Sun Belt, ASU right for each other

Would you mind terribly if I write about Arkansas State and realignment for college conferences, especially with the Razorbacks off this weekend?

Let’s play nice and do it anyway. I’ve long been interested in the shuffling and re-shuffling of college football conferences, going back to 1990 when I sat in a room on the University of Arkansas campus and listened to Frank Broyles announce in his wonderful southern drawl the Razorbacks were leaving the Southwest Conference and joining the SEC. It was a seismic shift on the college football landscape that still reverberates with the recent announcement that Texas and Oklahoma will join the league as well.

Far below the surface from the heavyweight programs — like Horton who hears a Who! — the scramble continues for teams who scream “We are here, we are here, we are here!” Schools with much smaller budgets that play in leagues like the Sun Belt Conference, which plans to expand to 14 teams by 2023. Arkansas fans should at least be slightly interested, considering the Razorbacks have played about every team in the current Sun Belt except Arkansas State. That’ll change in 2025 for Arkansas, which splattered Arkansas-Pine Bluff 45-3 two weeks ago in an historic first meeting in football.

Do you know Arkansas State once belonged to the Big West Conference along with schools like the University of Pacific, where water polo and beach volleyball are more popular on campus than college football? It was a terrible fit for Arkansas State, which was desperate for conference affiliation after transitioning from Division 1-AA (FSC) to 1-A (FBC).

The big break for Arkansas State came in 2001 when the Red Wolves were invited to join the Sun Belt Conference along with teams in its regional footprint. The league has gradually gotten stronger to where two of its members — Coastal Carolina and Louisiana — each finished in the top 15 of the final Associated Press poll last season.

Southern Miss was officially added last week to the Sun Belt Conference with Marshall, Old Dominion, and James Madison expected soon to follow.

Troy will likely move to the West Division of the Sun Belt, along with Southern Miss, and join Arkansas State, Louisiana, South Alabama, Texas State and Louisiana-Monroe. New members Marshall, Old Dominion and James Madison will compete in the East Division with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State and Georgia Southern.

That’s a solid two-division, 14team football conference that makes a lot of sense. Arkansas State’s challenge now is to become competitive again like the Red Wolves were under Hugh Freeze, Gus Malzahn, and Bryan Harsin. There’s been a significant drop-off of late and the Red Wolves were 1-6 under firstyear coach Butch Jones heading into Saturday’s game at South Alabama. The ASU defense, in particular, has been awful.

Jones didn’t help matters any when he clung in the off-season to the transfer portal like a teenager attached to a cell phone. He kept pushing Florida State transfer James Blackman ahead of Layne Hatcher, who had already proven himself quite capable last year in directing the ASU offense.

Finding the right fit can be difficult for teams that don’t play in Power 5 conferences. Louisiana Tech played for awhile in the same conference as Hawaii, which quickly busted the travel budget for the Bulldogs. Louisiana Tech is floundering again as a member of Conference USA, which could be down to five schools after being raided by other leagues.

There’s no question Arkansas State is in a secure place with the Sun Belt Conference, much better than Arkansas-Little Rock, which could be booted out of the league as a non-football member, or Central Arkansas, which recently moved from the Southland to something called the ASun Conference.

That’s bad news for UALR. But a 14-team league split in two divisions shows the Sun Belt is indeed on the rise as a college football conference.