See http://collegefootballbelt.com/ for more details, but this is the main issue for this thread:
Other SDMB threads on The Belt:
College Football Belt – Who’s next?
The College Football Belt
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What happens if Clemson keeps it? Who will take it from them?
What happens if WVU wins it? How long could they keep it?
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Other topics of your own?
No matter who is holding it Thursday morning, I expect it’ll change hands plenty next year due to the parity in the ACC and BigXII (or Big East, depending if WVA gets out right away or not). Regardless, go Tigers!
I think Auburn plays Clemson in Atlanta in the first week next season.
Indeed! Justice will return – if Clemson gets past WVU tomorrow night.
I have not been able to find a reliable schedule for Clemson for 2012 past their first three games. Haven’t checked for WVU yet.
Of all the permutations of games with potential Belt connotations, I just thought it would be fun to see where things could go if they really went crazy. Like, how quickly could The Belt get to a Division 2 team? Stuff like that.
Well, hoping this is better than nothing for perhaps generating a few comments, here’s all I have been able to track down about the 2012 schedules:
Clemson
Date Opponent
Saturday 09/01/12 Auburn Tigers Georgia Dome, Atlanta, GA
Saturday 09/08/12 Ball State Cardinals Memorial Stadium, Clemson, SC
Saturday 09/15/12 Furman Paladins Memorial Stadium, Clemson, SC
West Virginia
Date Opponent
Saturday 09/01/12 Marshall Thundering Herd Mountaineer Field, Morgantown, WV
Saturday 09/08/12 at Florida State Seminoles Doak Campbell Stadium, Tallahassee, FL
Saturday 09/15/12 James Madison Dukes FedEx Field, Landover, MD
My prediction is that Clemson will have the belt at least until ACC play next season. Obviously, that means I think they’ll win tonight.
I think Tahj Boyd is just a soph, so that will help a ton for next year. Also, Auburn, despite being in the S-E-C! S-E-C!! S-E-C!!! isn’t up to the level of LSU, Bama, or Florida (over the past 5-10 years). They were great in '04 when they had 2 NFL running backs and an NFL qb, and then a once-in-a-lifetime qb last season. Other than that, they seem to me to be a perennial 2nd tier program at best. They’re also losing Malzahn, which won’t help their current qb (whoever that may be). But that game is 9+ months away, so my prediction is subject to change.
No problems with your evaluation of Auburn’s current situation, but there is the fact that until Clemson won this past year it had been 14 meetings (since 1951 – see here for details) since Clemson had won a game from them. I think that will weigh in to the dynamics of the game in September, and it’s also a quicker road for The Belt to get back to the SEC where it belongs!
I’m truly torn between wanting Clemson to lose tonight or to wait and bring The Belt back to Auburn in the fall.
Yeah, but, being a numbers guy, you should know that a coin landing heads 18 times in a row doesn’t make it any likelier to land heads on the 19th try. If I’m on Clemson’s team, the weight of 60 years without a win against AU isn’t on my mind, knowing I just beat them 12 months earlier. These programs are hardly Notre Dame-Navy, where after Navy’s first win in decades a few years ago, they started looking to see if the sky was green.
All true, and I can relate to Lewis Grizzard’s referring to Clemson as “Auburn with a lake” as an example of the friendly rivalry that I perceive exists for the most part between the schools’ fanbases. But that “weight of numbers” thing does creep into attitudes more than it ought to. Just lately my favorite pro team managed to break the Colts’ losing streak and it stung at least as bad as the Clemson win did early this year.
The path through Auburn puts it back in USC’s hands sooner, but I can’t root for Clemson under any circumstances, so here’s hoping the Mountaineers can pull off the upset.
In this post in the other “Belt” thread you can see that The Belt has changed hands only within the FBS conferences, but by looking over the list of schools that have played games where The Belt was at stake you can see that there have been a good number of chances where the FBS might lose control of it.
The Clemson and WVU schedules could allow that to happen in September if luck plays a hand.
As soon as reliable schedules get posted it’s going to be fun (for me at least) to see what path(s) The Belt might take before returning to the Big Boys.
It’s perhaps worth noting that as of this post time there’s not even a school page for Marshall at http://collegefootballbelt.com/index.htm so the potential for some far-afield moves for The Belt is about as good as it’s been in a while.
Speculate away! We have until September for the dust to begin to settle. No telling where conference changes will take us.
It makes you wonder if The Belt will have any bearing on the intensity of the WVU-Marshall rivalry, or if it will even be noticed. Anybody close to that issue who can shed some light there?
If you Google “college football belt” you’ll see that the SDMB is not the only site discussing it. Maybe it will catch on as some side-trivia before too many more seasons. Especially if it starts wandering into lower divisions.