourne hired Houston away from The Citadel in January of 2016, he became the third coach in four years for JMU.

The previous coach, Everett Withers, departed for an FBS job at Texas State after only two seasons leading the Dukes. Mickey Matthews, who headed the program for the 15 years before that, was fired following the 2013 season.

“We needed change coming from Matthews, and Withers’ approach was different,” said sixth-year senior running back Cardon Johnson. The rusher with more than 2,000 yards to his name has been a member of the program longer than any current player, coach or staffer.

Johnson was recruited to JMU by Matthews’ staff, played a year for them and then two for Withers’ staff before Houston got to Harrisonburg.

“Mike came, and he wasn’t a Mickey. He wasn’t an Everett,” Bourne said. “He was somewhere in between with the ability to relate to the kids and still have a very strong and exceptional game plan of how competitive we’d be.”

Johnson has endured a 6-6 redshirt season with Matthews, dealt with playoff losses to Liberty and Colgate under Withers and helped the program reach new heights with Houston.

“But only after making it to the playoffs twice [under Withers] with coaches going in and out, you obviously need more change,” Johnson said.

Johnson said Withers aided the program’s build with the implementation of a mandatory summer strength program, a state-of-the art locker room and new uniforms. Bourne said Withers’ ability to land Georgia Tech transfer quarterback Vad Lee still has positive impact on the program today.

Houston said when he arrived he knew Withers had recruited well because talent existed on the roster and for the most part, all those athletes were solid students and people, but Houston said there was disconnect between those favorable attributes and on-field success along with the overall well-being of the team. Bourne agreed.

“It was completely just the dead opposite culture of the way we have it now,” Houston said. “It was definitely a strongly divided locker room. There was no respect for your teammates in that locker room.

“You had a group of defensive players that just had no confidence. They were completely beat down. Then you had some offensive guys who were really good kids, but they felt entitled. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen.”

Houston said he had to convince former starting linebacker Gage Steele and former starting center Kyle Rigney into sticking around for their senior seasons in 2016.

“[Rigney] had quit the team,” Houston said. “They were tired of being dog cussed. They were tired of being told that they weren’t good enough. They were tired of being MF’d and berated with the whole fear of intimidation style of coaching.”

Houston said the only time he spoke to Withers was when Withers called Houston after he got the JMU job.

“Maybe it was a day or two after I had been hired,” Houston said. “He called me and he was really good, and I think he cared about the kids he left behind, cared about the program.”

Senior cornerback Rashad Robinson, who was recruited by Withers, said Houston’s approach was welcomed.

“Coach Withers was very disciplined,” Robinson, a 2017 All-American, said. “It was very hard on the discipline side and I wasn’t used to that.

“And that’s opposed to now, and Coach Houston is still disciplined and strict, but you always get his point. With Coach Withers, I was so young that I didn’t understand the purpose of everything we were doing.”

Former JMU assistant John Bowers said Houston always delivers a message precisely so coordinators, position coaches, first-teamers, second-teamers and everyone else involved knows what to expect.

Withers brought Bowers, a JMU alum, back to the school in 2014, but Bowers stayed on as director of player personnel during the transitional period between Withers’ departure and Houston’s hiring, and was kept on by Houston to coach outside linebackers and special teams. Bowers stepped down after the spring of 2017 and moved to California in order to be closer to his family. His son, Ross, is the starting quarterback at Cal.

“That’s the thing I saw in [Houston],” Bowers said. “It’s the attention to detail and how he wants it done and his ability to communicate that to everyone in a first-class manner.

“That’s probably a rare thing that he has.”

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The phrase ‘family atmosphere’ is tossed around across college football as much as the ball itself.

“Every coach in America talks about that during recruiting,” Houston said.

But Houston, his staff and his players swear team togetherness remains a theme, and that it’s emphasized more on a daily basis than anything else the coach and his staff stress.

“They stuck by me,” Johnson said.

In each of the last two years, Johnson had his seasons cut short by Achilles injuries.

“When we talk about family, it’s not just going to be lip speak,” Houston said. “What it means to us is Cardon Johnson. He tears his Achilles. He went through a lot of rough stuff, but he was always here with us. He remained a part of our leadership council and was someone that we kept close to the program.”

Johnson said when he told Houston he wanted to return this year — his sixth with the program — there was no hesitation from the coach.

“We could have easily let him go on,” Houston said. “We could have easily said, ‘You know what, you need to move on with your career because we still don’t know.’

“There’s a chance he’ll never play a snap this year. Who knows? He could tear that thing tomorrow. And I’m using a scholarship on him, and we only have 63, but he’s part of us, and we’re going to do right by him.”

Houston points to last year’s Norfolk State game as the epitome of how he wants his assistants and his players to care about other. The Dukes beat the Spartans 75-14, but lost Johnson for the year with the injury, and running back Trai Sharp found out on the field that his father had passed away.

