14
Archive
Everything on the site, in one place
Fourteen pieces across four sections. Nothing here is a fixture list — the subject is documented history, structure and money.
Sun Belt — The conference, and the level it actually is
- 1.1A conference defined by who is not in itThe Sun Belt holds programmes that play Division I football on budgets an order of magnitude below the conference an hour away.Long read
- 1.2An hour's drive is two different sportsULM and LSU are close enough to share a recruiting map and far enough apart financially to be unrelated businesses.Short read
- 1.3The upset that everyone still citesAppalachian State beat Michigan in 2007, and it remains the reference point for what a guarantee game can produce.Long read
The Money — The guarantee game is a budget line before it is a fixture
- 2.1The road fixture is a budget line before it is a gameA guarantee game pays a visiting programme a fixed fee to travel and, usually, lose. The fee funds the rest of the athletic department.Long read
- 2.2The fee is spent before the bus leavesThe guarantee covers scholarships, travel and staffing across sports that generate no revenue at all.Short read
- 2.3A 1972 statute set the arithmetic of a scholarshipTitle IX requires proportionality in athletic opportunity, which is why the roster maths of every department is what it is.Long read
- 2.4Since 2021 the players can be paid, and the gap widenedName, image and likeness rules from July 2021 let athletes earn, and the effect was largest where the money already was.Short read
Coaches — The records that are the region's real history
- 3.1Fifty-five years at one programmeEddie Robinson coached Grambling State for 55 seasons and sent a documented number of players into professional football.Long read
- 3.2From Grambling to the seventeenth pickDoug Williams was drafted seventeenth in 1978 out of Grambling and later became the first Black quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl.Long read
- 3.3He never coached a game at the job he tookBo Rein was hired by LSU and died before the season, which is why his record belongs to North Carolina State and Louisiana remembers him anyway.Short read
Louisiana — The grounds, and the rules that shape them
- 4.1A stadium sized for the programme it has, not the one it wantsMalone Stadium in Monroe is the working home of a Sun Belt programme and its capacity is an honest number.Long read
- 4.2The other one, and the rivalry that comes with itCajun Field in Lafayette holds the in-state fixture that matters most to both programmes.Short read
- 4.3The Bayou Classic fills a professional stadiumGrambling and Southern meet in the Superdome, and the marching bands are as much of the event as the football.Long read
- 4.4The halftime show is not an interval hereSWAC band culture is a competitive tradition in its own right and draws its own audience.Short read