Sun Belt ADs have full docket

NEW ORLEANS — The Sun Belt Conference athletic directors’ annual meeting began Tuesday and will conclude today.

During those discussions, Commissioner Karl Benson said they will address how nonconference football scheduling can help place league teams in the new college football playoff or one of the six “elite bowl games” when the new postseason format begins next year.

Benson said when the playoff begins, the highestranked team from the group of five conferences — Sun Belt, Conference USA, American Athletic Conference, Mid-American and Mountain West — will receive a bid into one of the six “elite bowl games.”

“The highest-rated champion will go into one of those games,” Benson said. “That’s our goal. That’s the Sun Belt’s goal is to achieve that. It has to be done with strategic nonconference scheduling as we’ve seen across the country. … It just doesn’t happen. It requires some planning. It requires some concessions. It requires some cooperation.”

Benson said the new playoff is expected to disperse $80 million to that group of five conferences that will soon “form an alliance,” $50 million of which will be distributed equally and the rest based on performance. He said the Sun Belt doesn’t yet have a plan for distribution of the revenue.

“How can the Sun Belt manage in a strategic way, our nonconference scheduling, balancing the need for competitiveness, balancing it for revenue, but at the same time being able to put the Sun Belt in position to take advantage of the new postseason playoff,” he said.

Arkansas State Athletic Director Terry Mohajir said like-scheduling strategies between schools are difficult because “every school has a little bit of a different need and a different philosophy.” He expects the discussions to revolve around playing fewer money games, or what he calls “advanced training games,” and playing more home-and-home series.

Under Mohajir, ASU has scheduled a variety of opponents. ASU has homeand-home series planned with Missouri and Miami, as well as road games at Tennessee and Southern California.

“To be frank, our scheduling philosophy is based on our values and what we believe and what we’re trying to achieve. We didn’t ask anybody’s opinion about it,” Mohajir said.