This is true, but I don't read too much into it, at least right now.
Three years ago, the Sun Belt was a laughingstock. Now they're revered far and wide as the next great football conference, supplanting the ACC as the SEC's chief southern rival. They may even be better than the SEC in 2024. They're. Just. That. Good. It's a true story.
The same could happen to CUSA. And with MTSU bringing in a former SEC coach who led Vandy to a 27-55 record and two bowl appearances over 6 3/4 seasons, we're well on our way.
(Sarcasm, folks.)
In all seriousness, though, I like the direction MOST teams are moving in CUSA. We should be right up there with the Belt in a few more seasons.
Still struggling to see where SBC is so good? Yes they all are even but those even teams arent that good. I know its one game but look at ODU vs SBC and vs Liberty. Most you are just drinking the Kool Aid and they have some great Kool Aid salesmen.
It's not that the Belt is incredibly awesome. (I mean, THEY'LL tell you that. But that's not what I'm saying.)
First off, other than troy state, the SBC-West is awful. So there's no argument there for the supposed dominance of the Sun Belt. Hopefully, we can further prove this point on Dec. 16 in the Superdome.
But the SBC-East is different. Again, it's not that they're SEC Lite. It's just that they have several teams (JMU, App, Coastal) who are pretty good (on par with Liberty/NMSU/JSU) and the rest of the division is solidly mediocre. (I mean that in the best way possible. They're not GREAT, but none of them are terrible.)
I mean, everyone in the West had a gimme win when they played Monroe, and a fairly easy win when they played Southern Miss. Both teams had unproductive offenses and the worst defenses in the league. That's two wins right there. So even a bad team just needed to find four more wins to gain bowl eligibility. Add an FCS team to the front of the schedule, and now you only had to win three, against a conference which had seven -- SEVEN -- .500 teams and two more at 7-5.
With the exception of App State, which won the scheduling lottery, most East teams did not get to enjoy the two free wins provided by ULM and USM. ODU beat USM and Ga Southern beat ULM. App beat both. That's it. Everyone else had to at LEAST beat a .500 team.
That says a lot for that division. I mean, the Belt's overall percentage of teams at or below .500 isn't great at all -- 64.3% -- but only two of those (14.3%) had losing records. But in the SBC-E, the number of teams with losing records was a big fact ZERO.
The American, by contrast, had six teams with four or fewer wins, two more with only five wins, and two more just making .500. That's 10 teams (71.4%) at or below .500, and a whopping eight (57.1%) with losing records. (Can we talk again about how SMU's schedule was so much stronger than Liberty's??)
CUSA only had 9 teams this season, and five of those (55.6%) are sub-.500. (There were no 6-6 teams in CUSA this year.)
Looking at the other G5 leagues:
MAC (12 teams) - Eight teams .500 or below (66.7%) with six teams (50.0%) with losing records.
MWC (12 teams) - Six teams .500 or below (50.0%) with five teams (41.7%) with losing records.
When you rank the conferences by the percentage of teams with NON-LOSING records (.500 or better), the Sun Belt is the clear winner, and the Sun Belt East is a notch above that:
SBC-East - 100%
SBC - 85.7%
MWC - 58.3%
MAC - 50.0%
CUSA - 44.4%
When you rank the conferences by the percentage of teams with WINNING records, the full Sun Belt falls to a distant last place, while the vaunted SBC-East comes in just behind CUSA:
MWC - 58.3%
MAC - 50.0%
CUSA - 44.4%
SBC-E - 42.9%
SBC - 35.7%
If this isn't a clear case of "pick the stat that proves your case," I don't know what is. LOL.
I think we can all agree that the bottom halves of all these conferences are pretty terrible. On the other extreme, most G5s only have 2-3 really strong teams. The Belt arguably has four this season (troy state, JMU, App, Coastal). That puts it on par with the American (SMU, Tulane, UTSA, Memphis) and ahead of CUSA (Liberty, NMSU, JSU), the MAC (Miami, Toledo, Ohio), MWC (UNLV and Boise).
That's likely where the perception of the SBC (and especially the SBC-E) as "strong" is rooted. CUSA's three strongest teams are not perceived as such nationally. Liberty's been winning, but has been doing so in the obscurity of Indy life. NMSU also wallowed for years in Indy obscurity, and had been the definition of terrible until Jerry Kill arrived last season. And of course, the Gamecocks are new kids on the block. WKU had an off-year, and while they made it to a bowl, even their fans wouldn't consider them a "strong" team this season. Other traditionally strong/respectable teams (MTSU, La Tech) had miserable seasons.
The good news here is that we may not have to wait 5 years for the pendulum to swing our way.
It starts with CUSA winning our four bowl games. This helps chip away at the perception that we all suck. Then, assuming Liberty, NMSU, and JSU can maintain our strength, and WKU finds its mojo again, if at least one more team (Sammy? Middie? Kenny?) can turn things around, we could easily end up with more strong teams than the Belt (and any other G5) in 2024.
But we are not there yet. Is it more "perception" than "reality" that the Belt is so much better than CUSA? Absolutely. But the reality is, perception is everything.