The founding father of James Madison’s football program has died.

Challace McMillin, the first coach in Dukes history, passed away in his sleep on Saturday night, the Daily News-Record learned Sunday. McMillin was 77.

“He really paid attention to and followed everybody that he coached and that he was involved with,” former JMU kicker Joe Showker, who played for McMillin, said. “And we just all kept in touch with him, and that’s why there’s just so much endearment to him.

“It’s not just because of the man he was, but we were all actively engaged in his life right up to now and it’s a tribute to him that he did that.”

McMillin, a native of Gilt Edge, Tenn., led the Dukes from their existence in 1972 all the way through 1984, navigating the start of a non-scholarship team by plucking students out of the registration line on campus and turning them into football players. He then morphed Madison into a scholarship program during its transition to Division I-AA.

Over his 13 years at the helm, McMillin compiled a 67-60-2 mark and led JMU to the only unbeaten season in its history in 1975 when the Dukes won the former Virginia Collegiate Athletic Association.

The JMU Hall of Famer coached former NFL standouts including Pro Football Hall of Famer and five-time Super Bowl winner Charles Haley, Gary Clark and Scott Norwood in Harrisonburg.

“He is the DNA of the program,” Showker said. “He’s the one that started it.”

And even through this past season, with JMU reaching its third FCS national championship game in the last four years and the Dukes standing as one of the premier programs in the subdivision, McMillin still lived that role. A regular at practices, he’d fist-bump players more than 50 years younger than him and talk to them inside Bridgeforth Stadium, a palace the former coach probably couldn’t have dreamed of when he lined the field himself outside Godwin Hall ahead if JMU’s inaugural game against Shepherd’s junior varsity squad in October of 1972.

Second-year Dukes coach Curt Cignetti said he enjoyed seeing his players and McMillin bond.

“It was awesome,” Cignetti said. “It was great to be able to have him around, and obviously being a coach’s son and having an older dad that loved being around practice, too, it was the least we could do.

“Players loved having him around and he did a lot of great things. He’s the founding father of the football program, and he loved being around the kids. He was at almost every practice. He’ll be missed.”

Former JMU coach Mike Houston, now in the same role at East Carolina, echoed Cignetti’s thoughts.

“You figure, [McMillin] started the program from scratch,” Houston said, “and to see it grow into what it’s grown into, obviously, he was very proud. So it was always great to have him around, and I’d introduce him to the team each year, so that the players knew who he was and what he did.”

What Houston said he’s going remember most about McMillin: “Just how much he loved JMU football and loved the university. And certainly, he dedicated a lot of his life to building that football program.”

In his final interview with the DN-R this past January, McMillin said his passion was coaching football.

But, his former players all say, his impact went way beyond the game.

“Truly a great man,” JMU alum and former Dukes assistant coach Bryan Stinespring, now at Delaware, said about McMillin. “I think he never lost sight of the fact that his players were the most important thing to him.”

Stinespring played for McMillin and joined JMU’s coaching staff in 2016, the same year the Dukes won their second national championship, after he spent more than two decades with Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech.

“When I returned back to James Madison, [McMillin] was the first one waiting on me,” Stinespring said. “When I left to go to Maryland, he was the first one to call and congratulate me. When things didn’t go well at Maryland, he was the first to reach out and send me a message saying ‘Hang in there.’ I think he just shared our lives and was a constant part of our lives, and you don’t find that anymore.”

Said Showker: “He was the complete coach.”

In addition to starting the football program, McMillin also started the cross country and track and field teams at JMU. A graduate of Rhodes College, McMillin was a professor at Madison and the Challace J. McMillin Center for Sport Psychology at James Madison is named after him.