Preseason Poll & Divisional Races Ignite Dialog Forward of twenty fifth Anniversary Season at Sun Belt Football Media Days

NEW ORLEANS – Like almost all leagues, the Sun Belt Conference polls its coaches prior to every season and compiles a preseason rating for groups within the league, forecasting how the convention race will play out.
 
For the coaches, even that job has turn out to be way more tough with the appearance of the switch portal.
 
“The preseason polls, to figure out where everybody’s at, it’s hard,” stated Coastal Carolina third-year head coach Tim Beck, one of many seven Sun Belt East Division coaches who have been featured Wednesday at Sun Belt Football Media Days. “Nobody knows for sure what’s really going to take place until you get out there and you start practicing and teams start playing.”
 
Coastal Carolina was picked to complete fourth within the East Division Preseason Poll, behind James Madison, Georgia Southern and App State. Old Dominion was yet another spot behind, regardless of head coach Ricky Rahne’s prediction that his Monarchs shall be a lot improved, and Rahne is even much less a fan of the preseason picks.
 
“In my opinion, the preseason polls are the silliest thing that we do in all of college sports,” he stated. “I especially think they’re silly now because no one knows the players, no one knows his team, and no one knows how they’re going to work together.”
 
In the previous, groups that had essentially the most success within the previous yr have been at all times at or close to the highest of the preseason polls. That’s not the case anymore, and Marshall’s Thundering Herd is an ideal instance.
 
The Thundering Herd rolled to six-straight wins on the finish of the 2024 common season—and had a dominating 31-3 win over Louisiana within the Sun Belt Football Championship Game—however Marshall is picked sixth within the Sun Belt East Division on this yr’s preseason ledger, after a bevy of transfers adopted head coach Charles Huff to Southern Miss. First-year head coach Tony Gibson has an enormous rebuilding job with 72 new gamers on his Thundering Herd roster—54 transfers and 18 highschool recruits.
 
“We hope it stops there,” Gibson stated of the massive newcomer numbers. “But we will be at 105 starting camp, and we’re excited about how our team has worked and how our guys have bought into our culture. They understand how special Marshall is and what we play for.”
 
The injury-plagued Louisiana workforce that misplaced to Marshall within the title recreation seems able to make one other title run. The Ragin’ Cajuns have been picked to win the Sun Belt West Division by a stable margin due to a stable returnee corps.
 
The Ragin’ Cajuns additionally had the benefit of depth, and the power to raise gamers already in this system into important roles. That restricted their want for deep dives into the switch portal.
 
“We’ll take transfers where they’re needed,” stated fourth-year Louisiana coach Michael Desormeaux, who has taken Louisiana to three-straight bowl video games. “But I’m proud that we’ve been able to keep our roster together over the course of the last three years. We think that gives us an opportunity for success, but we know we’re not there yet. We still have more work to do.”
 
Texas State’s Bobcats have been a stable second-place choice within the ballot regardless of important commencement and switch losses, with 50 lettermen gone from final yr’s 8-5 workforce that gained the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl. The Bobcats are of their closing yr of Sun Belt competitors with an impending transfer to the Pac-12 Conference in 2026-27.
 
“With everything going on with conference realignment, we’re focused on the Sun Belt and focused on competing here,” stated third-year head coach GJ Kinne. “Our seniors are definitely focused on the Sun Belt. We’ll let our president and our athletic director worry about all that other stuff. We’ve accomplished a bunch of really good things the last two years, back-to-back bowl victories and a lot of firsts, but the conference championship is what we want to accomplish.”
 
If the Bobcats can try this, they’ll do it with no single participant named to both the Preseason All-Sun Belt First or Second Teams, doubtless due to the massive variety of new faces.
 
“We don’t control that,” Kinne stated. “All I know is that we had some really good players over the last two years, and I think we have some really good players this year.”
 
James Madison was the runaway favourite within the Sun Belt East Division Preseason Poll, getting 11 of the 14 first-place votes and 94 factors general, after coming inside a double-overtime loss to Marshall within the regular-season finale of profitable the East a yr in the past. 
 
“We had a nice year, and we did some things well, obviously to end with the first-ever bowl game win, that’s something we’re honored by,” stated second-year head coach Bob Chesney. “But there are a lot of games in there that we left on the table and things we weren’t excited about, but from that failure should come a lesson.”
 
Chesney had a late begin in his first season final yr and had greater than 60 new gamers throughout final yr’s 9-4 season. There are 54 newcomers once more this yr.
 
“A lot of changes have happened in the last year, and we had a lot that we had to learn in a very quick period of time,” he stated. “But I’m excited about how quickly all our guys bought in. We don’t have that many true returning starters, but a lot of guys rotated in last year and they’ve let us get a jump start on this season.”
 
Georgia Southern was picked second within the East, and fourth-year head coach Clay Helton stated his workforce is definitely essentially the most skilled since he arrived.
 
“I look around the locker room and I see third- and fourth-year guys everywhere,” he stated. “We’ve had 81 high school signees in the last three years and 59 of them have been from the state of Georgia. Those guys understand the expectations. We know how close we were last year, being one play away from playing in the championship game, and our guys have carried that over. They have a chip on their shoulder, and I think hungry teams play better.”