NEW ORLEANS - ESPN and the Sun Belt Conference announced today that the UL Lafayette at Georgia Southern football game will be featured as an ESPNU national television broadcast.  The game will be played on Thursday, November 10 at Paulson Stadium and kickoff time will be announced at a later date.
 
Each year ESPN features five attractive matchups from the Sun Belt for Thursday night telecasts on ESPNU.  The game between the Eagles and Ragin’ Cajuns gives these universities an opportunity to be showcased on a national network that reaches 72 million households.
 
“Georgia Southern and UL Lafayette have had tremendous success on the football field the last several years,” said Sun Belt Commissioner Karl Benson.  “Winning games grabs attention and these two teams win games.  ESPN and the Sun Belt provide an opportunity to showcase winning programs to a primetime national audience and the result is that student-athletes, teams, universities and the Sun Belt Conference get to raise their profiles on a national level.”
 
Georgia Southern’s home contest against Appalachian State will also be featured on a Thursday night ESPNU telecast.  That game is scheduled for October 27 and it will mark the third consecutive season that these two historic rivals will face-off on national television.
 
Sun Belt television listings for the first three weeks of the regular season, plus game times for midweek contests, will be announced at a later date.  Networks will be determined 12 days prior to games in the fourth week of the season and beyond.  The 2016 football season will be the fourth consecutive year that every game played on a Sun Belt campus will be available to watch live on an ESPN platform.
 
The 2016 season will conclude with the Sun Belt being guaranteed a minimum of four spots in postseason bowl games. The Sun Belt maintains partnerships with the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, the GoDaddy Bowl, the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl and the AutoNation Cure Bowl.  Additionally, the College Football Playoff guarantees that a spot among the premier bowl games in college football will be given to the highest-ranked champion from the Group of Five" conferences: the Sun Belt Conference, American Athletic Conference, Mountain West Conference, Mid-American Conference and Conference USA.