Off the Troy board.

SBC team of the decade (Phil Steele)

Phil Steele's Daily Blog - Monday July 6th

I took a look at the teams of the decade this past week for the 6 BCS conferences. Now lets take a look at the non BCS conference schools and I will do it in two parts.

The Sun Belt began in 2001 with North Texas, Mtenn St, New Mexico St, ULL, ULM, Ark St and Idaho. In 2003 they added Utah St. In 2004 Troy joined the league as it grew to 9 teams. In 2005 Utah St, Nmex St and Idaho left for the WAC and taking their place was Florida Atlantic and Florida International putting them back at 8. Western Kentucky joins this year to get back to 9.

Here are the 8 year standings for the Sun Belt

TROY
25-9, 73.50%
FLA ATLANTIC
16-12, 57.10%
MIDDLE TENN
30-24, 55.60%
NORTH TEXAS
30-24, 55.60%
NEW MEX ST
15-14, 51.70%
ARK ST
27-26, 50.90%
LOUISIANA
25-27, 48.10%
ULM
23-29, 44.20%
UTAH ST
5-9, 35.70%
IDAHO
10-21, 32.30%
FIU
7-21, 25.00%

North Texas dominated the start of the league with a 25-1 run in the first 4 years with 4 league titles and appeared to have a lock on the team of the decade honors. Since then they are just 5-23 which is shocking. North Texas still has the lead with 4 league titles while newcomer Troy has dominated as of 3 winning at least a share of the last 3 conference titles. Middle Tenn St has 2 and ULL, Ark St, ULM and Flordia Atlantic have 1 each.

If Troy wins the title as I expect this year than I would crown them team of the decade. The only challenger is North Texas and if they won the Sun Belt this year they would have the most conference wins and most titles and win it.