Watching Troy and USA on 11/2/23 got me thinking:

Let's be UN-BIAS and rank the jobs/football programs in the Sun Belt:

Criteria is:

1) Tradition = winning past
2) FanBase = do they fill the seats
3) Budget/staff salary/charter flights = how's the funds
4) Location/Campus = living with a family and good location to recruit a lot of football talent in the area.
5) Admissions/Portal standards = can we get anyone in school
6) NIL $ = big business now days
7) Realistic Expectations = are they crazy or understanding.

You take all those into account when ranking the top football based schools 1-14.
Remember you must be UNBIAS,
Think as if you were a hot young coach and had your pick of where you want to coach/live/recruit and salary.

Example:
AppState has the best fan base by a wide margin, BUT where does App rank compare to the other 13 schools in the other 6 areas. Then rank your schools, if your'e being realistic App State isn't #1 in all 7 areas. I am intrigued by this boards opinion.

My Pool/Opinion:

14th is ULM, we can all agree here I believe.
13th is USA
12th is Old Dominion
11th is Ark State
10th is Texas State (great state and big money, another 4 good years and they will move up)
9th is Southern Miss
8th is Troy (maybe too low, but they are virtually a newer school with football)
7th is Georgia State
6th is Coastal Carolina
5th is Georgia Southern
4th is #TeamClark or to many known as AppState
3rd is JMU
2nd is Louisiana (so much $$$$) big time football state.
1st is Marshall

I'm realistic. There could a coin flip on a lot of these. Wish I could hear what coaches thought of this.

I'd rank ODU higher and Ga Southern lower but otherwise this is in the right ballpark

If you rank based on pay for a head coach, which is the driving force for most coaches, here is the top 12 in the league.

Crazy stat: The TE coach at Texas A&M makes more than all but 2 Sun Belt head coaches.

1. Coastal Carolina
2. Troy
3. App State
4. Old Dominion
5. Arkansas State
6. Southern Miss
7. Georgia State
8. South Alabama
9. Texas State
10. Marshall
11. Louisiana
12. Georgia Southern

My problem with trying to rank them all with this criterion is that i have absolutely no idea about #5 and #6 for any school, including App. That and the better a team is with #1 and #2 (app is clearly in the lead on both of those) than the more #7 applies. For those reasons I can't put together a list but I will say this. I doubt there is a coach at any Sun Belt school that would not have taken the job at App State. I think hands down App State is the best coaching job in the Sun Belt (Arkansas State used to be but it has fallen apart). Also, I don't see how Marshall beats us on any of those criteria except maybe money, the terds are the worst.

t4pizza wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2023 10:45 am

My problem with trying to rank them all with this criterion is that i have absolutely no idea about #5 and #6 for any school, including App. That and the better a team is with #1 and #2 (app is clearly in the lead on both of those) than the more #7 applies. For those reasons I can't put together a list but I will say this. I doubt there is a coach at any Sun Belt school that would not have taken the job at App State. I think hands down App State is the best coaching job in the Sun Belt (Arkansas State used to be but it has fallen apart). Also, I don't see how Marshall beats us on any of those criteria except maybe money, the terds are the worst.

Agreed on 1 and 2 and that is why I think App is top 3 and I would imagine that most coaches would put App, Troy, Louisiana, and Coastal as top 4 on their list. ULL is not high on HC salary now but that dropped when Napier left.

I’ll just go top three, no specific order: App, ULL, JMU.

Each school has the fanbase, support, and game day atmosphere; they either have money or do great with what they got; and they have a solid tradition (winning or otherwise, but this one is more culture than anything I guess).

I wouldn’t want to follow Cignetti, but any of these three I would look at as a young HC trying to make a name. My “backups” in the SBC would be Southern Miss and Texas St.

The rest would be dreadful.