POINT CLEAR, Ala. -- The Sun Belt Conference will split into two five-team divisions, broken up simply by east and west, starting in 2018.
The conference announced its divisions Tuesday after the end of its spring meetings.
The East Division will include Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State and Troy. The West Division will have Arkansas State, South Alabama, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisiana-Lafayette and Texas State.
The division winners will meet in the championship game, which will be played at the home stadium of the team with the best College Football Playoff ranking. If no teams are ranked in the CFP selection committee, the conference will determine home field using a formula based on six computer ratings that were used in the old Bowl Championship Series standings.
Sun Belt conference to split into 2 divisions
Will be interesting to see the total number of conference games scheduled. I suspect it will be 8 in order to keep the H/A even at 4 each. All of these schools are prime candidates for SEC schools to drop $1-1.5M in their bank accounts for single-no return game OOC games. Ten schools with 4 OOC games each gives the SEC a potential 40 OOC games to fill their 56 OOC game schedule. And gives each of them a potential $4-6M windfall.
Safe to say they will not go to a complete round robin schedule of nine conference games. If they were going to do that, I don't believe they would have gone to divisions.
The conference announced its divisions Tuesday after the end of its spring meetings.
The East Division will include Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State and Troy. The West Division will have Arkansas State, South Alabama, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisiana-Lafayette and Texas State.
The division winners will meet in the championship game, which will be played at the home stadium of the team with the best College Football Playoff ranking. If no teams are ranked in the CFP selection committee, the conference will determine home field using a formula based on six computer ratings that were used in the old Bowl Championship Series standings.
Sun Belt conference to split into 2 divisions
Will be interesting to see the total number of conference games scheduled. I suspect it will be 8 in order to keep the H/A even at 4 each. All of these schools are prime candidates for SEC schools to drop $1-1.5M in their bank accounts for single-no return game OOC games. Ten schools with 4 OOC games each gives the SEC a potential 40 OOC games to fill their 56 OOC game schedule. And gives each of them a potential $4-6M windfall.
Safe to say they will not go to a complete round robin schedule of nine conference games. If they were going to do that, I don't believe they would have gone to divisions.
