The Sunbelt No Longer Sucks The Worst!

BeanCounterGrad'03 · January 8, 2008

StealthEagle84 · January 8, 2008

And is that a post you should have an exclamation point at the end of? Don't get too excited, however, it is a step forward.

stebo · January 8, 2008

The Belt also finished higher then the MAC in the Sag's (final Sags came out today). First time since 2004 that the Belt has finished higher then another conference. While I am happy for Tulsa for winning their game... if they had lost, we would have finihsed ahead of both the MAC and CUSA. *Shrugs* - also, if Troy had gotten into another bowl and won - we probably would have finished ahead of the MAC and CUSA (yep, it was that close). MAC went "0" fer in their 3 bowl games. CUSA went 2-4. Wins against WAC and MAC. I really think that the Belt will replace the MAC in the GMAC Bowl. We will get another bowl - three bowl eligible teams, one of them really good, and only one team gets to play. For those that think the Belt schedule brings down our "ranking potential" just take a look at CUSA champ UCF... they finished with 10 wins and ended up being ranked 46. Troy finished in second place, with no bowl game - and was ranked higher then every team in CUSA except UCF and was barely behind them at 53. The MAC's champ/highest rated team was 83 (Central Michigan) and finished behind both FAU and Troy. If we had been able to count Western Kentucky this year - we probably would have passed them both by as well (rather then just the one)...

Anyways, I know how these threads go... I post this, someone like NT80 posts that the Belt still sicks... I write a 4 paragraph list of examples as to why the Belt might still be bad and that "Yes, I agree - we are near the bottom".... the point was that we did improve as a group again this year - this time in the rankings... and then they tell me what an idiot that I am. Oh well, the Belt is making progess and is better then it was before. The Belt is our home right now and until that changes we should be proud of our progress. That's all, nothing more.

AnotherEagleFan · January 8, 2008

The Belt also finished higher then the MAC in the Sag's (final Sags came out today). First time since 2004 that the Belt has finished higher then another conference. While I am happy for Tulsa for winning their game... if they had lost, we would have finihsed ahead of both the MAC and CUSA. *Shrugs* - also, if Troy had gotten into another bowl and won - we probably would have finished ahead of the MAC and CUSA (yep, it was that close). MAC went "0" fer in their 3 bowl games. CUSA went 2-4. Wins against WAC and MAC. I really think that the Belt will replace the MAC in the GMAC Bowl. We will get another bowl - three bowl eligible teams, one of them really good, and only one team gets to play. For those that think the Belt schedule brings down our "ranking potential" just take a look at CUSA champ UCF... they finished with 10 wins and ended up being ranked 46. Troy finished in second place, with no bowl game - and was ranked higher then every team in CUSA except UCF and was barely behind them at 53. The MAC's champ/highest rated team was 83 (Central Michigan) and finished behind both FAU and Troy. If we had been able to count Western Kentucky this year - we probably would have passed them both by as well (rather then just the one)...
Anyways, I know how these threads go... I post this, someone like NT80 posts that the Belt still sicks... I write a 4 paragraph list of examples as to why the Belt might still be bad and that "Yes, I agree - we are near the bottom".... the point was that we did improve as a group again this year - this time in the rankings... and then they tell me what an idiot that I am. Oh well, the Belt is making progess and is better then it was before. The Belt is our home right now and until that changes we should be proud of our progress. That's all, nothing more.

FYI I am going from memory.... I am not going to spend time looking up the facts.... AND this is not a CUSA vs Sunbelt post so please do not read it as such.

I still think that CUSA and the Sunbelt both have a long way to go. But I truly think that they are the only 2 Mid Majors that are going about developing conferences the right way. Look at either the Sunbelt or CUSA OOC schedule and then look at any other Mid OOC. We by far have tougher out of conference schedules. Most Sunbelt and CUSA teams tend to schedule ar least 2 - 3 "named" opponents each year. The other Mids may schedule 1 per team - instead they schedule the weak BCS teams or average Mid Majors. So as our OOC wins start out numbering our losses both conferences will start surpassing the other mids.