The Sun Belt, including incoming member in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, then merged with the American South Conference, made up of Arkansas State University, Louisiana Tech University, the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), the University of Texas–Pan American (now merged into the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), New Orleans (re-joined), Lamar University, and the University of Central Florida. New Orleans competed as an independent before joining the newly formed American South Conference in 1987.Īfter the 1990–91 basketball season, all members of the Sun Belt, except Western Kentucky, South Alabama, and Jacksonville, departed for other conferences. New Orleans was forced out of the league in 1980 due to its small on-campus gymnasium that the conference did not deem suitable for conference competition. Over the next ten years the conference would add Western Kentucky University, Old Dominion University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Virginia Commonwealth University. The Sun Belt Conference was founded on August 4, 1976, with the University of New Orleans, the University of South Alabama, Georgia State University, Jacksonville University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the University of South Florida. History Original Sun Belt logo from 1976.

The 14 member institutions of the Sun Belt are distributed across the Southern United States. Its football teams participate in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Originally a non-football conference, the Sun Belt began sponsoring football in 2001. The Sun Belt Conference ( SBC) is a collegiate athletic conference that has been affiliated with the NCAA's Division I since 1976. For the region of the southern United States, see Sun Belt.

This article is about the college athletic conference.

Sunbelt conference 2020