Late TD by Southern Miss but 2 pt conversion fails. MTSU wins 42-32

owlcountry40 said

I picked USM but this is great for the sun-belt

I disagree. I don't think it makes a difference 1 way or the other

Makes a difference on my card, so hats-off to MTSU!!! :D

And, of course it's good for the Belt…are you serious??  Any win is!

Any win in the regular season against OOC opponents is yes. I don't think it makes a difference 1 way or the other if the belt wins or loses the bowl games.

If the Belt is to be taken seriously and not be considered the worst conference in FBS and sometimes even ranked lower than some FCS conferences then its all about wins against OOC opponents in the regular season and its about having strong teams from top to bottom. I think Villanova (winner of the FCS title) could beat WKU, they mauy even be able to beat UNT.
If the Sun Belt is to be taken seriously we can't have teams with 0, 1 and 3 wins in a season. We have 3 maybe 4 strong teams in the belt right now. We need FIU, WKU, and UNT to pull their weight.Winning a bowl game doesn't mean anything IMO. If Troy loses their bowl game, they still finished with 9 wins and people still know they are the best team in the belt. If MTSU lost, they still finished with 9 wins

Jab979 said

Any win in the regular season against OOC opponents is yes. I don't think it makes a difference 1 way or the other if the belt wins or loses the bowl games.

If the Belt is to be taken seriously and not be considered the worst conference in FBS and sometimes even ranked lower than some FCS conferences then its all about wins against OOC opponents in the regular season and its about having strong teams from top to bottom. I think Villanova (winner of the FCS title) could beat WKU, they mauy even be able to beat UNT.
If the Sun Belt is to be taken seriously we can't have teams with 0, 1 and 3 wins in a season. We have 3 maybe 4 strong teams in the belt right now. We need FIU, WKU, and UNT to pull their weight.Winning a bowl game doesn't mean anything IMO. If Troy loses their bowl game, they still finished with 9 wins and people still know they are the best team in the belt. If MTSU lost, they still finished with 9 wins

I do not follow this logic.  It's important for the SunBelt to win OOC games during the regular season, but not important to win OOC games in Bowl games?  Huh?  Those are incredibly important to win.
Every conference will have a few bottom feeders.  The conference needs to win every game possible and Bowl games are the most important games the SunBelt teams can play.

If every team in the SunBelt is Bowl eligible but never wins a Bowl game…who will care?

fauowl said

Jab979 said

Any win in the regular season against OOC opponents is yes. I don't think it makes a difference 1 way or the other if the belt wins or loses the bowl games.

If the Belt is to be taken seriously and not be considered the worst conference in FBS and sometimes even ranked lower than some FCS conferences then its all about wins against OOC opponents in the regular season and its about having strong teams from top to bottom. I think Villanova (winner of the FCS title) could beat WKU, they mauy even be able to beat UNT.
If the Sun Belt is to be taken seriously we can't have teams with 0, 1 and 3 wins in a season. We have 3 maybe 4 strong teams in the belt right now. We need FIU, WKU, and UNT to pull their weight.Winning a bowl game doesn't mean anything IMO. If Troy loses their bowl game, they still finished with 9 wins and people still know they are the best team in the belt. If MTSU lost, they still finished with 9 wins

I do not follow this logic.  It's important for the SunBelt to win OOC games during the regular season, but not important to win OOC games in Bowl games?  Huh?  Those are incredibly important to win.
Every conference will have a few bottom feeders.  The conference needs to win every game possible and Bowl games are the most important games the SunBelt teams can play.

If every team in the SunBelt is Bowl eligible but never wins a Bowl game…who will care?

What I'm saying is, yeah it's important to win OOC games but say the SBC wins the NO Bowl every year, you think people will say "Oh the Sun Belt is better than C-USA or the MAC because they always have a team that wins the New Orleans bowl" ? No in order to be better than the other conferences its more about the regular season than the bowl games.

Bowl games are important but not as important as regular season. Troy and MTSU having 9 wins is important for the Sun Belt. Yes every conference has it's bottom feeders but we consistently have teams with 0 wins or 1 win every season. You can't tell me BYU is rooting for TCU because it's good for the conference or UF Fans are rooting for Alabama because it's good for the conference.

I just think winning games in the regular season is more important to the success of the SBC than winning bowl games

I think it's more important for SBC teams to upset BCS schools during the regular season than to post bowl wins over CUSA/MAC/WAC etc. I'm not saying that to degrade our bowl wins because I'm proud of them (particularly the second) but to truly want to make our presence known to the world, we want to beat an Alabama or Michigan instead of upending a team like Southern Miss.

Of course to do that we need the athletes. We're not going to have the athletes until we have the stadium. Then it snowballs from there.

Baby steps guys, baby steps.

Winning the bowl is huge for the confrence and shows recruits across the board that you can play in the Sun Belt and be competative and win. Eventually well get 1 or 2 teams (hopefully us) that can compete and get ranked.

The league is getting better every year, and hoepfully Troy beats CMU this year as well.

If we win both bowl games it will do a TON to get people excited to see teams and recruting.

Just next year it NEEDS to be US and not the MUTS or Condoms.

GO BELT!

Jab979 said

you think people will say "Oh the Sun Belt is better than C-USA or the MAC because they always have a team that wins the New Orleans bowl" ?

I don't know but I can guarantee they won't say the SunBelt is better than C-USA or the MAC if we always lose it.

As far as us beating BCS teams being more important than winning the New Orleans Bowl…

When that happens regularly, we won't be going to the New Orleans Bowl.  Right now that is what the SunBelt gets as their Bowl game.  They sure as heck better win it to get any other meaningful Bowls in the mix for the future.