Tight Sun Belt race ?

[MeanGreen61]

http://www.dnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A.../607270320/1006

Coaches anticipate Belt tightening

By ADAM SPARKS

sparks@dnj.com

—Adam Sparks, 278-5167

If anything definitive came out of the 2005 Sun Belt football season it's that no team is exempt from a league race.

And so is the feel heading into this season, where all eight conference members can plot some path to the conference championship.

"I think every year is going to be different, but I also think the norm, at least at this time of the year, is that every team has reason to believe they can win the conference championship," said North Texas coach Darrell Dickey, whose squad won the league's first four titles (2001-04).

"But that was actually the way teams felt when we were winning it every year, too. Even in the years that we were 7-0, we weren't beating people 65-0."

Among the Mean Green's 26-game conference winning streak over four years, 15 contests were won by 10 points or less.

But those near misses merely served as a tease to the rest of the league's teams until last season when North Texas fell to last place in the Sun Belt and more than half of the conference slugged it out for the title.

"In the last week of the season, five of our eight teams had an influence on the conference championship," said Sun Belt commissioner Wright Waters. "That was the most exposure our league had gotten."

Ultimately, three teams tied for the 2005 Sun Belt championship, three more teams tied for fourth and another couple were knotted at the bottom. Arkansas State represented the league in the New Orleans Bowl, but that was only after an exhaustive study of tie-breaker rules and bowl selection by-laws.

Amid the muddle, a new hope arose for the league's contenders this season.

"Well, it's a good thing," said Arkansas State coach Steve Roberts. "Anybody would rather play for the title in those last couple of weeks than already be out of the race."

To see how much parity is perceived in the Sun Belt, look no further than the coaches' preseason poll — where the eight first-place votes were split between four teams.

Louisiana-Lafayette is the consensus No. 1 pick for preseason publications, but it only received three votes for the top spot in the coaches' poll. That's a far cry from the consecutive years that North Texas hogged the predictable poll.

A veteran of the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference, MTSU coach Rick Stockstill said the uncertainty adds to the energy of the league.

"It creates excitement and fan interest throughout the year. I know in the ACC, when Florida State got in it, they dominated it for 10-11 years and that was always a given. Florida State was No. 1, and the whole question was, 'Who's going to be No. 2?'" Stockstill said. "It's good for the league because we've all got a chance. I don't think you can look at the SEC and say that everybody has a chance to win it."

Troy coach Larry Blakeney agrees.

"It's a tight league and as far as preseason picks, I think you could've drawn them out of a hat and been just as close as the prognosticators — and that includes myself. Anybody can beat anybody else anywhere on any given day, and that's just not true in other leagues," Blakeney said.

Furthermore, Florida International coach Don Strock thinks the different styles of play also add to the league's weekly unpredictability.

"All the teams are very competitive. We have our hands full with every Sun Belt Conference team we play," Strock said. "But it also comes down to the different kinds of teams from North Texas' power running game to the spread offense at Louisiana-Monroe to the unknown now at Middle Tennessee with a new coaching staff there.

"A lot of teams have different approaches and a lot of ups and downs from year to year. That means there's balance and that's good for any league."