This is interesting: Read announcement here.
TL;DR version:
The Sun Belt Conference has decided NOT to continue conference agreements with New Mexico State and Idaho. They're adding Coastal Carolina to become a ten team conference for 2018.
My take:
This could be nothing or it could be the start of a seismic shift. The last time a team got kicked out of a conference was when Temple got kicked out of the Big East in 2004. This isn't a conference dissolving, like the old SWC, and there not being enough seats at the table for all the new guys. This is a conference telling two schools, "you don't bring enough to the table. Go away."
Reasons for kicking the teams out were that the conference wanted to go to full membership, and travel was a big problem, as they were far outliers in the geographic footprint. Other schools didn't want to travel that far.
On other threads, there's been discussion of some schools dropping out of the money war. Idaho has been the weakest FBS school for a while. The Kibbie Dome seats just over 16,000, and is so small the goal posts are attached to the back walls.
Idaho could go independent. They could also return to the Big Sky Conference, which would require them to be the first school to drop from the FBS to the FCS.
The G5 live in a different financial realm from the P5, but this could be the start of another dividing of the haves and have nots in football conferences.
TL;DR version:
The Sun Belt Conference has decided NOT to continue conference agreements with New Mexico State and Idaho. They're adding Coastal Carolina to become a ten team conference for 2018.
My take:
This could be nothing or it could be the start of a seismic shift. The last time a team got kicked out of a conference was when Temple got kicked out of the Big East in 2004. This isn't a conference dissolving, like the old SWC, and there not being enough seats at the table for all the new guys. This is a conference telling two schools, "you don't bring enough to the table. Go away."
Reasons for kicking the teams out were that the conference wanted to go to full membership, and travel was a big problem, as they were far outliers in the geographic footprint. Other schools didn't want to travel that far.
On other threads, there's been discussion of some schools dropping out of the money war. Idaho has been the weakest FBS school for a while. The Kibbie Dome seats just over 16,000, and is so small the goal posts are attached to the back walls.
Idaho could go independent. They could also return to the Big Sky Conference, which would require them to be the first school to drop from the FBS to the FCS.
The G5 live in a different financial realm from the P5, but this could be the start of another dividing of the haves and have nots in football conferences.
