Conference USA has largely devolved into Sun Belt 2.0, with five of its 12 members formerly hailing from that league and another two having participated as non-football members of the Sun Belt. It has watched as most of its best members have been poached away by the AAC, restocking through the Sun Belt and directly from the FCS ranks in...
Arkansas State v. Louisiana Tech
Mercedes Benz Superdome -- New Orleans, LA
December 19, 2015 -- 9:00 pm Eastern (ESPN)
Why You Should Watch
For the first time since 2010, a team besides Louisiana-Lafayette will represent the Sun Belt in the New Orleans Bowl. It has been a decade since Arkansas...
For every contender left in the Access Bowl race in 2015, just one plot point remains for each of them as they all strive to present the strongest possible resume for the College Football Playoff selection committee to parse through. Four of the Group of Five conferences have winnowed down to their final two hopefuls in the race for the...
We are getting to a point in the 2015 season where determining which teams will win their respective Group of Five conferences is oddly becoming more difficult. What we are seeing, however, is a clear hierarchy emerging between the mid-major conferences.
Not all conference championships are created equal. Even as undefeated teams have...
With a couple of upsets and a wild comeback keeping things interesting within the Group of Five over Week 11, there is a lot more clarity in some divisions and a lot more confusion as to what might happen in others. This week we winnow down the rankings by one team to 14, as we focus exclusively on those teams that still have a...
This is coming at you late this week for personal reasons, but while we've already seen some weekday Week 11 games take place there is still no logical answer as to why we should not look back at last week's shakedown of the mid-major standings.
Because, in the end, there was a ton of chaos among the Access Bowl hopefuls. By the time...
This year has already seen the hierarchy of Access Bowl candidates shuffle on its head, as perennial contenders like UCF and Marshall have looked listless in the early going and former BCS Busters Boise State and Northern Illinois have sustained losses by Week 2. The beauty of the Access Bowl, though, is that a loss does not immediately...
In the lead-up to the upcoming college football season, Sports Unbiassed is taking a look at the top 20 teams with a chance to win the Access Bowl bid in 2015. You can find the full list of the Top 20, links to other team previews, and read more about the methodology behind the rankings here.
Louisiana Tech...
Last year provided the first glimpse of what a new future of increased access for mid-major programs might look like. No longer was an undefeated season and praying for a high ranking a prerequisite for selection to a major bowl game for the schools of the Mountain West, AAC, Sun Belt, Conference USA, and MAC.
The hierarchy still...
The pinnacle of success for any football team is to win a national championship. But, for the 667 football teams that participate at the NCAA levels of the sport, there are just four national championships to go around.
For the rest of the hundreds of schools that don't go on to claim the ultimate prize in their...