By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — There was a poll circulating around Twitter a couple of weeks ago by CFB Campus Tour, soliciting readers’ votes for the “Top G5 Football Stadium.” The finalists were (drumroll) Appalachian State’s Kidd Brewer and East Carolina’s Dowdy-Ficklen.
For the uninitiated, “G5” is the familiar abbreviation for the Group of Five football conferences: the non-Power 5 schools in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).
Sun Belt Conference, Rising
It is hard to argue that the Sun Belt Conference is not now the most competitive of the G5 schools. In just under a decade since App State moved from FCS to the FBS level, the Sun Belt Conference in which the Mountaineers are a member has transitioned from football doormat to a legitimate D1 threat any time one of its member schools takes the field against a Power 5 opponent. App State alone has defeated both North Carolina (ACC) and South Carolina (SEC), as well as Texas A&M, took Tennessee (SEC) and Penn State (Big 10) to overtime on the road, and has had strong showings against Miami, Fla. (ACC) and Wake Forest (ACC) — and that is not even to mention the storied upset of Michigan when the Mountaineers were an FCS upstart.
Other Sun Belt Conference schools have made giant leaps in their competitiveness, too. On the same weekend that App State was holding court on the road in defeating highly ranked Texas A&M last September, Marshall upset the storied Fighting Irish of Notre Dame and Georgia Southern prevailed in an offensive thriller at Nebraska.
In 2020, the “Fun Belt” had a 3-game, weekend sweep of Big 12 schools when Arkansas State thumped Kansas State, Louisiana rallied to beat Iowa State, and Coastal Carolina jumped on Kansas. Last year, Sun Belt “newbie” Old Dominion pulled off an upset of ACC power, Virginia Tech. There is nothing “hokey” about the Monarchs. They proved to be for real.
The near-upsets have had their moments, too. Last year alone, Georgia State challenged the Tar Heels of UNC in a close one, South Alabama scared Oklahoma State,
The G5 is made up of 60 schools across the country, including the American Athletic Conference (AAC), Conference-USA (C-USA), MidAmerica Conference (MAC), Mountain West Conference and, of course, the Sun Belt Conference.
According to CFB Campus Tour, the final vote came down to East Carolina’s Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and Appalachian State’s Kidd Brewer (“The Rock”) Stadium. Of course it was a popularity contest driven by enthusiastic fans but, even so, being in the final two out of 60 stadiums is pretty heady stuff.
After almost 9,000 votes were counted, Kidd Brewer Stadium (with 54.8 percent of the final vote) came out on top. There was a backlash of condemnation from ECU supporters, claiming the poll had some kind of bias and that voters were “… just looking at the pretty trees.”
Well, it is hard to see the trees in the picture at the top of this story, the moment captured by our friend Jay Howard near the start of the the Darius Rucker concert hosted at The Rock on July 29.
No argument here with the CFB Campus Tour decision.
QUESTION: Are you ready for some football?
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