
100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 87: Hawaii Football Mattered

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 89: Zero Completions, Zero Problem — Georgia Southern at Florida

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 88: Big Ben from the MAC

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 90: 12-0 Deserved Better — 1998 Tulane

Back When: The day the people brought UAB football back from the dead
One hundred and eighty-one days after UAB football was declared dead, the people brought it back.

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters — No. 91: Brett Favre Beat Alabama After a Car Crash
Southern Miss was his only scholarship offer. Five weeks after a car crash nearly killed him, he started against Alabama at Legion Field.

How good is the South Alabama AD job?
Joel Erdmann built South Alabama athletics from nothing. The next AD inherits the foundation and a fundamentally different job.

The A-Train's last stop
From walk-on to all-conference center, Adam Lepkowski enters his final season at UAB

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 92: Marshall Faulk's Breakout Game

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 93: You Got Mossed

Senate strikes bipartisan deal on college sports reform — what it means for the G6
The Protect College Sports Act addresses transfers, NIL enforcement and media rights pooling. Some provisions help programs outside the Power 4. Others may lock them in place.
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100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 94: The Statue of Liberty

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 95: Josh Allen — Wyoming's $330 Million Man

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 96: The Ass Kickin' Chicken

Goose Crowder Has Played 29 Games in Five Years. He Keeps Coming Back.
Injuries took most of five college seasons from Troy's captain. His last one starts in September.

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 97: UAB Came Back from the Dead

Now It's His Team
Charles Kelly spent all spring limiting Caden Creel’s run game. The championship loss told him why.

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 98: The Blue — Boise State’s Home Turf

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters — No. 99: App State Over Michigan
September 1, 2007. Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32. In the Big House. The upset that gave every G6 fan base a permanent answer.

Play the Damn Games
James Madison just scheduled a trip to Virginia in 2028. Good. Now do the rest of them.

Ryder Burton Has the Swagger. Now He Needs the Stage.
After three schools in three years, UAB’s redshirt junior quarterback upset No. 22 Memphis the first time he started a college football game. Now he’s finally the guy — and the people around him believe it.

Bishop Davenport Went From Fourth String to South Alabama’s Foundation. Now Comes the Hard Part.
The redshirt senior’s journey from emergency duty at Utah State to a full season as the Jaguars’ starter is one of the best quarterback stories in the Sun Belt. In 2026, he has to turn it into wins.

Your Best Player Just Left. His Contract Says He Owes You. Good Luck Collecting.
NIL buyout clauses may be the only retention tool Group of 6 programs have against the transfer portal. No court has ruled on the merits.

100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 100: MACtion

We cover your team. For you.
Why I'm building Diehard Sports Network — and why it starts here

The G6 was never allowed to compound
If the College Football Playoff had started with 24 teams in 2014, 21 of 80 qualifying programs would have come from the Group of 6. Every one of them was denied the chance to build on it.

THE BOARD: Jacksonville State Basketball
Ray Harper enters his 11th year with a 600-win career, a gutted roster and the same pitch he's always made: minutes, development and a track record.

Alabama has four G6 football programs. It's time they acted like it.

THE BOARD: South Alabama Basketball
Richie Riley lost 35.9 PPG and went global to replace it — eight signings from six competitive levels across three continents

THE BOARD: Troy Basketball
Adam Howard returns to Troy after back-to-back championships, a coaching exodus and 50.7 PPG lost to the portal. The rebuild starts now.

The door that only opens from the inside
In 2003, Tulane’s president told Congress the system was rigged. Twenty-three years later, the same argument is being made by the people who thought they were on the other side.

THE BOARD: UAB Basketball
Andy Kennedy rebuilds the roster — again. The Portal King adds 12 players in a month.

USF’s Rob Higgins is building something different in Tampa — and the fan base is buying in
The only CEO of athletics in college sports has made three major coaching hires, added a Hall of Fame COO and broken ground on a $348.5 million stadium. His fan base approves at 95 percent.

The Pac-12’s tax return is a snapshot of the divide between Power 4 and everyone else
Revenue dropped from $566.6 million to $111.5 million. The rebuild projects $13.2 million per school. The gap between P4 and G6 is structural.

USF’s $350 million answer to a 30-year problem is going vertical
South Florida has never played a home game on its own campus. A $348.5 million stadium now rising in Tampa changes that in 2027.

Back When: The day Troy went to Starkville and announced itself
In their first crack at an SEC team as a I-A program, the Trojans went to Mississippi State as 26-point underdogs and won 21-9.

Alex Mortensen knows the job is hard. He wants UAB fans to know he’s not running from it.
The first-year UAB head coach gave his most detailed interview yet. Here’s what stood out for Blazer fans.

Savior or surrender: The G6 playoff proposal isn’t what it looks like
The White House wants to give the Group of 6 its own playoff. Before you celebrate, look at what they’re asking for in return — and what they’ve done every other time.

He didn’t know what football was. Now he starts for Troy.
Troy Athletics told the story of Tyler Cappi, a walk-on OL born in South Korea who didn’t discover football until age 12.

76 teams, same problem: NCAA tournament expansion won’t help the G6
Kevin Scarbinsky breaks down why the eight new at-large spots will go to 17-and-16 Auburns, not UABs.

The diehard fan, the Bones and the 911 call
A UAB super fan built a basketball version of the Battle for the Bones trophy, gave it to Penny Hardaway and threatened to call 911 when Memphis wouldn’t give it back.

The best rivalries in the Group of 6 — and the ones that should be
The UAB-Memphis beef over a JUCO big man got us thinking. What are the best G6 rivalries? And does the G6 have enough hate to sustain them?

A 24-team playoff sounds great for the Group of Six. Don't get excited yet.
Locked On College Football's Spencer McLaughlin breaks down why more playoff spots might not change anything for the G6 — and why the people making these decisions don't want it to.

They saved the program. Now they're being asked to save it again.
NIL donor fatigue is real at the Group of 6 level. The communities that built these programs are being asked to fund a system that wasn't designed for them.

Alex Mortensen is recruiting Birmingham
The first-year UAB coach is embedding himself in the city, rebuilding recruiting relationships and leaning on nine years with Nick Saban to restore the Blazers.

Back When: The day Jacksonville State hit the map
On Sept. 4, 2010, the Gamecocks walked into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium as a $300,000 sacrificial lamb. They left with an SEC scalp and a signal that the climb was just getting started.

The war never stopped
The current climate feels existential for the G6. But this class war has been raging since the first TV camera pointed at a football field — and I’ve been covering it for three decades.

Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould on rebuilding a conference from scratch: ‘This is about transformation, not transaction’
In a wide-ranging interview, Gould detailed the Pac-12’s startup mentality, Pac-12 Enterprises as a revenue engine, expansion plans and why nobody should underestimate the conference’s will to survive.

The G6 Diehard Podcast is coming
College sports through the lens of the Group of 6 — hosted by Tim Stephens

Roderick Robinson II is ready to be the guy at UAB
The former Georgia four-star spent three years learning behind one of the best defenses in the country. Now he’s bringing that education to a UAB backfield his coaches say could be the best in the American.
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