I'm pretty sure Troy will vote to stay at 10 or expand to 14 before we would ever even consider playing in the West. Troy and South have a much stronger case than WKU for being in the East division.

Troy has five football conference championships and leads or equals the conference in bowl appearances and wins since we joined in 2004 if I'm not mistaken. And South Alabama is one of the founding members of the conference with the biggest endowment by far.

WKU will be happy either way long as they get their one game with Middle Tenn every year while Troy has rivalries with South, Middle Tenn, and Georgia Southern to a small extent.

(05-01-2012 09:23 PM)army56mike Wrote:  Any good GUESSES on what the new Sun Belt might look like? I've heard a 16 team rumor with an east/west split. But I'm gonna throw out this guess...

SUN BELT

Middle Tennessee St.
Georgia St.
Appalachian St.
Western Kentucky
Liberty U.
Florida Atlantic

Troy
South Alabama
LA Monroe
LA Lafayette
Arkansas St.
Texas St.

If they were to move to 16 I'd say they'd add Idaho, New Mexico St., James Madison and Georgia Southern.

no- the next move would be that astate and the cajuns will leave because of the influx of bottom rung programs..probably to take the place of ecu and usm in the c-usa.....

Does it really matter what they look like??

Not really, GKF. They'll still resemble the SEC's whipping boy...

It matters to a lot of fan bases.

It'll look like the shadow of C-USA 3.0, with slightly less recognizable names:

- - - C-USA - - -vs- - - SunBelt - - -
5 Texas/Oklahoma schools vs 4 TexArkansas schools (UTEP, UTSA, Rice, Tulsa, UNT vs TexasSt, UTA, UALR, ArkSt)
2 Louisiana schools vs 2 Louisiana schools (La-Tech, Tulane vs La-Laff, La-Mon)
1 Florida school vs 1 Florida school (FIU vs FAU)
2 Mississippi/Alabama schools vs 2 Mississippi/Alabama schools (SoMiss, UAB vs TroySt, SoAlabama)

the following final catagory isn't "as is" (although C-USA is close), but what I think they could look like soon:
3-4 Carolina/Appalachia schools vs 3-5 Georgia/Appalachia schools (ECU, Marshall, OldDominion, Charlotte vs WKU, MTSU, GeorgiaState, GeorgiaSouthern, AppyState)

An incredibly similar footprint...with slightly less recognizable schools.