Troy’s LSU upset big Sun Belt news

7 p.m. Central Wednesday, Statesboro, Ga. (ESPN2)

The Sun Belt has its shining star after the biggest victory in conference history.

Not long after Troy beat then-No. 25 LSU 24-21 Saturday night in Death Valley, Sun Belt Commissioner Karl Benson’s cellphone sparked to life.

Family, friends, LSU-faithful co-workers. Their calls, texts and emails poured in, lighting up the darkness that came with the Sun Belt’s 34.3 percent nonconference win percentage heading into the weekend.

Benson had stood before the national media in July and declared that the Sun Belt was “no longer a younger brother among NCAA conferences” and said it was the Sun Belt’s expectation to have one of its members

represent the Group of 5 conferences in a New Year’s Six Bowl.

To do that, a Sun Belt team needs to be the highest-ranked Group of 5 conference champion, and that means one of the top teams in the conference had to beat one of the Power 5 teams on its schedule.

Appalachian State lost 31-10 to Georgia, Arkansas State lost 43-36 to Nebraska and South Alabama lost 4727 to Ole Miss — each on the opening weekend of college football.

Then, Troy won. “We’ve been waiting four weeks for that big win,” Benson said Monday. “Troy delivered that for us. … Games against Power 5 conferences are normally on a big stage. But on national television, on a Saturday, in Baton Rouge — it doesn’t get any bigger than that.”

The unranked Trojans (41) received one vote in the AP Top 25 Poll and the USA

Today Coaches’ Poll, but that number will increase if the team finishes its remaning seven conference games undefeated.

“Our goal is to be the highest-rated conference with our Group of 5 peers, and to have the highest-ranked champion at the end of the season,” Benson said. “That win certainly puts Troy in the conversation.”

Troy was a part of that conversation last season, although it didn’t have a victory over a Power 5 opponent — just a 30-24 loss to eventual national champion Clemson.

It took seven consecutive victories, but the Trojans became the first Sun Belt team to crack a top 25 poll, showing up at No. 25 in the AP poll released on Nov. 14.

Troy’s notoriety ended three days later when Arkansas State arrived in town for a nationally televised matchup and defeated the Trojans 35-3.

Benson said this time the situation is different.

“With seven games to play, they just need to continue to win, continue to move up in the polls,” Benson said. “Pretty simple formula.”

Troy Coach Neal Brown hesitated to call the LSU victory the school’s biggest, citing the program’s three

previous national championships in NAIA and NCAA Division II.

“I think this has probably brought the most notoriety, the most publicity to the university,” he said Monday.

Teams have a tendency to schedule softies on homecoming, and LSU would not pay $985,00 — according to USA Today — to a team it expected to lose to.

“The narrative does not need to be, ‘What’s wrong with LSU?’” Brown said. “We’ve played good football here for a long time. We’ve got really good players.”

Now, the burden of proof is on Troy to show its LSU victory was not a fluke, and that it is not going to follow the same path as the previous 21 Sun Belt teams that beat a Power 5 opponent and not reach a prestigious bowl game.

Only the 2009 Middle Tennessee State team achieved a 10-victory season, which it completed with a New Orleans Bowl victory after it beat then-ACC member Maryland 32-31 earlier in the season.

The rest either produced similar results or could be charted away as “flukes” and “upsets,” such as when Arkansas State beat Texas A&M 18-14 in 2008 and went on to have a 6-6 season without a bowl appearance.

Troy still needs to catch three Group of 5 teams — No. 18 South Florida (5-0), No. 19 San Diego State (5-0) and No. 25 Central Florida (3-0) — but the true measuring stick, the College Football Playoff Poll, will not be released for the first time until Oct. 31.