Sun Belt excited about backup plan
Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008
NEW ORLEANS — There are plenty of fortunetellers available here, but it doesn’t take one to read the future of the Sun Belt Conference.
It’s all about more teams and more bowl opportunities.
Sun Belt Commissioner Wright Waters announced agreements with three bowls as the Sun Belt concluded media days Tuesday. In addition to its tie with the New Orleans Bowl, the Sun Belt now has relationships with the St. Petersburg Bowl, the Papajohns. com Bowl and the Independence Bowl.
The two-year agreements, effective this season, make bowleligible Sun Belt teams the first option should primary teams not fulfill their requirements. That gives the expanding Sun Belt, which welcomes Western Kentucky as a full member next year and South Alabama in 2013, more chances for postseason play.
“If we have a team that is bowl eligible, the chance of them participating in a bowl just went up,” Waters said.
The Sun Belt champion will still play in the New Orleans Bowl in the Louisiana Superdome — scheduled for Dec. 21 this year — while the other bowls will turn to eligible Sun Belt teams in a pinch.
The new St. Petersburg Bowl will be played at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Dec. 20 and will feature the No. 6 team from the Big East and the No. 7 team from Conference USA. The Papajohns. com Bowl, played Dec. 29 at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., will play host to teams from the Big East (No. 5 ) and SEC (No. 9 ).
Those bowls will have the option of selecting a Sun Belt team if their participating conferences can’t field enough bowl-eligible teams.
The Independence Bowl, scheduled for Dec. 28 at Shreveport’s Independence Stadium, will have the second choice to take a Sun Belt team or the first option if the St. Petersburg Bowl and the Papajohns. com Bowl have no openings and there aren’t enough SEC (No. 8 ) and Big 12 (No. 7 ) teams eligible.
“What’s different today than five years ago is there’s 34 bowls but there’s no more teams eligible than there were five years ago,” Waters said.
The new agreements might help the Sun Belt, with a current membership of eight, avoid situations like last season, when Troy was bowl eligible at 8-4 but stayed home, as did Louisiana-Monroe, which was eligible at 6-6. Arkansas State was 6-6 in 2006 and stayed home.
“When you have teams that win eight games in your league and playing the schedules that we play and they don’t get into a bowl, that’s obviously not good for any team in our league, [not ] from a recruiting standpoint or from an image standpoint or from a financial standpoint,” Arkansas State Coach Steve Roberts said. “To be able to affiliate ourselves with additional bowls will be a great thing.” The Sun Belt opened football play in 2001 with a far-flung, seven-team membership that included Idaho and New Mexico State. There was a two-year flirtation with Utah State, but by 2005, all the western teams had left, and the conference took on a more regional look with the addition of Florida Atlantic, last year’s Sun Belt champion, and Florida International.
Waters said the conference wanted regional bowls to match the membership, and the new ties help do that. If a Sun Belt team lands a berth outside the New Orleans Bowl, it will be able to play where it can draw more fans, unlike in 2004 when Troy had to play Northern Illinois in the Silicon Valley Bowl in San Jose, Calif.
“It also gives us an opportunity to play against Big 12, Big East, SEC-type opponents,” Waters said. “We like our chances in that. We think it’s a good opportunity for our teams to prove they belong in that environment.” Waters said that despite the expansion, the Sun Belt will hold its league schedule to eight games. The four nonconference games allow Sun Belt schools to continue their success in negotiating homeand-home contracts, as Arkansas State has done recently with Army, Memphis and SMU.
“Of our highest-profile wins last year, two were on Sun Belt campuses,” Waters said, referring to Troy’s 41-23 victory over Oklahoma State and Florida Atlantic’s 42-39 victory over Minnesota.
The eighth conference game will help Sun Belt teams with their bowl eligibility, Roberts said.
“Obviously somebody in the league is going to pick up another win in that eighth or ninth ballgame, which we haven’t had in the past, because when you play yourself, somebody is going to win,” Roberts said. “That’s going to give the league a better perception from a win-loss standpoint.”
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