1. Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson would like for his league to nab the Group of Five spot in the College Football Playoff at some point."It's not a matter of if — it's when — a Sun Belt team becomes that highest-rated champion and plays in one of those New Year's Day games," he said. To do that he believes his teams must stop spending a quarter to half of their non-conference schedules as sacrificial lambs.
"As nice as it is and as great as it is to win a game against one of the 'Big Five' — I don't want to minimize that — but right now, in the system that we have, competition with our peer conferences is so important," Benson told reporters at Sun Belt media day Monday. "Those are the games that we really need to focus on."
Now cut to every Sun Belt AD saying, "Sure, that'd be great. You're going to float us that $2 million then, right?"
The Sun Belt will play 19 guarantee games in 2015, as opposed to 16 "fair fight" games against teams from the MAC, Conference USA, Mountain West and American.
2. It's the Frankenstein's monster of college football water cooler topics: Big 12 realignment and/or expansion. Every week the league a nation full of amateur conference commissioners are either picking the league apart or doing the same to someone else. But to hear him tell it, there may be no person in the industry that puts less effort into the topic than the one man who actually has the power to do something about it - Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
Programs send him information all the time. And he knows just what to do when yet another packet arrives on his desk. "They send us enough stuff. They prepare the dossier for us. We get stuff all the time," Bowlsby told the Charleston (W. Va.) Gazzette. "I have a round thing. It's right by my desk.''
Big 12 expansion - if/when it ever happens - is a pretty simple concept for Bowlsby. When a consensus emerges from his bosses, the 10 member presidents, he'll make a move on the two obvious candidates at that time. Until then, the line forms to the left - and ends in his trash can.
3. These were Troy's helmets up until last year. A decent logo, but there's too much going on for a helmet decal. Imagine trying to make out what this says from the 45th row.
It appears the Trojans have now fixed that problem:
I really like this look. The matte lid and chrome facemask are a nice update, and the "T" logo, which resembles a sword, gets the point across without being too busy. Let's hope the Trojans wear this lid early and often this fall.