(02-15-2009 08:00 PM)statefanatic Wrote: I will disagree with you and say that the belt has improved on the field. Teams in the belt are hanging with BCS teams now at home and on the road. Their are far less blowout game than 3 years ago. ULL hung with 2 BCS teams last year, TROY was beating LSU in th 4th quarter and hung with Ohio st., ASU beat Texas A&M on the road and MTSU beat Maryland.
The on field play is light years ahead of what it was 4 years ago. The belt is starting to become fun to watch and I look forward to the upcoming season. the addition of WKU will add to the strength of the belt.
I'm a big believer in Belt football, And I'm not saying that the on-field product isn't improving. Heck, it'd make my life a lot easier as a North Texas fan if I could just believe that the rest of the conference took a tremendous leap forward and that's why we're getting stomped on a weekly basis.
But I just don't see it. I'd be a much bigger believer in a Dramatically Improved Sun Belt if the conference had come out of last season with more than three collective wins against teams with winning records. Other than MTSU over Maryland (a win which happened at MTSU) and FAU's bowl win over Central Michigan, the only other Belt win over a team with a winning record was ULM over Troy.
Three wins combined for all of us, and the three wins were all against 8 win squads. Not exactly a dominating league performance, to say the least.
As for the almost-did-it stuff... That's the sort of thing that everyone forgets years later. We all remember Troy's close call against LSU, but few people remember North Texas losing by 6 points to what would wind up being a 10-2 TCU team and then by 5 points against Arizona in consecutive weeks. That same season, Middle beat Vandy and lost to what would wind up being a 10-3 Alabama team by just 5 points. Again.. same season, Utah State jumps out to a 34-7 halftime lead over BYU, but winds up losing by 1 point.
Nobody remembers these games once the next season gets underway. Just like 3 years from now, very few people outside of Lafayette will remember how well ULL hung in there in those two games, either. If you don't believe me, try to remember how well ULL fought against two BCS opponents like Texas A&M and Minnesota in 2002. The Cajuns held up pretty well back then, too, until depth got the better of them and they wore down in the 2nd half. A&M couldn't manage but a field goal in the first half, and Minnesota was only up by 5 points midway through the 3rd quarter. But in the end, ULL couldn't hang on.
As for 2008 being "light years ahead" vs. 4 years earlier... Just look at your own Wolves! I was cheering my ass off over you guys' huge, huge win over Texas A&M. It was the only thing I had to cheer about while I sat in a stadium in Manhattan and watched my own coach QUIT TRYING (by his own admission!!) against Kansas State after just two possessions. You guys getting that win made all of us look stronger, and it brought respect to the entire conference.
But if you want to talk about quality of the product on the field... Did you guys have a stronger performance when you won that game against a 4-8 A&M team (that I watched take a bare-assed spanking from Baylor b/c my girlfriend is a Baylor alum), or when you took on a bowl bound Mississippi team in 2004? Led them until more than halfway through the third quarter, only lost by 7 points (and that's just because they converted a 2-pointer in the 4th). Was the ASU team that played Mississippi in 2004 not playing on at least roughly the same level as the one that faced A&M in 2008?
I'm not selling anyone short here. The quality of the teams on the field from the Sun Belt is steadily improving every year. But to say that the Belt then was dramatically worse than it is now just isn't accurate, at least not in my opinion.
What's really exciting about right now is where the top teams of the moment came from and what their future might be. Troy and FAU are both seeing great success, are blessed with exceptional coaches and quality athletic leadership, and neither gives any indication that they haven't been 1-A for decades. Fans of both schools have a lot to be proud of and even more to be excited about, and I'm eager to see just how high they can take themselves.
But I don't believe that their recent teams are any better than Middle Tennessee's 2001 squad or the 2002 Mean Green. I don't think the middle-of-the-pack teams are any better than the New Mexico States of the past. And I don't think that the 2002 or 2003 Arkansas State teams that each finished with 7 losses would look out of place against a resurgent (and very impressive, not trying to take away from their growth, either) 5-7 Florida International team from this past season.
The Belt is getting better. The most important place it's happening is in the leadership that gets us out of the horrible contracts and bodybag games of the early 2000's. Every time Troy plays a Missouri or Oklahoma State in Troy, it puts the pressure on the leadership at schools like mine to stop accepting contracts that don't include a guaranteed return game. When Wright Waters (not trying to defend the guy, just citing one thing I don't think any of us can really complain about) tells the membership to stop taking paycheck games unless we're earning at least $1 Million, it puts pressure on us all to avoid the sort of carnage we saw in years past that schools had to accept in order to finance their programs. And when Middle Tennessee creates an OOC schedule like they had last season, it shows that it is indeed possible to have a slate of respectable BCS opponents that you can expect to compete with, no beatdown games against Top 5 opponents in sight. I forget who it was that has a schedule I'm very impressed by (and jealous of) for this season upcoming, but it may even be better than MTSU's 2008 OOC lineup.
That's the stuff that's really making us better. The teams on the field aren't light years ahead of where they used to be. They're just being put in position to show what they're really capable of... How talented they really are, instead of taking piddling checks to get blown out by Texas and Florida so they can keep the lights on in their offices.