Football: Sun Belt’s future shaping up nicely

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, July 21, 2013

NEW ORLEANS — There was a time not long ago that UL football coach Mark Hudspeth bemoaned the notion of the Sun Belt reacting to national conference realignment by potentially adding too many lower-level FCS programs and essentially becoming little more than a glorified league of former NCAA Division I-AA programs.

Since then, the SBC – which lost Middle Tennessee, North Texas, Florida International and Florida Atlantic to Conference USA starting this season, and will lose Western Kentucky to C-USA in 2014 – added traditional I-AA/FCS powers Georgia Southern and Appalachian State.

But the Sun Belt declined to invite any other FCS schools, and instead turned to FBS programs New Mexico State and Idaho as football-only members starting in 2013.

At Sun Belt Media Day here earlier this week, Hudspeth was heard singing a different tune than the one he once voiced.

“I really think this conference came out of realignment in great shape,” he said.

“If you look at all the non-AQ conferences (Sun Belt, Mid-American, Conference USA, Mountain USA and American Athletic), I think our conference is one of the best. If you look at the teams that are still in our conference, there are (four 2012-season) bowl (participants). The teams that left did not (go to a bowl last season).

“Then you look at the teams we’re bringing in – we’re bringing in, obviously, two great programs I think already have big budgets, already have big markets, with Georgia State and then Texas State,” he added. “I just think those are outstanding programs. Then next year we’re bringing in Georgia Southern and Appalachian State. If you look at some other teams other conferences are bringing in, they don’t have the tradition and the national championships those teams have.”

Georgia Southern won six I-AA national titles from 1985-2000, and Appalachian State won three straight in I-AA/FCS from 2005-07.

“So,” Hudspeth said, “this conference is going to be very strong football-wise.”

Hudspeth wasn’t alone in trumpeting the Sun Belt cause in New Orleans.

UL center Andre Huval said the SBC has become “really competitive” the last couple seasons.

“Every game, it’s like, ‘This team’s good, this team’s good,’ ” Huval said. “You never know who’s gonna come out on top.

“Now it’s at the point where everybody is just as good as everybody, and you have to come to play that week, you have to come to practice that week, or you’ll go home with a loss.”

Also in the chorus: SBC commissioner Karl Benson, who called the 2012 season the most-successful in conference history after five Sun Belt teams were bowl-eligible, four were invited and two (including UL) won.

SBC-member programs went 19-26 in non-conference games last season – a record number of wins, including seven over C-USA teams and two, with UL Monroe upsetting Arkansas and Western Kentucky beating Kentucky, against SEC opponents.

The Sun Belt further finished the 2012 season with its best-ever average computer ranking – ahead of both Conference USA and the Mountain West.

Benson also bragged Monday about the conference’s recent move of its conference offices from a different New Orleans locale to one inside the Superdome, whose Poydras Street exterior now is adorned with an eye-catching sign that clearly identifies it as home of the Sun Belt.

“It’s part of a strategic move by the Sun Belt,” Benson said, “to gain greater presence, greater visibility, here in one of the greatest cities in the United States and the world.”

What Hudspeth sees most clearly, however, is a conference he hopes, and now evidently thinks, can continue building a bona fide bowl history.

Getting four invites last year was a conference record, and the Cajun coach does now want it to dip even with a new-look league lineup.

“Sometimes you worry about those,” Hudspeth said, “but I think our perception right now (is good). … Just because a 1-AA team is moving in, that does not, to me, affect us.”