Encouraging Words From Sun Belt Commissioner
South Alabama head coach Joey Jones greeting fans during Jaguar Prowl before the Jaguars game against Kentucky Wesleyan.
Sun Belt Conference commissioner Wright Waters has some bold words as he was looking at South Alabama’s football program recently.
Fans of college football, especially SEC football, knows that South Mississippi, northwest Florida and South Alabama is quite the hotbed of talent. Just a couple of the recent players are Pat White, Julio Jones, Trent Richardson among many others have come out of this area. While South Florida is heralded as a hotbed of talent, this area is just as fertile.
But Mr. Waters’ comments were uttered at the Heron Lakes Country Club for the Cellular South 1st & 10 club. “Not to put undue pressure on Joey or Joel or Gordon, but very honestly, South Alabama can be the Boise State of the next decade.”
Boise State was in Division I-AA in the mid-90’s. Waters visited for their playoff game against Marshall back then and they weren’t ready for the game. However, we all know that Boise State has remedied that situation since then.
But the other glaring one I want to make note of is the following one as he spoke about Boise State’s recruiting. “They understand their recruiting area, they understand what’s important, they’ve done a great job of scheduling and I think those omens are here too (at South Alabama). As I look at future non-conference schedules for South Alabama, they’re not taking the $1.3 million guarantee, they’re doing it the right way and scheduling games home and away. They’ll be ready. … Joey’s been there, done that, and that’s huge.”
This year marks the 10th season the league has sponsored a championship in football. As good things have happened to the league since they added football as a championship sport.
Troy moved up to Division I-A and have done well. The changes to South Alabama has been tremendous since the announcement of the addition to football at the University.
Currently with nine football schools, South Alabama will get the Sun Belt one school closer to the minimum 12 schools for a conference championship game. However, with the loss of the University of New Orleans and the impending departure of the University of Denver, this will leave the conference with only 11 schools. Since Arkansas-Little Rock does not appear to be making any movements towards adding football, a 12 team football conference is not on the horizon just yet.
Tommy Hicks has many more quotes from Commissioner Waters in his article here.