I see where ESPN is taking college gameday to Harrisonburg, Virginia, and James Madison University. The Dukes, of course, are the defending FCS college football champions and are top-ranked and undefeated this year, so like everyone else, I’m into their Saturday Colonial Athletic Association battle with Villanova. But I’m even more stoked because the game gives me the chance to talk about one of my favorite subjects – James Madison the president.

They called him lots of things, the Sage of Montpelier, America’s First Graduate Student, the Father of the Constitution, but they mostly called him Lil’ Jemmie because he was barely over five feet tall and weighed about 120 pounds. One of his Colonial-era peers observed, “Never have I seen so much mind in so little matter.”

Madison was brains over brawn personified, and quite literally, there might not be an America without him. He wrote a portion of the Constitution and a big chunk of the Federalist Papers (the essays that defined the value and viability of the federal government and a nation-sized republic). Many men believed in the concept of liberty, but the job often fell to Madison to define, in concrete, written terms, just exactly what that liberty meant. Madison orchestrated and almost single-handedly ran the First Congress. At the time, in 1789, America was a nation in name only, and the structure of the country as we know it today simply didn’t exist. What was the role of the President, what should we call him? How would the government generate income? Where should the capital be? How should the judiciary be structured? The First Congress, but mostly Madison, made it all up. Many people wanted the Constitution amended to be more prescriptive about the role of government and the rights of citizens, so Madison simply started writing amendments, dozens of them. The distillation of the first ten became what is now known as the Bill of Rights. By the end of his public life, Madison had held more public posts than anyone in American history. In addition to becoming the young nation’s fourth president (1809-1817), he served in both Congress and the Senate, was Ambassador to France, Britain and Spain, and was Secretary of State and Secretary of War.

Though small of stature, he was no scaredy cat or lazy ass. During the War of 1812, while the White House and the Capital were burning, Madison stayed at his post and even mounted a horse and rode from the White House to the point of battle. He was an active farmer who routinely worked the farm at Montpelier; he had wheat and tobacco and pecan and apple trees. And, he was lucky in love. Though by all accounts a bit homely and well into his forties, Madison courted and married Dolley Madison. By the standards of the day, Dolly would have been considered, well, hot. She moved in the highest social circles and knew how to throw a party. They complemented each other perfectly, the soft-spoken Madison and the gregarious Dolley and she was committed to Madison and he to her. They ended up being the Revolutionary Era’s It couple.

Cool wife, big brain, courageous leader, passionate revolutionary, master wordsmith, shrewd consensus builder, Madison was a man for all seasons. He was the first president to smoke a cigar, his image was on the $5,000 bill and though often in ill-health (or perceived to be in ill-health), Jemmie outlived almost all of his revolutionary contemporaries, living to be eighty-five years old.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you James Madison, visionary, statesman, patriot. Go Dukes!