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How the Sun Belt writers ranked the coaching jobs within their own conference.

South Alabama is a mediocre job, unless you ask our USA guy. Georgia State is great... maybe. And Coastal Carolina??? What?!

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Arkansas State Appalachian State Coastal Carolina Georgia Southern Georgia State Idaho Louisiana ULM NMSU Texas State Troy South Alabama
Will Butler 1 4 7 2 9 11 3 10 12 6 5 8
Nic Lewis 1 4 8 2 7 12 3 11 9 6 5 10
TK Sherrill 1 4 7 2 9 11 3 10 12 6 5 8
Jeremy Harper 1 2 7 4 5 12 3 10 11 6 8 9
Haisten Willis 2 3 4 1 8 12 5 9 11 7 6 10
Chris Kay 2 1 7 3 5 12 4 11 10 6 8 9
Jeremy Adcock 1 3 7 2 8 12 4 11 10 6 5 9
Jared Kalmus 1 4 9 2 6 12 3 10 11 5 8 7

Collective panel rankings:

1. Arkansas State

Haisten's homer pick aside, pretty much everyone agreed that this is the best job in the Sun Belt. And given all that they've accomplished this decade, why not?

2. Georgia Southern

Jeremy Harper may not have been overly impressed with the Eagles, but everyone else was. Unless Tyson Broad disappoints, #GATA is going to be a serious pain in the ass for everyone in the conference going forward.

3. Louisiana

They're still a top 4 job to us for now, especially with Mark Hudspeth still playing his part as the spirit animal of every enraged Cajun in Acadiana. Keywords being "for now."

4. Appalachian State

It's already good job that could easily become a great job. Both Jeremys certainly believe so, and Chris even listed them #1 for fan loyalty and on-field consistency. TK was too busy yelling at App State's athletic department for holding a whiteout to put together a homer ranking for his alma mater.

5. Troy

One of the consistently ranked middle-of-the-pack teams. Larry Blakeney built too much at Troy for it to be a bottom third program in this conference, but they have most definitely been passed by everyone above them in this list.

6. Texas State

[writes, deletes Dennis Franchione 6-6 record joke, writes again but in brackets this time]

7. Coastal Carolina

How does our panel rank a current FCS school over 5 FBS programs? I'm guessing we all just want to go to Myrtle Beach.

8. Georgia State

GSU was the biggest source of disagreement among our panelists. Rankings for the desirability of the Panthers' head coaching job ranged from a top 5 job to the bottom 25%. Keep an eye on GSU the next few years, as they seem equally likely to find wild success or crash out and implode. Chris says they have the biggest upside of any non-top-four team, but that's not enough to move much further until the realize it.

9. South Alabama

I was unwittingly able to talk up Mobile resident Nic Lewis from ranking the Jaguars last, but he certainly is far from impressed with them. So much so that he rated NMSU, who won't have a conference in two years, as a better job. OUCH.

10. ULM

There was a pretty strong consensus that being the Warhawks' head coaching job will be the toughest in the Sun Belt once the western schools are kicked out following the 2017 season. They'd better hope the price of oil rebounds or that Louisiana somehow finds some way of funding higher educati---*laughs hysterically*

11. NMSU

The general consensus was that FBS independence and an Aggie program still willing to invest in its future is a better job than their counterparts in Moscow that have officially tapped out of playing at the highest level of college football.

12. Idaho

:(