What We Learned From UL’s Fifth Straight Victory

by Dan McDonald (Special to ESPN 1420)

What we learned, or perhaps what we already knew and was reinforced, over the past Sun Belt Conference football weekend:

DIVISIONS IN THE BELT: With the 11 football-playing schools in the league, there’s no divisional play like there could be if the league ever gets to 12 members. But in effect, there’s a division near the top.

There is a distinct line between the conference’s top teams and everyone else, with three teams – UL, Arkansas State and Georgia Southern – in that top tier and in that order (more on that later). Nobody in that group has lost to anyone else in the league, and won’t the rest of the way since GSU doesn’t play either the Cajuns or the Red Wolves.

Both Texas State and South Alabama had opportunities to break into that top three, and one still could since they face each other in Mobile this Saturday. But USA struggled mightily in a 45-10 loss to Arkansas State over the weekend, and Texas State fell at home to Georgia Southern despite dominating the Eagles for much of the game and losing on a handful of big plays.

The Ragin’ Cajuns have won five in a row, Georgia Southern has won eight straight and ASU has won five of six with the only loss coming to UL at Cajun Field in a wild 55-40 contest.

There still could be upsets, of course, but both the Cajuns and the Red Wolves will be solid favorites in each of their last three Sun Belt games and GSU will be favored in its only remaining conference game against UL-Monroe.

BOWL PICTURE: The league is easily going to fill its bowl obligations to the three games in which it has tie-ins – the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl and the new Raycom Media Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, Ala. both on Saturday, Dec. 20, and the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile on Sunday, Jan. 4.

The Cajuns and the Red Wolves are both 6-3 and bowl-eligible, and both Texas State and South Alabama are 5-4 and face each other Saturday with the winner becoming the league’s third bowl-eligible team.

USA in particular needs that win, since the Jaguars finish conference play Saturday and end the season with non-conference contests against South Carolina and Navy. Texas State will likely still reach bowl eligibility even with a Saturday loss, since the Bobcats wrap the season at league cellar-dweller Georgia State.

The only other league team that can achieve “regular” bowl eligibility is ULM, but the Warhawks would have to beat the Cajuns in Monroe this weekend and then go on the road and beat both New Mexico State and Georgia Southern to get to 6-6 and have a hope for the postseason.

TWO IN LIMBO: First-year league member Georgia Southern (8-2) has the bowl-minimum six wins and Appalachian State (4-5) could get to that number. But both are in their final year of reclassification from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the upper-level Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and are ineligible for bowl participation – under normal circumstances.

Georgia Southern is crunching numbers and holding out hope that regulations passed in 2012 to insure that the bowls have enough participating teams can kick in this year.

Teams with six wins on a 12-game schedule are bowl eligible, and those teams may count one win over an FCS opponent as long as that team awards 90 percent of its permissible maximum of scholarships – which most competitive FCS teams do. Teams that win conference championships are also eligible without six wins, but that won’t come into play this year, but an exception that allows a team that is 6-6 and loses in a conference title game to remain bowl eligible is still a possibility.

If the total bowl-eligible teams at that point still falls under the 76 needed to fill the 39 bowl games (two bowl winners play a second game in this year’s new College Football Playoff Championship game), a new set of regulations kicks in. Any teams must be selected in descending order.

In order, they are:

* A school whose FCS win came against a school that doesn’t give 90 percent of its allowed scholarships;

* A school that has two wins over FCS competition;

* A school that finished the regular season with a 6-7 record (in other words, teams that played Hawaii as a permissible 13th game);

* A school that is in the final “reclassification” year (where Georgia Southern would fit); and

* A school that finished 5-7 but is in the top five on the APR academic ranking.

Entering this week, there are 51 bowl-eligible teams, leaving 25 more spots. However, 23 other teams are only one win short of bowl eligibility, and several others are 4-5 and have a chance to win two of their last three to get the magic sixth win.

Teams that are bowl eligible must be accommodated first before the descending order regulations kick in. It’s going to become a numbers game for Georgia Southern, which has to hope that a lot of teams get stuck on that five-win mark over the final few weekends.

AND SPEAKING OF THE EAGLES: Georgia Southern’s success is well deserved, and the 8-2, 7-0 Eagles have brought some notoriety to the Sun Belt this season.

But let’s not get too carried away.

USA Today Sports and writers Dan Wolken, Paul Myerberg and George Schroeder did their best Moe, Larry and Curly imitation Saturday by mentioning GSU as a possible contender for the one spot from the Group of Five conferences for a New Year’s bowl game ... adding that Georgia Southern “is steamrolling people in the Sun Belt.”

ESPN’s Saturday Game Day coverage also devoted a brief package to the Eagles, one that gave the impression that GSU has little competition in the Sun Belt.

The USA Today threesome and the network didn’t bother to notice that GSU doesn’t face either Arkansas State or UL this year in a scheduling quirk (and won’t next year, either).

The eye test over the weekend didn’t match those lofty accolades, either. Georgia Southern was lucky to escape Texas State with a three-point win (they got out-first downed 26-9), only a couple of weeks after the Cajuns crushed the Bobcats in San Marcos (that 34-10 win was 34-3 with two minutes left). GSU also struggled with New Mexico State in a one-score win – the same NMSU team the Cajuns trounced 44-16 and led 44-9 with two minutes left.

The Eagles barely beat South Alabama earlier this year – the same USA team that was down 45-3 to Arkansas State last Saturday.

Comparative scores aren’t always a good indicator of team strength, but in this case they’re enough to quell all the hyperbole. GSU-based chat rooms are filled with comments that the Eagles are already too good to hang around in the Sun Belt and need to jump to a tougher football conference.

Really?