App State is wearing awesome 'Yosef' helmets, so it's another Saturday you pay attention to them

Appalachian State has dominated college football storylines this season.

You remember, right? They scored 40 points in the fourth quarter in a wild Week One game, only to lose 63-61 to North Carolina. The Mountaineers followed that up with a historic win though, going down to College Station, Texas to upset then-ranked No. 6 Texas A&M. And then last weekend – with ESPN’s College GameDay in Boone – App beat Troy on a tipped Hail Mary as time expired.

This weekend, App State hosts James Madison. The Mountaineers are a -6.5 favorite in a game that will stream on ESPN+ at 3:30 p.m. EST. So, it’s not a game that you *need* to pay attention to, right?

Wrong.

App State is wearing all-black uniforms with awesome helmets.

Behold: Yosef.

Any team that’s sporting helmets featuring a bearded man wearing a brimmed hat and smoking a pipe is worth watching.

Back in 2020, they wore white helmets featuring a patriotic Yosef. App State won that game 78-58, so it’s pretty obvious that Yosef has magical offensive powers.

According to App State’s website, its mascot – Dan’l Boone Yoseff from Appalachian – was introduced in 1941. The second “f” in his name got dropped in 1947, for reasons that are unclear. Anyway, the Yosef logo became popular in Boone during the 1970s, and App State reintroduced it to fans around 2012, just a few years before they made the jump to FBS in 2014.

Of course, there’s on-field football reasons you should pay attention to this game too.

James Madison is off to a nice start in their first season of FBS ball with a 2-0 record. In their first FBS game, they beat Middle Tennessee State 44-7. The Dukes followed that up with a 63-7 thrashing of Norfolk State.

This game for JMU will be their first-ever in the Sun Belt conference – you know this as the #FunBelt – but they have plenty of history with App, a fellow former FCS powerhouse. This is the first trip to Boone for JMU since a 2007 FCS playoff game, which App won 28-27 after a key fourth down conversion and fumble recovery. App went on to win its third straight FCS national championship that season (and yes, the Mountaineers’ famous win over Michigan happened at the beginning of that campaign).

App State is 12-4 all-time against JMU, and the two schools are separated by about 265 miles.

JMU is armed with a defense that is No. 1 in the nation in fewest yards allowed per-game (163), and grad-transfer quarterback Todd Centeio, who previously played at Temple and Colorado State. He threw six touchdowns passes in his Dukes’ debut, tying a single-game program record.

And since App State is wearing all-black on Saturday, that of course means the Dukes are wearing all-white. These uniforms are pretty sharp too.