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Each day, tens of millions of individuals ask, “Who am I?” Numerous books, penned by everybody from Marcus Aurelius to Oprah, attempt to assist folks discover solutions. As Deepak Chopra writes: “One should take it upon themselves to do the work of self-awareness discovery now.”
Effectively, with all due respect to the daddy of quantum therapeutic, there’s one place that doesn’t require any help in the case of self-awareness, despite the fact that it lives life because the flag tied to the center of the tug-of-war rope that’s the world of collegiate athletics.
The parents down at Solar Belt Convention HQ in New Orleans? They’re good to go. No self-help guides wanted there. They know precisely who they’re, the place they’re, what they wish to be and the place they wish to go from right here.
“Ultimately, what makes soccer nice is once you look throughout that area and also you see a group that you just actually, actually wish to beat, that your followers actually, actually wish to beat, video games that you just get emotional about,” explains Appalachian State head coach Shawn Clark, a former two-time FCS All-American offensive lineman for the Mountaineers. “After I have a look at the convention schedule that the Solar Belt has put collectively for us, for an old-school man who performed right here, I see these sorts of video games everywhere in the calendar.”
The SBC is now a 14-team league, cleanly divided into two true regional divisions, east and west. When their soccer season kicks off Sept. 2, it should achieve this with 4 new members, three defectors from fellow Group of 5 league Convention USA — Marshall, Southern Miss and Old Dominion — and one promoted FCS superpower in James Madison. These new colleges, together with the departure of two far-flung non-football members, create a superbly seamless nook of the American map. The brand new Solar Belt roster of faculties begins in Virginia and sweeps down by each state of the Deep South till it reaches central Texas.
The Solar Belt is preserving its divisions, leaning arduous into regional rivalries, and reconnecting long-missed matchups that have been misplaced to earlier rounds of convention realignment and groups leaping into the FBS ranks irrespective of the place and the way they did it.
That technique, as soon as the usual in faculty sports activities, is now downright counter cultural. A playbook that feels as if it’s by the wanting glass throughout this one-year stretch when we’ve got been advised that Oklahoma is definitely within the Southeast, Los Angeles is within the Midwest, the quantity 10 really means 16, the quantity 12 actually means 10 now and can sooner or later imply 14 however for a minute can be 16.
The Solar Belt represents stability and familiarity in a world the place complaints of “I do not even acknowledge my favourite sport” have gotten louder by the day. That is no accident.
“No, no, we have been actually deliberate. On the finish of the day, we would like followers to have the ability to journey to the video games, but additionally video games they wish to go to,” says commissioner Keith Gill, a former Duke working again who took the SBC reins in April 2019. Barely two years later, within the days after the information broke that Texas and Oklahoma have been departing the Massive 12 for the SEC, Gill had his presidents and athletic administrators on the telephone to map out the convention’s potential reactions.
Everybody knew the Massive 12 was going to poach the American Athletic Convention and maybe extra. In return, the American would buy groceries among the many others within the Group of 5. Gill laid out his technique of galvanized regionalism as each a type of protection and as a recruiting instrument. Your complete group agreed, and the telephone calls to and from potential members started in earnest, particularly when there was established historical past concerned.
“Making an attempt to create new rivalries is usually a tall order, and we’ve got skilled a few of that as we’ve got moved up the ladder over time,” says Coastal Carolina athletic director Matt Hogue, who has been with the Chanticleers since 1997, six years earlier than the college performed its first soccer sport and twenty years earlier than it arrived on the FBS stage. “However proximity, blended in with some success, that lights the fireplace fairly shortly. Appalachian State folks love to come back to the seaside, and we seaside folks like to go the mountains. We all know one another fairly properly. Now we’re preventing for the division yearly. For those who’ve been to these video games, there is definitely no lack of depth.”
Similar for Louisiana and UL Monroe. Or South Alabama and Troy. Or Georgia State and Georgia Southern. The brand new colleges added to the roster slide proper into that chart of animosity like items of a puzzle. Anybody who is aware of their soccer historical past of the area is properly conscious that no ramping-up time can be wanted for App State and Marshall, Marshall and Georgia Southern, and even Outdated Dominion and Georgia Southern. All of them have roots going means again to enjoying for FCS championships. Holding these fires stoked is why Troy was moved into the extra map-logical West Division, dwelling of rival South Alabama. Southern Miss, on arduous occasions now however a longtime football-obsessed faculty, was additionally pure match.
“What I see when I’m within the room with these coaches and these gamers is that these are soccer folks,” says new Georgia Southern head coach Clay Helton. “In Statesboro they inform tales in regards to the Erk Russell days, enjoying for I-AA (FCS) nationwide championships and having to do it by enjoying guess who? App State. Marshall. Outdated Dominion. Arkansas State. I can not wait to get within the stadium for these video games.”
Even the choice to maintain the 2 divisions was carried out so with the motivation of making extra rivalry stress. These within the East will not see these within the West with a lot regularity, which in principle ought to result in battles of “Us vs. Them” in the identical the way in which divisions initially did for the originator of the mannequin, the SEC of the Nineteen Nineties.
It is all in regards to the story of showdowns, one thing over which followers can discover themselves labored right into a lather. No, the nation as a complete is rarely going to be buzzing coast to coast about an Appalachian State-Marshall matchup the way in which it does in regards to the Iron Bowl. Simply because the Solar Belt is not prone to ever land a $7 billion TV deal. However that is additionally not the objective.
The long-term SBC eye is on two horizons directly. The primary is on the postseason, each the continuing Faculty Soccer Playoff enlargement debate, making certain there’s a place on the desk for non-A5 (Autonomous 5) colleges, but additionally preserving some form of bowl-season mannequin in place. Says Gill: “The 12-team mannequin of the six highest-ranked convention champions and the six highest ranked at-large groups, that has had our help from the primary second it was proposed. And so do the bowls. That is a showcase for our universities and a reward for our student-athletes that they deserve.”
The second is the always-looming thought of additional realignment, whether or not it’s bringing others into the SBC fold or shoring up the moat round New Orleans to carry off would-be convention raiders.
“Proper now, we’re actually going to take a pause,” Gill says with a deep breath. “That is to not say if there is a actually good alternative there, then we will definitely be open. However we like what we’ve got. We like our configuration, it type of suits us completely.”
It does. And that brings us to the Solar Belt’s short-term objective, one which is so simple as it’s noble. Play good soccer and do it in significant, regional, passionate rivalry video games the individuals who put on the colours of its colleges wish to see. Maybe the remainder of the sports activities world will catch a whiff of that vitality, determine to tune in and discover themselves turning into #FunBelt devotees.
In different phrases, faculty sports activities the way in which it is speculated to be.
“We’re simply making an attempt to guarantee that folks know that we’re right here and that individuals will respect the extent and high quality of soccer that we play,” Gill says. “I believe folks suppose in case you’re not in an A5 league, you are not enjoying high quality soccer, you are not making an attempt as arduous, these sorts of issues. And that is simply the furthest factor from the reality. We have a terrific product, one thing that is actually thrilling for folk to observe.
“Proximity creates worth, within the sense of, if we’ve got extra folks at our video games, there’s extra vitality. It is good TV. It is good soccer.”