By Staff
Adam Robinson- Sports Editor
It may have come a year too late for the Troy Trojans, but at least it is now an option. The Sun Belt Conference has announced has added bowl tie-ins for their teams in three new bowls.
The Sun Belt Conference previously only had tie-ins with the New Orleans Bowl for their conference winner, but on Monday at Sun Belt Media Days in New Orleans, the conference announced that the Sun Belt now has relationships with the PapaJohns.com Bowl in Birmingham at Legion Field, the PetroSun Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana and a new bowl called the St. Petersburg Bowl in St. Petersburg.
This is good news for Troy University and its fans.
For the 2006-2007 bowl season, Troy won the conference, or tied with Middle Tennessee as some would say, but Troy earned the championship and went to the New Orleans Bowl where the Trojans defeated Rice 41-17.
Last year, Troy went 8-4 and did not get a bowl invite, but if they happen to do that again this year they could get one of these new bowls.
With the three new bowls if one of the conferences that is contractually obligated to send a team to one of those bowls fails to produce enough bowl-eligible teams, then the bowls would then take a Sun Belt eligible team before looking for an at-large addition.
Sun Belt Conference commissioner Wright Waters said he wanted the Sun Belt teams to be able to compete with other teams.
Also, Waters mentioned that all three new bowls plus the already current New Orleans bowl arre close to Troy and Troy's fans.
Trojan fans have already showed how much they love, New Orleans after the first bowl win there.
All this news of the bowl games is good news for Troy and its football team.
Troy has already shown is can play with some of the best teams and again will show that this season as the Trojans go to Ohio State, known to its fans as “The” Ohio State University.
Troy will also go to LSU and play the defending national champions.
In fact, both those teams played for the national championship last year.
Congratulations to the Sun Belt Conference on gaining these new bowls.
Hopefully the conference will get some better recognition from this.
More close to home, I want to continue to wish our All-Stars still playing in the state level tournament good luck and safe travels.
As of press time on Tuesday, our 13-year-old team had finished their tournament with a 1-3 record and our 11-and-12-year Little League team was 1-1 after their eight inning win over Russellville on Monday. They were set to play Huntsville Tuesday night.
I had not heard anything from the 14-year-old team.
We have only 12 more days until the first day of football practice and only 36 more days until high school football in the area starts.
Can you feel it? Are you ready?
Before long, the AHSAA will be releasing their preseason polls for each classification and football preview sections will be coming out soon. I can't wait, can you?
Until Sunday when we meet again here or out in the sports world, God bless.