Fun Belt Podcast dug deep into the mysteries of the Sun Belt in Episode 4, recruiting Chris Vannini of The Athletic to parse the tea leaves of realignment, the USA Today Coaches Poll, and something about SBC Commissioner Keith Gill personally wooing Marshall
Category Archive: Texas State
culture is new. The coaching staff is new. The Vice Chancellor for Intercollegiate Athletics is new. But the program is seeking an old result – a return to Sun Belt dominance. It begins September 4.
Fun Belt Podcast solved the mystery of the South Alabama Jaguars in Episode 3 with the help of Jag scribes Creg Stephenson (AI.com) and Doug Konkel (JagsJungle.com). Here’s some of what we learned:
The SEC has scanned the landscape and decided that bigger is better; the more, the merrier. The SEC has all the money in the world, but all isn’t enough. Texas and Oklahoma lines the golden coffers with more gold. Size matters now, and if we’re going to survive, we need size.
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.
Nobody asked us, but we’re doing it anyway. Fun Belt Podcast launches Friday (maybe) and it will absolutely open wide the crystal portals of perception.
The conference has seen growth, defections, additions, subtractions, and upgrades. But the process (absolutely necessary in the SBC evolution) was heavy on the unmerciful beatings.
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.
You know you remember it. It was September 12, 2020. Louisiana made nationally ranked Iowa State look silly. Kansas State was a 13 point favorite at home, and the Red Wolves told the Wildcats to go eat Kibble. The final hatchet blow: Coastal Carolina leveled Kansas to signal the end of Les Miles. Sun Belt 3, Big XII 0.
Howlraiser 