Minium: By Being Patient and Strategic, Sun Belt has Benefited from Football Realignment
Sun Belt Commissioner Keith Gill said his league has made the most of conference realignment in recent years, adding ODU, JMU, Southern Miss and Marshall and most recently, Louisiana Tech.
By Harry Minium
NEW ORLEANS, La. – The latest rounds of conference realignment the last few years have meted out a ton of pain to most Group of 6 leagues. Conference USA, the American, the Mountain West and Pac-12 (which was a power league) have suffered major losses.
The Mid-American Conference essentially broke even, losing Northern Illinois to the Mountain West but gaining UMass from the Atlantic 10.
Only the Sun Belt has markedly improved itself.
Three years ago, Old Dominion, Marshall and Southern Miss left Conference USA and James Madison left the Colonial Athletic Association, to join the Sun Belt. It was a transformational move that greatly enhanced Sun Belt football and also helped other sports, such as baseball and men's basketball.
Texas State recently announced it will leave to join the Pac-12 in 2026, but the Sun Belt quickly replaced the Bobcats with Louisiana Tech, which has a richer football tradition than Texas State.
LA Tech, which joins the Sun Belt on July 1, 2027, also makes what was already a regional league even more compact.
While expressing nothing but good wishes for his league’s Group of 6 rivals, Sun Belt Commissioner Keith Gill opened the league’s 25th annual football media days last week by toasting his league’s realignment successes.
“Among our peer conferences, membership transitions have historically triggered the loss of top conference institutions that move to a conference deemed more beneficial,” he said.
“Conferences have found themselves placed in survival mode, where strategic options are non-existent. That’s weakened many leagues in the past and continues to do so.
“However, over the last two rounds of realignment, the Sun Belt has experienced the opposite outcome. We have strategically added brands that objectively improve our conference.”
This hasn’t happened by accident.
While other leagues have forsaken the concept of regional rivalries, with Stanford and Cal, for instance, joining the ACC, the Sun Belt has embraced a regional model.
While other leagues sought universities with the potential for growth in major markets, the Sun Belt went after schools with established football programs with great traditions and solid fan followings.
Sun Belt football does well on ESPN broadcasts not because most of its teams are in urban areas, but because the league plays great football and has a ton of fans.
As conference realignment heated up a decade ago, the league elected to be true to its name and keep its footprint in the Sun Belt. It shed several members in the west and now has 14 schools in nine contiguous states.
There’s nothing that creates rivalries more than proximity, witness ODU’s intense and bordering-on-hate rivalry with JMU.
“To me, the Sun Belt is what college football should be all about,” ODU Head Football Coach Ricky Rahne said during media days. “We’re close to each other. Many of our road trips are made by bus.
“Flying from the West Coast to the East Coast for a conference game is not what college football should be about.”
While it’s good for ODU that the Sun Belt is prospering, no one can reasonably argue that conference realignment has been a good thing for college sports. It resulted in the end of Big East football and the Pac-12 as we know it and in coast-to-coast leagues that increase travel time and time away from class for student-athletes.
Conference USA has lost nine schools in recent years and was forced to extend its footprint from Miami to New Mexico. The American Conference scooped up six C-USA schools, including UAB and Charlotte, but that was after the AAC lost Cincinnati, UCF and Houston to the Big 12 and SMU to the ACC.
Most recently, Memphis has been making overtures to the Big 12, although so far, there’s no interest there.
The Mountain West will lose Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Utah State and Colorado State to the Pac-12, which will become the sixth mid-major league when it reforms in 2026.
The Pac-12, of course, was sucked dry by power leagues, losing Cal, UCLA, Stanford, et. al. to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. Only Oregon State and Washington State remained.
Meanwhile, the Sun Belt has so far managed to avoid the chaos that has done so much damage to college athletics.
LA Tech will be in the West Division and thus won’t appear on ODU’s schedule very much, but the Bulldogs have a long history of competing against the Monarchs, from women’s basketball decades ago to football and baseball when both were in Conference USA.
LA Tech has been to eight bowl games in the last 11 years, and had a six-game winning streak in which it claimed victories over Illinois, SMU, Navy and Miami (Fla.). In the five years since the end of the pandemic, Head Coach Lane Burroughs has taken the LA Tech baseball team to the NCAA Tournament three times.
LA Tech men’s basketball has won 20 or more games in 11 of the last 13 seasons.
Ruston, Louisiana isn’t a big TV market, but that doesn’t matter, Gill said.
“Louisiana Tech has a lot of tradition,” Gill said. “Our conference has never really focused on markets. We focus on good brands, people who have a strong tradition of success.
“LA Tech is certainly one of those programs. They’ve been to 14 bowl games, which is more than most of our Sun Belt teams.”
Gill said he wished Texas State well.
“They’ve been a good conference member and I like the people there,” he said.
But he added: “I think LA Tech brings a lot to the table that is going to help us keep our momentum.
“They shrink our geography, which is great, because we play in pairs in many sports, so know you can pair a road trip with Arkansas State or ULM, then easily shoot over the Ruston.
“And obviously, LA Tech already enjoys great rivalries with Louisiana and ULM.”
Gill insists that, from top to bottom, the Sun Belt remains the best of the Group of 6 football leagues. Two years ago, the league sent 12 of 14 teams to bowl games and had more bowl games than any Group of 6 league the last three years.
The Sun Belt trails only the SEC in bowl game winning percentage since the advent of the College Football Playoff.
The Sun Belt is also about great TV exposure – more than 1,500 individual Sun Belt games and matches in all sports were televised on an ESPN network on 2024-25.
Gill said there are no plans to expand beyond 14 schools.
“But if we can find schools that have good brands and good fan bases that are interested in us, that would help us continue to do what we do better, then I think we would be open to that,” he said.
“If we could find two schools that help us, then we would go to 16. I suspect those schools are out there.
“Fourteen is a really good number for us, for scheduling and other factors. But we’re not going to miss out on an opportunity, if it presents itself, just because we’re trying to be at a certain number.
“We’ll take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.”
Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram