2025 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Sun Belt

Last week we looked at how Sun Belt teams fared in terms of yards per play. This week, we turn our attention to how the season played out in terms of the Adjusted Pythagorean Record, or APR. For an in-depth look at APR, click here. If you didn’t feel like clicking, here is the Reader’s Digest version. APR looks at how well a team scores and prevents touchdowns. Non-offensive touchdowns, field goals, extra points, and safeties are excluded. The ratio of offensive touchdowns to touchdowns allowed is converted into a winning percentage. Pretty simple actually. 

Once again, here are the 2025 Sun Belt standings.

And here are the APR standings with conference rank in offensive touchdowns, touchdowns allowed, and APR in parentheses. This includes conference games only with the championship game excluded.

Finally, Sun Belt teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

I use a game and a half as a somewhat arbitrary standard to determine if a team over or underachieved relative to their APR. By that standard, Arkansas State overachieved and Georgia State underachieved. The Red Wolves and Panthers also over and underachieved when compared to their performances in Net YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. 

The Champs Are Here

Division I football officially split into I-A and I-AA in 1978. The nomenclature has changed. I-A is now known as the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and I-AA is known as the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). In the nearly half century since the split, the top FCS programs have 'graduated' to the FBS ranks, with North Dakota State serving as the latest example. The Bison have been on a dynastic run, winning the FCS title ten times in the past fifteen seasons. With that in mind, I wanted to find out how many FCS champions will be playing in the FBS in 2026. 

The FCS has crowned 48 champions since 1978. 23 individual schools have won those 48 titles. The 23 schools are listed chronologically below based on the year they won their first FCS title. If a school won multiple titles, the other championship years are also listed. Those schools that will be playing at the FBS level in 2026 are color coded blue. 

Eleven of the 23 schools to win FCS titles will be playing at the FBS level in 2026. Those eleven schools have combined to win 29 of the 48 FCS titles. In addition, of the ten schools to win multiple FCS titles, five are playing in the FBS. The FCS really is sending its best and brightest to the FBS. Five of the eleven teams to make the jump (Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, James Madison, Marshall, and Louisiana-Monroe or Northeast Louisiana as they were known previously) currently play in the Sun Belt and another (Western Kentucky) is a former Sun Belt member. 

Finally, you may notice that Florida A&M is shaded a different color. While the Rattlers are current denizens of the Southwestern Athletic Conference in FCS, they attempted to make a go of it in FBS in 2004. The move lasted just one season and is not greatly remembered by most college football fans. However, I would highly recommend Bill Connelly's retrospective on the team if you have any interest in HBCU football. 

Thanks for reading as we conclude yet another season of YPP and APR recaps. Week Zero is thirteen weeks from Saturday. Thats still a quarter of the year, but its much closer than it was when we started these write ups. We'll be taking about a month break, but fear not, the First Half Point Differential recaps will drop in early July. Then I'll take my annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas to make some futures bets and before you know it, we'll be in full countdown mode. Enjoy the early part of summer and we'll see you after the 4th.