“You just won by 70 and there was no celebration,” Houston said. “There was no fight song. There was no hoo-rah in the locker room because not only had we lost Cardon and part the locker room was hurting for him, but then everyone knows what had happened to Trai.

“When you see that kind of dynamic versus what it was two years ago where players are more concerned about their teammates than they are themselves. To me that says that you kind of got it right.”

Houston said the unity approach worked for him at Lenoir-Rhyne and The Citadel as well. Lenoir-Rhyne reached the Division II national championship game in 2013 and The Citadel transformed from conference cellar dweller to SoCon contender.

“He would talk with every player,” said former Lenoir-Rhyne defensive lineman Jason Arenillas. “It didn’t matter if you were on the scout team or you were starting.

“I was on the scout team that first year and he would always find time to come talk to me, and always make time to make sure that every player was doing alright.”

Former Citadel defensive tackle Joe Crochet said Houston’s family-first style became even more important when Bulldogs fullback DeSean Daniels nearly died during a spring practice.

“As tough as Trai’s deal was, almost losing a player, that was bad,” Houston said. “DeSean had run a play. He got thudded up, came back to the huddle, broke the huddle, got down in his stance and fell over face first. What we didn’t know at the time was that he had a brain aneurysm and he went into a seizure on the field.”

Houston said doctors were able to successfully perform surgery later that night, but Crochet said in that moment on the field, there was shock.

“What coach did was had us all go to the other side of the field, take a knee and we said a prayer,” Crochet said. “All the coaches went to the hospital, and a couple of the players, we went to check on him as well … it’s really a miracle that [Daniels] is around now.”

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Houston’s idea is that if every person in his program cares enough about each other to work in unison toward the same goal, the team’s chance of more on-field triumphs is greater than any X’s-and-O’s scheme could allow.

It’s why his decision to drive through a snowstorm to lure Bob Trott away from Richmond is acknowledged by Bourne, Bowers and Goldsmith as a pivotal point in JMU’s ascent to the top of the FCS food chain.

“Mike’s kind of like a son to me and Trott’s like my brother,” Goldsmith said.

Trott worked at Air Force, Arkansas and Duke with Goldsmith. Goldsmith said he hired Trott at Duke to be the defensive coordinator after former North Dakota State coach and current Wyoming coach Craig Bohl, who was the previous defensive coordinator took off to coach linebackers at Nebraska. Much of what North Dakota State still does is based on Bohl’s blueprint.

When Goldsmith and Houston were at Lenoir-Rhyne, he paired Houston with Trott during the summers, so the two could talk defense.

“The top recruiting job Mike did was to recruit Trott away from Richmond,” Goldsmith said. “They were doing well and when Mike got the JMU job, I’ll never forget it. There were horrible snowstorms in Virginia. I was talking to Mike on the phone and he drove through the snow and I don’t know how he got through, but he went to Trott’s house, hired him and spent the night there.”

A former Bill Parcells assistant, Trott knew the defense Houston wanted to run. They shared ideas in the past and have similar views about their 4-2-5 system, but few coaches understand better than Trott how defense, offense and special teams needs to work in harmony to connect an entire football team.

Since arriving at JMU, Trott has said many times that those three phases must complement each other in order to win, so not only did he possess the experience to drastically improve that unit, he also held perspective that would help Houston bring the team together.

“I know they were calling for snow,” Houston said, “and I have no coaches at that point. It’s just me.”

Bowers and former offensive line coach Jamal Powell stayed on in an interim capacity before Houston officially hired them.

“I knew two things, I had to get on the phone with coaches and I had to get on the phone recruiting,” Houston said. “I had to go see [quarterback] Cole Johnson. I had to go see [center] Mac Patrick and all those committed kids to hold onto them and I had to hire a staff as fast as possible.”

He dropped the car that The Citadel had given him back at the school in Charleston, S.C., and picked up a Jeep Cherokee from the nearest car rental. He said it was the only four-wheel drive vehicle he could find.

“I packed it up with everything I could imagine and I took off to Richmond,” Houston said. “I stayed two nights with Bob and [his wife] Barbara at their place.

“I had offered Coach Trott a job when I got to The Citadel, but he didn’t feel like that was the right time, but he was intrigued by this job, so it became more of recruiting Barbara.

“So I leave after those two nights, I’m gone recruiting and he gets in the car with Barbara and drives up.”

Trott said it wasn’t an easy decision to leave Richmond.

“It was a tough time,” Trott said. “I had spent six seasons at Richmond, gotten close with those players and we had a lot of success. We had just finished third in the country, but it came down to that I liked what Mike was doing, and JMU had a lot of good answers. You could see they were committed to winning.

“And when I did decide to leave, we had a 12-inch snowstorm and so when I was trying to pack my office, the wheel came off the hand truck.”

JMU had the top scoring defense in FCS while leading the country in interceptions and sacks last season.

“They knew what they wanted the defense to look like from the beginning,” Bowers said. “So that allowed us to take a big step in the program with putting in the defense that fast.

“We got better that 2016 season. We got better, better and better each week and the one [2016 FCS quarterfinal] game against Sam Houston State — they were the number one offense in the country — and they had trouble doing anything. After that game our kids defensively, they thought they could beat anybody, and that carried over last year.”

Because the defensive players improved, a respect and appreciation grew from the athletes that played on offense.

Bonds across the roster were built and the wall that previously existed was knocked down.

“When you have that, it brings everybody together,” junior wide receiver Riley Stapleton said. “After a tough practice where me and Rashad, or me and Jimmy [Moreland] will be getting after it, in the locker room we’re all friends.

“I’ve never gotten along with corners or defensive players as well as I have now and I just think it’s because of the whole comfortability of the locker room. It’s a more comfortable family environment, which I think leads to better locker-room structure and a better team.”

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There were fears Johnson, Robinson and Stapleton had when Houston was rumored to have job offers at the FBS level from Georgia Southern and Rice this past December.

The main worry was that the Dukes would lose all they’d built in the midst of preparing for a run at back-to-back national titles.

“Of course there were whispers in the locker room like, ‘Man, you know after we won 28 straight, and we see in the news all the time, that big DI schools want him,’” Robinson said. “Of course there were whispers, but I got to give credit to Coach Houston with the way he handled it.”

Johnson said if Houston and his staff weren’t returning, there was no guarantee that he would’ve wanted to come back to the school for a sixth season considering it would’ve meant he would’ve had to play for a fourth head coach in his college career.

“[Houston] called a team meeting,” Stapleton said. “He said this is the situation right now and that ‘I turned it down’ because we had something special here and that ‘I want to stick around with you guys and that I’m loyal to you guys.’

“He always talks about us earning his trust and I think that got us to all trust him fully because if he can turn something like that down, then we can play for him and buy into the program even more so.”

Houston then managed to keep Williams, Trott and offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick in place when they all had offers to leave for jobs that would’ve brought them a pay bump.

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Houston said his biggest fear is his team losing a game that it shouldn’t.

That hasn’t happened yet in his tenure, but the rest of the CAA is striving to catch the Dukes who have won 18 consecutive league contests.

“One of the things we talk about in the weight room is the championship contender,” Williams said. “They’re only training for one person, but the champion, has to train for all the contenders.

“That’s how we keep it going.”

The current seniors have said they don’t want to be the group that fails to aid a return to the FCS championship.

Two years ago then seniors Steele, Khalid Abdullah and Brandon Ravenel helped guide JMU to its first title since 2004, and last year it was upperclassmen Bryan Schor, Andrew Ankrah, Raven Greene and Aaron Stinne who led the team back before ultimately falling there to North Dakota State.

“That 2016 team, they decided they were going to the national championship,” Williams said. “Last year, they decided and I remember [former wide receiver] Ish Hyman said, ‘Coach, we’re going to the natty’ and this was probably the second game, so I was like ‘Let’s do it.’

“This team, we’re deciding what our goals are as we practice.”

Former Citadel fullback Tyler Renew, a Columbia, S.C., native said players believe they can win under Houston and that it starts to snowball as victories pile up. It’s what happened when Renew ran for 174 yards and two touchdowns when the Bulldogs stunned FBS South Carolina in 2015.

“We had a firm belief that we’d beat anybody that we played against,” Renew said, “and he made that clear from the get-go.

“He said, ‘I don’t care if we’re going to play the Dallas Cowboys or the Pop Warner team down the road. ‘We’re going to win.’”

Trott is filling holes with seven first-time starters and Kirkpatrick has tweaked the offense to adapt and stay ahead of opposing defenses. Houston’s staff works to make sure players think they can win each week.

Houston visited Alabama and Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban, who has six national titles to his name and understands how to succeed year after year.

“I want to maintain the level of play that we have,” Houston said. “So the things that he and I talked about were how you’ve got to keep the kids focused.

“They’ve got to understand just how easily you can lose your edge because everyone wants the same thing. Everyone in the CAA has the goal of winning the CAA championship and every time somebody plays JMU, because we have won the last couple of titles, they see that we’re the team they’ve got to beat, so we’ve got to understand that and we’ve got to be working every single day to make sure that we’re doing things right. We can’t cut corners.”

Johnson, Robinson and Stapleton said Houston’s post-practice speeches or talks with the team during meetings might include different stories or examples but that the message is always the necessity of walking the same path together and never straying apart, so that the program can achieve ultimate success.

“They’re very motivated to be the ones that keep the torch going and pass it to the next group and keep the standard of achievement for where it should be,” Houston said. “Does that mean we’re going to go 14-1? I don’t know. You never know those things, but I think they’re very motivated to make sure that we stay a team that’s one of the top teams in our league and one of the top teams in the country.”