NEW ORLEANS - As unlikely as it seems, Florida Atlantic carries the banner for the Sun Belt Conference tonight.
And Troy, the league's best football team all season except for a four-hour period, is sitting at home, still trying to figure out what happened.
The Trojans were on their way to the New Orleans Bowl, or surely some bowl game. They'd beaten their first six Sun Belt opponents by at least 17 points, and their only losses all year were respectable ones to three Southeastern Conference teams who are all playing in January bowls. The Trojans scored 93 points in those games against Arkansas (46-26), Florida (59-31) and Georgia (44-34).
All that came tumbling down on Dec. 1 when, on their home turf, Troy watched a 9-7 lead turn into a 35-12 deficit in a period of 13 minutes. That was too much of a hole for even the Trojans' potent offense, and Florida Atlantic stole away from the Alabama plains with a share of the league title and the Sun Belt's berth in tonight's Crescent City game.
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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com