![]() 1-5) | MAC East | MAC West | Sun Belt WestĪppalachian State has finished in the SP+ top 40 for four straight seasons, but for a brief moment last season, we almost forgot about Shawn Clark's Mountaineers. The previews will include 2021 breakdowns, 2022 previews and burning questions for each team.Įarlier previews: MWC West | MWC Mountain | AAC (Nos. Welcome to the G5 thunderdome.Įvery week through the offseason, Bill Connelly will preview another division from the Group of 5 and Power 5 exclusively for ESPN+, ultimately including all 131 FBS teams. ![]() And it could give us the best division title race in the mid-major ranks this fall. It raised its already blossoming football ceiling without overstretching its borders. It plucked three programs from C-USA - a decade after C-USA had done something similar to the Sun Belt, no less - and beat C-USA for JMU's services. If the SEC was the biggest winner of this recent round of conference realignment, the Sun Belt came in second. What do you get? The best division in the G5 ranks: the Sun Belt East. Throw in the second-best program in FCS (James Madison). From Conference USA, add a borderline top-50 program (Marshall) and a high-potential young program in a fertile recruiting area (Old Dominion). Start with two of the best recent Group of 5 college football programs (Appalachian State and Coastal Carolina), plus a rising Georgia State. ![]() Sun Belt East college football preview: Projections, storylines in Group of 5's best divisionĬollege Football, Marshall Thundering Herd, Georgia Southern Eagles, Appalachian State Mountaineers, Old Dominion Monarchs, James Madison Dukes, Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, Georgia State Panthers Let's not forget that there are other hybrid conferences in the FCS level, like the CAA.You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser As far as Navy goes for being a football-only school, would they be forced to bring the rest of their sports to the AAC from the Patriot League, or would they be an FBS Independent again (similar to how Army went through when its football program was in C-USA)? And should Navy get the boot also, would either another school from C-USA to move up and replace them (either FIU or Louisiana Tech)? Let's say UALR would re-join the A-Sun or join the Southland (where Central Arkansas once competed) and UT-Arlington re-join either the Southland or the WAC.Īnd if Wichita State does get the proverbial boot, they might either re-join the MVC or join the Summit, as both of these conferences are within the Upper Midwest for them in a geographic footprint standpoint. In regards with UT-Arlington and UALR, you make a point about the time that C-USA had, when it was a 12-plus member school hybrid conference (and half of them play FBS football, which included then-associate Army in football only) until 2005 when half of those football-playing all sports schools jumped ship to the original Big East, which was also a 12-plus member school hybrid conference, which took a few years until between late 2012 to early 2013 leading the "Catholic-7" schools to vote out and re-create the Big East, which lead the creation of the AAC for the football-playing schools.īack to the topic, and in case these two schools don't plan to add football (which most fanbases within their schools wanted or hoped or invested, but it's highly doubted), they would need to find a geographic friendly conference.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |