Group of Five Power Rankings, Week 3: Sun Belt fires first salvos
By Zach Bigalke
Only three leagues from the Group of Five are playing football this fall. The Sun Belt took advantage in a huge Week 2 showing against Power Five opponents.
On the second Saturday of August, the Mid-American Conference became the first FBS league in the country to cancel all fall sports including college football. Two days later, the Mountain West Conference followed suit as the league suspended sports that were due to return in mere weeks. The decisions by the two conferences throws the rest of the Group of Five into an uncomfortable situation.
As of right now, the American Athletic Conference plans to play eight conference games and up to four non-conference games as members are able to schedule intersectional play. The Sun Belt is watching closely to see what the SEC opts to do and modeling its strategy after that Power Five league within a similar geographic footprint. Conference USA also intends to hold competition this fall that extends to the gridiron, even after member school Old Dominion opted to unilaterally cancel fall sports at their university.
With only 34 teams competing for the lucrative New Year’s Six bid, the 2020 season stands to be stranger even than usual for smaller schools from the Group of Five. As of Week 2, we are still missing data points for one-third of that truncated group of programs. That leaves the Group of Five Power Rankings largely conjecture at this point, except…
Sun Belt proved it will be no patsy in the Group of Five race
Historically the Sun Belt has been an afterthought among the Group of Five. The league only started sponsoring football in 2001, effectively filling the gap left by the dissolution of the Big West as a football-playing conference.
Last year’s Appalachian State squad became the first in league history to end a season ranked in the AP Top 25. This year we could see two or even three teams from the league ranked at the end. The Sun Belt put itself on everyone’s radar this weekend when three of its teams went out and walloped Big 12 opponents — and none of those victorious teams was even Appalachian State.
A new pecking order has been established this year, without teams like Boise State in the mix. Especially when most teams are only playing within their own conference, or playing at most one or two non-conference games, the salvos fired by the Sun Belt could go a long way toward legitimizing the league in the eyes of the College Football Playoff selection committee.
With that in mind, the deck has been shuffled immensely. There are still two teams on the list who have yet to play, but otherwise we focus this week on teams that are already starting to make a mark on this pandemic-inflected season. Let’s dive in and discuss the top 10 teams among the Access Bowl hopefuls in the Group of Five Power Rankings heading into Week 3.