Weber State will host Western Oregon on Thursday, Sept. 1, the school announced Thursday. It will be only the second time in nine seasons for head coach Jay Hill in which the Wildcats start a season at home.

Western Oregon is a Division II university located in Monmouth, Oregon, just west of Salem. The two teams have never met. The arrangement will give WSU six home games in a season for only the second time in 13 years.

The Wildcats won’t leave the state for the first three weeks of the 2022 season, traveling to Utah State on Sept. 10 and hosting Utah Tech (formerly Dixie State) on Sept. 17.

James Madison backed out of a game originally scheduled for Sept. 3 in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a return trip from the 2021 game in Ogden.

James Madison had already accepted an invitation to join the Sun Belt and move up to FBS in 2023. JMU was going to be ineligible for the FCS playoffs as it began the transition and played at the FBS scholarship level in 2022. But Feb. 1 it became known JMU would jump to the Sun Belt a year earlier than anticipated and needed to add FBS games to make that possible.

So the Dukes scheduled a home game against Middle Tennessee on Sept. 3, displacing Weber State’s planned return trip.

The original contract between JMU and WSU called for a fee of $400,000 if either side canceled a game. Contracts obtained via open records request show the two schools mutually agreed to cancel the game with a reduced fee of $75,000 to be paid by James Madison. In turn, WSU’s contract with Western Oregon shows a payout of $75,000 going to the Division II team.

Sources confirmed that WSU had conversations with the few possible FCS opponents that had the opening-week date open, but nothing materialized. Now, at least, WSU gets a rare home opener and can perhaps test out the basics of Mickey Mental’s new offense against an opponent before the stakes begin to ramp up.