| Daily Blog • June 28, 2010 |
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All week long I will be taking a look at the conference teams of the decade for 2000-2009. Factored into my analysis will be conference win %, conference and division titles, bowl games and bowl wins. I will also include BCS bowl wins, final AP rankings and number of national championships for the major conferences. There have been several teams who have changed conferences during that time and I will include them in the analysis for any season(s) they were affiliated with that certain conference. I will also be doing a breakdown of how the conference did in bowl games during the decade and I will emphasis the overall win/loss record, the number of BCS bowl wins, and the records against Non-BCS and ranked bowl teams.
While some conferences may have no-brainers as the top team, other conferences were very competitive over the past decade. Here is the schedule for the upcoming week with the conferences I will be analyzing on each date.
Today Sun Belt
Tomorrow MAC
Wednesday WAC
Thursday CUSA
Friday MWC
Saturday Big East
Monday July 5th Pac-10
Tuesday July 6th ACC
Wednesday July 7th Big 12
Thursday July 8th Big 10
Friday July 9th SEC
The Sun Belt began in 2001 with North Texas, Middle Tennessee, New Mexico St, Louisiana, ULM, Arkansas St and Idaho. In 2003, they added Utah St. In 2004 Troy joined the league as it grew to 9 teams. In 2005, Utah St, New Mexico St and Idaho left for the WAC and taking their place was Florida Atlantic and Florida International putting them back at 8. Western Kentucky joined last year to get them back to 9.
North Texas dominated the start of the league with a 25-1 run in the first 4 years with 4 league titles and appeared to have a lock on the team of the decade honors. Since then they are just 6-30 which is shocking. North Texas still has a share of the lead with 4 league titles but newcomer Troy has dominated as of late winning at least a share of the last 4 conference titles. Middle Tennessee has 2 conference titles while Louisiana, Arkansas St, ULM and Florida Atlantic have 1 each. By easily having the best win % and while they are tied for the most titles with four, I will crown Troy as the SBC team of the decade for 2000-2009!
Here are my Top 4 SBC teams for the past decade…
Sun Belt Conference Rankings '00-'09
Rk |
Team |
Wins |
Losses |
Win % |
Titles |
1 |
Troy |
34 |
9 |
79.10% |
4 |
2 |
North Texas |
31 |
31 |
50% |
4 |
3 |
Middle Tenn |
38 |
25 |
60.30% |
2 |
4 |
Florida Atlantic |
21 |
15 |
58.30% |
1 |
The Sun Belt has an overall record of 5-8 in bowl games with all of the games coming against non-ranked and non-BCS teams. Here are the bowl records for each team that played in one over the past decade.
Sun Belt Bowl Records '00-'09
| Team | Overall |
vs BCS |
vs Non-BCS |
| FAU | 2-0 |
0-0 |
2-0 |
| Troy | 1-3 |
0-0 |
1-3 |
| North Texas | 1-3 |
0-0 |
1-3 |
| Middle Tenn | 1-1 |
0-0 |
1-1 |
| Arkansas St | 0-1 |
0-0 |
0-1 |
Also The Top 30 Countdown that we did several weeks ago for the FBS teams was wildly successful so please check PhilSteele.com everyday to get my FCS Top 25 Countdown, which continues with #23 Colgate. Thru July 20th, I will post both magazine pages on a new team ranked in the Top 25 and you can get an early look on how I breakdown your favorite FCS team. Remember those magazine pages are available for only 24 hours for you to download as the next team will be posted the following day.
I will be back tomorrow with a look at the MAC which will be one of the closest conference races of the past decade.