That's certainly true, but its a much different time; and you could not ask for a better time for Marshall to enter into D1 football than when we did. The planets aligned superbly and we'll not see that stretch of success ever again. Just too many things have changed in the last two decades. People need to understand that.
JMU is seeing it. It's not gone, we've just settled for bad to mediocre for a long time. I think Huff is trying to get the winning culture back. Not sure he can do it, but he's taking down teams we've never beat and winning games that were a loss in the recent past when we got down. i agree that it probably wont happen overnight anymore for established teams, but the whole Sunbelt seems to have found their stride, even the "bad" teams.
I won't even be mad if we don't win the Sunbelt, if we go out swinging. Disappointed, sure, but there's not a gimme in the whole conference except maybe USM and even they fought like hell when Texas State eased up a bit. Scared the hell out of them. We're in a tough, tough league. if you win the Sunbelt, you are legitimately one of, if not the best, teams in the G5 and 70% of the P5 or more.
We've been the best before, but we haven't been in the best league before. Big difference. Used to be biggest fish in a small pond, now we're a medium fish in a medium pond. Everyone is capable of pushing us around and anything we get will be earned. That is what the fans need to accept as our new reality. We didn't take advantage of many years of feasting on minnows and we got fat and complacent. Now we're in better shape, but it's like CUSA 2.0, when we first joined. There are decent sized sharks in this pond and they are hungry.