Butch Jones, Justin Parks, Melique Straker will represent Arkansas State at SBC Media Days

The 2023 Sun Belt football season will officially kick off with Sun Belt Football Media Days on Tuesday, July 25, and Wednesday, July 26. For the third-straight year, the event will be held at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel in downtown New Orleans, La., and will be broadcast nationwide on ESPN+. The media days attendees—the head coach and two student-athletes from each program—representing the Sun Belt West Division are listed below. The group includes reigning Sun Belt Coach of the Year Troy head coach Jon Sumrall alongside three All-Sun Belt First Team, one All-Sun Belt Second Team, one All-Sun Belt Third Team and three All-Sun Belt Honorable Mention selections from a year ago. Sun Belt West Division programs—Arkansas State, Louisiana, ULM, South Alabama, Southern Miss, Texas State and Troy—will participate in Sun Belt Football Media Days on Tuesday, July 25. Sun Belt East Division programs—App State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, James Madison, Marshall and Old Dominion—will appear on Wednesday, July 26. ARKANSAS STATE Butch Jones (Head Coach) Melique Straker (Sr., LB – Brampton, Ontario, Canada) Justin Parks (Jr., S – Gardendale, Ala.) LOUISIANA Michael Desormeaux (Head Coach) Neal Johnson (Sr., TE – Mesquite, Texas) K.C. Ossai (Jr., LB – Conroe, Texas) ULM Terry Bowden (Head Coach) Jiya Wright (Sr., QB – Fort Wayne, Ind.) Adin Huntington (Jr., DL – Stafford, Va.) SOUTH ALABAMA Kane Wommack (Head Coach) Carter Bradley (Sr., QB – Jacksonville, Fla.) Yam Banks (Jr., S – Ridgeland, Miss.) SOUTHERN MISS Will Hall (Head Coach) Frank Gore Jr. (Jr., RB – Miami, Fla.) Jay Stanley (Sr., S – Greenwood, Miss.) TEXAS STATE GJ Kinne (Head Coach) Nash Jones (Jr., OL – Nacogdoches, Texas) Tory Spears (RS Sr., S – Houston, Texas) TROY Jon Sumrall (Head Coach) Clayton Ollendieck (Sr., TE – Cresco, Iowa) Reddy Steward (Sr., CB – Decatur, Ala.) Heading into the 2023 season, the Sun Belt continues to lead the FBS with a .614 bowl winning percentage since the dawn of the College Football Playoff era in 2014. The 2022 campaign—the conference’s first as a 14-team football league—was a banner year for the Sun Belt, which defeated four autonomy five programs, hosted ESPN’s College GameDay for the second time in conference history and produced a conference-record seven Bowl Season participants—tied for the most among non-autonomy conferences and trailing only the SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Big 12. Three of the conference’s victories over autonomy five programs came on a statement Saturday in Week 2, when the Sun Belt became the first non-autonomy conference to knock off multiple Top 10-ranked opponents on the same day in nearly two decades (Sept. 20, 2003). On the heels of these victories, the conference launched its Sun Belt Rising campaign, which featured in Times Square leading into College GameDay, Los Angeles during CFP week, each of the conference’s seven bowl markets during Bowl Season and each of the conference’s 14 institutional markets during the 2022 campaign. The conference was home to the last two unbeaten teams and the last one-loss team from a non-autonomy conference in 2022 and was the lone non-autonomy conference to have multiple teams reach 10 wins during the regular season. No. 24 Troy (12-2) finished the year as 1-of-2 two-loss teams from non-autonomy conferences, alongside New Year’s Six representative No. 16 Tulane (12-2). The Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship Game—which Troy won 45-26 over Coastal Carolina to claim its conference record seventh Sun Belt title—was the lone conference championship game to feature a pair of teams with two-or-fewer losses in 2022. Sun Belt champion and No. 24-ranked Troy also proved victorious in the Duluth Trading Cure Bowl—the only bowl game to feature a pair of conference champions in 2022—defeating Conference USA champion and No. 25 UTSA, 18-12.