As a rule, conference commissioners strive to put their league’s best foot forward when they make their annual “State of the Conference” addresses at football Media Days.
 
But rarely has a commissioner had as much to tout and brag about as Karl Benson had Monday at the Sun Belt Conference’s Media Day activities, which were held only a few steps away from the league’s offices in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
 
“This event has come a long, long way in four short years,” Benson said prior to the previews provided by the league’s 12 head football coaches. “It’s been instrumental in re-branding the Sun Belt. It’s much more than just a mantra or a slogan or a rallying cry. It truly represents the universities that now comprise the Sun Belt.”
 
Monday’s Media Day was an opportunity to recap and review the league’s many advances since Benson took over as commissioner in July of 2012, and more importantly the league’s most recent moves. It is not just hyperbole to call the last 12 months the most significant since the Sun Belt began football competition in 2001 – and likely the most significant in the league’s 40-year history.
 
The last year has seen:

• The establishment of a solid geographical footprint, with the Sun Belt locked into a path to a membership structure that benefits all sports;
• The announcement of a football championship game, one to begin in the 2018 season;
• The addition of a fifth bowl game tie-in, continuing an increase that has seen the Sun Belt more than double its bowl opportunities in the past four years;
• The completion of a stretch that has seen a 10-fold increase in conference revenues to member schools over the past three playing seasons, and
• Significant increases in both television and social media exposure.

 
“All our indicators are trending upward,” Benson said. “We have created a membership structure that is positioned for success. When I took this job in 2012, our goal was to build a model that would provide our members all they needed to maximize their own university goals and aspirations while under the Sun Belt umbrella. I believe that has been accomplished.”
 
Benson said that last August’s addition of Coastal Carolina to the league lineup, and the announcement that the conference would be comprised of 10 football members, was the final piece to creating that structure. The Chanticleer program begins competition in all Sun Belt sports except football this year, with CCU’s football program competing for conference honors in 2017 and becoming eligible for post-season bowl participation in 2018.
 
“All you have to do is look at the map now,” he said. “You see two teams from Texas, two from Arkansas, two from Louisiana, two from Alabama, two from Georgia and two from the Carolinas. It’s perfect, it works, and we believe in the long run it will allow the Sun Belt to grow and thrive and prosper.
 
“It was a big chore because we were faced with a pretty big footprint, but every step we made and every decision we made was predicated on establishing that footprint and protecting that footprint. We’ve created a structure that had geography attached, one that tried to regain some of the reasons that conferences were first developed and formalized and established.”
 
The league joins the country’s other nine FBS conferences in staging a football championship game beginning in 2018. Benson said the format is still to be determined but that divisional play is likely given the league’s geographic balance once the 2018 season arrives.
 
“It’s safe to say we’ll be in divisions,” he said. “We want to get it right, and we will take the time to make it right. That game will mark the beginning of the next generation and the next era for the Sun Belt Conference.”
 
Representatives from each of the Sun Belt’s five bowl tie-ins were on hand for Monday’s activities, with Benson noting that this year’s addition of the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl means that the league has more than doubled its bowl presence in three seasons. But Benson also said that a bowl appearance is not the only goal for the league’s football programs, citing Coastal Carolina’s victory in the College World Series Championship, and the top-ranked “Group of Five” team claiming a spot in this year’s College Football Playoff “New Year’s Six” bowls at the Jan. 2 Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic.
 
“Coastal Carolina’s membership has had an immediate impact,” Benson said. “What that has said, and the message it has given to all Sun Belt teams and student-athletes, it is possible and will be possible for a Sun Belt team to play on the big stage and play for a national championship.
 
“As we begin the 2016 football season, why not 2016 becoming the year that the Sun Belt champion plays in Dallas Jan. 2 in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl?”
 
Another point Benson cited on Monday was the increase in conference revenues, one that has meant payouts of over $1 million to each league school during the past year. “Reaching that point has been a significant change from the Sun Belt’s distribution just several years ago,” Benson said.
 
League revenues aren’t the only thing increasing. Media exposure in all of its forms has increased, and in some cases exploded. The Sun Belt has doubled its presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in two years, with the Sun Belt Twitter account seeing a 150 percent increase in that time, a bigger gain than any other FBS conference.
 
Television appearances, both on the linear and digital tiers, have increased dramatically, with all home games of every Sun Belt member available on either linear or digital telecast for the second straight year. In the past year, 56 million minutes of SBC content was viewed on ESPN3 and WatchESPN.
 
With all of those positives, Benson said the league is better poised to withstand any future “domino” effects from conference realignment than at any time in its history.
 
“I will know when the Sun Belt has reached a level of sustainability and stability, when a phone call comes from one of the Sun Belt’s peer conferences to a Sun Belt president, the answer will be, thank you very much, but my university is very happy right where we are in the Sun Belt Conference. And that is exactly where I believe the Sun Belt is today.”