Keeping it local was the key emphasis of Commissioner Keith Gill’s opening stump at Sun Belt Media Days this week in New Orleans.
As the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) brings in west-coast teams such as Stanford and Cal and the Southeastern Conference (SEC) decided to move out of its epithet with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, the Sun Belt is working to remain regional amid a major realignment wave across college athletics.
“We decided [regionality] really was the best course of action for us, relative to the games that we’re trying to play and the opponents that we’re trying to make sure our teams see regularly,” Gill said, adding that a lot of the Sun Belt’s decision to not bring in teams from other parts of the U.S. was to ensure fans could travel easier. “It’s what we’re trying to do to support our fans.”
In 2022, the Sun Belt brought in Southern Miss, Marshall, and Old Dominion from the Conference USA. It also added James Madison from the FCS level to make for a conference that mostly stays within its namesake, with representation from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Gill said the realignment two offseasons ago, plus the mainstays of Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Louisiana, Louisiana-Monroe, South Alabama, and Texas State, has been able to preserve and enhance historical rivalries.
“We brought together a lot of historical rivalries when we added schools and we want to do everything we can to facilitate as many kinds of competition between those teams as possible,” Gill added.
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The expansion in 2022 served to revive some old rivalries, such as Appalachian State and Marshall, or Old Dominion and James Dominion, while retaining existing ones like Georgia Southern and Georgia State, or Louisiana and Louisiana Monroe.
With TV markets a large piece of the current college football conversation – the SEC soon set to follow in the footsteps of Big 10, who just inked a $1.1 billion media rights deal – Gill noted that the revenue is important. However, in his eyes, maintaining rivalries and not eliminating divisions outweighs the importance of large television markets and, with time, glossier deals may be put on the table. While the Sun Belt doesn’t release TV contract details publicly, revenue from the league’s contract with ESPN is believed to be around $1.2 million per member annually.
“We’re never going to say that it’s always going to be that way. If we see factors that indicate we should change it, we’ll certainly consider that,” he said. “Right now, we feel really good about everything. We feel that’s a core part of who we are.”
In Gill and the Sun Belt’s push towards a better seat at the table, 2024’s expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams is a shot in the arm. The highest-ranked Group of Five champion, which includes the Sun Belt, American, C-USA, MAC, and Mountain West, will get an automatic bid into the playoff starting this season. For the first time in the modern era, a chance is guaranteed for at least one of the G5 members to compete for a national championship. Gill emphasized the opportunity, saying Sun Belt schools “just really aren’t interested” in such lesser accolades for any other variation of the playoff system.
