Lake Charles is once again the center of the Southland Conference football universe as league players and coaches descend on L’Auberge du Lac Resort today for media day.
The host institution of the event is the only one to undergo any major changes, as new McNeese State coach Lance Guidry will be making his media day debut and potentially providing a challenge to the technician in charge of lowering microphone volume levels.
Guidry, a defensive guru, will be joined at the dais by a pair of offensive players — junior wide receiver Kent Shelby and junior tight end Zach Hetrick. Both were preseason first-team all-conference selections.
Two coaches share “dean” status now that Matt Viator is at Louisiana-Monroe. Stephen F. Austin coach Clint Conque is the league’s most veteran member, dating to when Central Arkansas joined the SLC in 2007, though he’s been at SFA for the last two years, which technically makes Lamar coach Ray Woodard the longest-tenured in the league. Woodard, who spent his childhood in Lake Charles, has led the Cardinals since they restarted the football program in 2010.
For the conference as a whole, the day’s biggest talking point figures to be the push to extend the Football Championship Subdivision regular season to 12 games. Earlier this summer the Southland and Ohio Valley conferences proposed expanding the schedule from 11 games to be more in line with Football Bowl Subdivision scheduling standards.
“In Division I football, 12 regular-season games has become the standard, as 11 games did a few decades ago,” SLC Commissioner Tom Burnett said in a league statement.
He said the issue is particularly important to the SLC, which expanded to a nine-game conference schedule last season.
“The Southland has made a decision to play nine league games, a choice we made partly because conference realignment led to us expanding our membership and adding more football programs,” Burnett said. “Nine league games help us better determine a truer Southland champion, but 11 overall games restrict us with limited exposure against outside competition.
“We’d like to have more opportunities to play more nonconference FCS programs, as well as expand our chances to possibly play more FBS competition, and a 12th date allows that. The extra game should also allow for more robust FCS vs. FCS competition that can provide a 12th data point to the NCAA Football Committee when determining postseason bracketing and seeding. And how much fun would an early weekend of strong FCS matchups on television be?”
The proposal calls for starting the FCS season one week before the FBS season, giving an added degree of exposure to the entire subdivision in a football-starved television environment at the end of August.
As is, the calendar permits four 12-game FCS seasons in the next 14 years — 2019, 2024, 2025 and 2030.
Follow Alex Hickey on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AlexAmPress
from American Press: Your Best News And Advertising Source - Home http://ift.tt/2aqzhsE
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment