NEW ORLEANS — It was fitting that when Sun Belt Conference Commissioner Keith Gill went to the podium on Tuesday to open the 2025 Sun Belt Football Media Days, the background music was Louie Armstrong’s iconic “What a Wonderful World.”
 
It wasn’t just the fact that “Satchmo” was born and raised in the Crescent City, not that far from where the league opened its celebration of 25 years of conference football with the first of two days of activities at the New Orleans Marriott Warehouse Arts District or that the Sun Belt Conference office is located a few blocks down Poydras Street in the iconic Caesars Superdome.
 
It’s more about that right now in the Sun Belt, as Armstrong and Gill both said, “I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
 
“It’s a perfect metaphor for today,” Gill told the assembled media. “What can be more wonderful than celebrating the start of the 2025 college football season and celebrating a quarter-century of Sun Belt football.”
 
Gill has a lot to brag about, both in football and in the overall growth of what he called the top non-autonomy conference in the country.
 
In football, the league led the FBS with 12 bowl teams at the end of the 2023 season and, in each of the past three seasons, has had the most bowl eligible teams among its peer conferences. In the last three years, the Sun Belt also holds 11 victories over autonomy conference foes. 
 
“I don’t think there’s any question that this is the toughest league top-to-bottom of anyone in the Group of Six,” said second-year ULM football head coach Bryant Vincent, one of seven West Division head coaches to take the Main Stage podium at Media Days on Tuesday. 
 
The Sun Belt has had multiple 10-win teams for seven-straight years, including last year’s two division winners Marshall (10-3) and Louisiana (10-4). The league also owns the best Bowl Season winning percentage among peer conferences and trails only the SEC in overall FBS bowl winning percentage during the College Football Playoff era. 
 
Gill said the major factors in the Sun Belt’s rise in football have been the increased emphasis and financial support from the league’s 14 members and the growth of the league’s agreement with its television partner ESPN.
 
“To get to this place, time, energy and investments were required,” he said. “Our members’ athletic budgets have on average tripled since the Sun Belt became a football conference. Assisting in these investments, conference revenue has grown by over 900 percent during this period and 65 percent over the last decade. And revenue from television has increased by a factor of 50 since the start of Sun Belt football.”
 
The conference and its member institutions produced over 1,500 events across ESPN’s platforms last year.
 
Gill touched on several other areas during his State of the Conference address, including the recent addition of Louisiana Tech as a league member, set to join the conference no later than July 1, 2027. 
 
“The Sun Belt Conference foundation is built on schools with passionate fanbases, great football tradition, a tradition of success in other sports and proximity that creates regional rivalries,” he said. “Louisiana Tech allows us to be better in each of those areas. We are adding a school with a long and rich tradition of FBS competition.”
 
“Among our peer conferences, membership transitions have historically triggered the loss of top conference institutions that move to a conference deemed more beneficial. Conferences have found themselves placed in survival mode, where strategic options are non-existent. That’s weakened many leagues in the past and continues to do so. However, over the last two rounds of realignment, the Sun Belt has experienced the opposite outcome. We have strategically added brands that objectively improve our conference.”
 
Gill referenced the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff format, the proposed new NCAA governance framework that ensures Division I conferences continue to work together and the House Settlement involving student-athlete compensation.
 
“All Sun Belt members opted into the House Settlement and will abide by those guidelines going forward,” he said. “July 1 marked a new era for college sports. I’m happy that student-athletes will be permitted to earn money through their participation in college sports. That being said, we still need to find some consistent rules that can govern this new normal. The House Settlement is a good first step, but it does not go far enough, which is why the Sun Belt is supportive of the bi-partisan SCORE Act. It is not perfect, but it will provide needed structure to Division I.”

As of July 1, Gill also assumed the chairmanship of the NCAA’s Division I men’s basketball committee, one of the most public positions in collegiate athletics administration.
 
“I am incredibly honored and incredibly fortunate to be in this role,” he said. “it’s going to be a busy year and it’s going to be a challenging year, but it can do nothing but enhance the reputation of the Sun Belt across the country.”