The Gulf Coast Conference

So the cloak comes off, the first of the 2 new Non-BCS conferences are announced tonight! I bring to you the Gulf Coast Conference (GCC) a mixture of old C-USA and Sun Belt teams.

It is an interesting Conference to say the least, dominated by 4 Louisiana teams (Tulane, Louisiana Tech, UL-Lafayette, UL-Monroe) and 3 Florida teams (Central Florida, Florida International, Florida Atlantic). Since this is a new conference, I don't have to run down the list of an old conference for you so here you go here is the 2009 Gulf Coast Conference:

Southern Mississippi, Tulane, Alabama - Birmingham, Central Florida, Louisiana-Lafayette, Arkansas State, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Louisiana-Monroe and Louisiana Tech.


So as I've done with every other Conference I'll list a few strong points here and there. First biggest point is that there are a lot of rising teams in this conference. FAU and FIU are both on the rise after making the leap from no program to FBS. Grouping the 4 Louisiana schools together will bring HUGE instate rivalry, similiar to the directional schools in Michigan (Western, Central, Eastern). You could hope that would spur one of the 4 or two of the 4 to rise above with the increased competitive instate recruiting.

This wouldn't be a very strong conference at first, but Southern Miss has been a traditionaly strong program. They may headline the conference to start. They could pick up 3-4 bowl games per year. Depending on if they could pick up enough bowl eligable teams that is.


Ok now here you go, the video of the day comes from Southern Miss. Enjoy it and remember tomorrow is the FINAL installment of the new Non-BCS conferences, stick around!