HARRISONBURG — The two men haven’t met, but they are connected.

Former James Madison football coach Mickey Matthews led the Dukes to their only national title in 2004, and first-year JMU coach Mike Houston has the program back in the championship game for the first time since.

JMU meets Youngstown State at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, for the FCS title on Jan. 7.

What the two coaches share are simple — a pair of exchanged hand-written notes and a love for the same players.

Matthews and his staff recruited many of the Frisco-bound Dukes that Houston and his staff have molded into title contenders.

Matthews said he initially penned a letter to Houston in August to wish him well ahead of the team’s season opener.

“He wrote me a note back,” said Matthews, who held the head-coaching job at JMU for 15 years (1999-2013) and compiled a 109-71 record in Harrisonburg. “And I didn’t ask him to, but he said he had shared my note with those kids, which I thought was first class.”

Houston said it was thoughtful of the former JMU coach to reach out.

“In the note, I said that those kids had a warm spot in my heart and that I really enjoyed coaching them and that they’d play hard for him,” Matthews said.

Now starting preparations for his second season as defensive coordinator at Coastal Carolina, Matthews only got to work with the players he brought to Harrisonburg for a season or two before he was fired and replaced by Everett Withers.

Withers stayed two seasons before leaving to become the head coach at Texas State.

“When I got the note from Mickey at the end of the summer, I thought it was a first-class thing for him to do,” Houston said. “The big thing was for the seniors, he recruited them. And when you recruit kids, you spend so much time with them and their families during the recruiting process. You get to know them so well and you go through their freshmen year with them that you just develop a pretty special bond with them. He feels that bond with those kids.”

Houston said he felt an obligation to Matthews and the players on JMU’s roster he recruited to share the message.

Matthews and his assistants landed key members of this season’s team including running back Khalid Abdullah, wide receiver Brandon Ravenel, cornerback Taylor Reynolds, punt returner Rashard Davis and offensive tackle Mitchell Kirsch.

His push to upgrade the talent in his program began with an unconventional approach at the time, Matthews said.

Under Matthews, JMU was one of the first schools in the country at any level to invest in satellite camps. Matthews said it was his son, Clayton Matthews, and former running back coach Ulrick Edmonds who came up with the idea to expand the Dukes’ camps for prospects outside of Harrisonburg.

The ex-JMU coach said he knew then satellite camps would ultimately become a controversial issue in the sport.

“Old Dominion didn’t like us coming to the 757, having two camps and giving out JMU football camp T-shirts to 300 kids,” Matthews said. “I knew a lot of coaches around the country didn’t want to work that hard. It takes time to do the satellite camps.

“You have to take your entire staff a long ways from your school. Some of the Power Five schools have jets to fly their coaches in, but we didn’t have that. We rented and took a Ford van. We thought it was the way to go because we’re a little isolated in Harrisonburg and sometimes you struggle to get kids to your camp to evaluate them.”

Matthews said if it wasn’t for a satellite camp, Abdullah might not be playing college football.

Matthews said he and Edmonds first noticed Abdullah at one of their satellite camps in the Virginia Beach area. Abdullah, who played at Heritage High School, didn’t get any scholarship offers aside from JMU.

All Abdullah’s done since is become the school’s leader for career rushing touchdowns. He also led the team in its 27-17 win in the semifinals over North Dakota State on Dec. 16. He had 180 rushing yards, 51 receiving yards and a touchdown.

Ravenel came to Matthews’ camps, too.

The now-senior wide receiver would even venture from Stafford to Harrisonburg for camps at JMU and see Matthews before picking the Dukes over FBS programs like Boston College, Buffalo, Purdue, Temple and West Virginia.

Ravenel is a two-time All-Colonial Athletic Association first-team selection.

“Going into high school, we came to JMU for a team camp,” Ravenel said. “This was before I thought I’d make anything of myself. I told myself if I was fortunate enough to come here, that I’d come here.

“Then as time went on and other offers rolled in, there was something about JMU and I wanted to stick with my word.”

Matthews’ staff also landed linebacker Gage Steele, running back Cardon Johnson and safety Raven Greene among others.

Matthews said he holds no bitterness toward James Madison for his ouster.

“I made the mistake. I fell in love with something that couldn’t love me back,” he said.

“But as far as the emotion, I’m fine. When you coach college football, as I’ve told my coaches, they’ve fired Tom Landry, Bobby Bowden twice, Darrell Royal and you can go on and on with the great football coaches that have been fired. It was just part of the deal.

“We got caught really young [in 2013]. We were 6-3 and then lost three tough games at the end of the season. In terms of recruiting, we knew we had hit the mother load with the group of seniors there this year, but a lot of those kids either started as freshmen or played a bunch as freshmen and we got caught young.”

Matthews said his only regret was staying too long.

Throughout his tenure, he had opportunities elsewhere. South Alabama offered him to be its first coach in program history in 2008.

“I took the South Alabama job for about six hours,” he said. “I always laugh. I was the first head coach at South Alabama. I took the job at about 1 p.m. in the afternoon and gave it back at about 7 at night. My daughter was crying and my wife was crying, so I called the athletic director back at 7 o’clock and gave the job back.”

Most schools in the Mid-American Conference gauged his interest, he said. So did Louisiana-Lafayette, Marshall, North Texas and Texas State. But Matthews said he never wanted to leave JMU.

“The mistake coaches make is that when we turn down other jobs as the years go by, we expect loyalty in return and it doesn’t happen,” he said. “Hindsight is always 20-20, but you go through what I went through and you certainly wish you had taken people up on some of those jobs, but I loved James Madison.

“We had a great run and I’m very proud of what we did here, but it’s probably an overstatement to say I don’t have any regrets. But I did have some regrets with the way things turned out, and I think everyone would understand that.”

He doesn’t have any regrets about his former players though and he said he’d be watching when next Saturday rolls around.

“I’ll be pulling hard,” Matthews said. “I want those kids to win. It’s so hard to get there.”

Houston said Matthews sent him a “great text message” after the Dukes knocked off North Dakota State in the national semifinal, which just reaffirmed Matthews’ care for the players he recruited onto JMU’s current roster.

“I feel like he is genuinely pulling for these kids,” Houston said. “And for JMU to get back and do something that he did 12 years ago.”

Matthews also said Houston has done a great job this year, especially considering the program was going on its third coach in four years.

“Mike inherited a tough situation,” Matthews said. “In the Colgate loss last year it was obvious that kids weren’t playing very hard and that there were some problems in the program, but he came in there and corrected it. He’s done a great job getting it going in the right direction.”