The Sun Belt has emerged from 2020’s ooze like a Greek god from an enormous seashell. We have a CVS receipt of reasons to love the Sun Belt. Why screw up a good thing? Unless we’re talking about adding members (which would be ideal), there’s honestly little reason to leave a conference that with a ceiling g so high.

Do it, Commissioner Gill. Send the invitations. It can be a text. Tell them that, because have full hearts, we will accept them into our ranks provided they work to meet our standards. After all, the Sun Belt is a conference on the rise, and we don’t need anchors from a failing ideology dragging us into mediocrity’s lukewarm depths.

Why do I care? Consider this: the Sun Belt plays the SEC far more than any Privileged Five conference. A normal human-being would glance at these numbers and assume that there is a jolly-good rivalry at play. After all, the Sun Belt has only played its natural peer rival, Conference USA, just 107 times.