How a college football bowl game in the Myrtle Beach area is a step closer to reality
The NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee approved this week recommendations that would allow for the creation of three new bowls beginning in 2020, setting the stage for a proposed college bowl game at Coastal Carolina.
The bowls formats approved by the committee are for the six-year period from 2020-21 to 2025-26.
College football reporter Brett McMurphy, formerly of ESPN, cited sources in a report that named Wrigley Field in Chicago and the Myrtle Beach area as “near locks” to host two of the new bowl games. Charleston, Greenville, N.C., and Tempe, Ariz., were among the possibilities for the third new bowl.
The Myrtle Beach bowl would feature a team from the Sun Belt Conference, of which Coastal Carolina is a member, and a team from either Conference USA or the Mid-American Conference.
The Sun Belt currently has affiliations with five bowls, and the committee approved the Sun Belt for five bowl commitments through the 2025-26 season.
The bowl proposed for CCU’s Brooks Stadium would likely be held in December and broadcast on an ESPN network.
Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce executive director of sports tourism Jonathan Paris said Monday that the chamber has been in ongoing discussions with ESPN to bring a bowl game to the area and he was optimistic a deal would be consummated.
The oversight committee also maintained the current bowl eligibility criteria for Football Bowl Subdivision teams: they must win at least six games, which can include one win against a qualifying Football Championship Subdivision opponent. In order to be counted, the FCS team must average 90 percent of the permissible maximum number of football scholarships per year during a rolling two-year period.
If not enough six-win teams are available to fill bowl slots, five to seven teams with 5-7 records with the highest multi-year Academic Progress Rate scores will be eligible.
Baseball lauded
Coastal Carolina landed three players – designated hitter Zach Biermann, shortstop Seth Lancaster and first baseman Kevin Woodall Jr. – on the American Baseball Coaches Association All-Atlantic Region First Team for the first time in school history.
Coastal was the only team to have three first team selections, with Florida State, UNC Greensboro and Clemson each landing two first teamers. The ABCA All-Atlantic region is comprised of selected schools from South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
It is the fourth time three Chants were named All-Region in the same season. CCU had three players in 2010 (Anthony Meo on the first team, and Cody Wheeler and Jose Iglesias on the second team), 2011 (Tommy La Stella first team; Meo and Matt Rein second team) and 2016 (Connor Owings and G.K. Young first team; Zach Remillard second team).
Lancaster and Woodall were both seniors who were drafted in the first 10 rounds of the Major League Baseball Draft, while Biermann was a junior and is expected to return to CCU for his senior season.
Lancaster has also been named to the ABCA All-America Second Team and Biermann is a third team pick. They become the fifth and sixth Chants to be named ABCA All-Americans, joining Anthony Meo (2010, 3rd team), Tommy La Stella (2011, 2nd team), Connor Owings (2016, 1st team) and G.K. Young (2016, 1st team). Also making the 2018 ABCA All-American team were fellow Sun Belt players Joey Denison (Troy, 2nd team) and Colten Schmidt (Louisiana, 3rd team).
In addition, Lancaster was named to the Perfect Game/Rawlings College All-America First Team, and freshman centerfielder Parker Chavers has been named to a second All-America team, the Perfect Game Freshman All-America Second Team.
He had already been named a Collegiate Baseball Freshman All-American. Chavers, from Montgomery, Ala., was one of 34 freshmen to be honored by Perfect Game and just six total outfielders were selected on the first and second teams.
Schedules released
The Sun Belt Conference and Coastal Carolina have announced schedules for some fall and winter sports.
CCU’s men’s soccer schedule, including three exhibition matches, will feature 11 home matches, seven road trips and one match at a neutral site. The first exhibition is against North Carolina at home on Aug. 12.
Coastal, which reached the third round of the NCAA Tournament last season, will host UCLA on Aug. 24 and Georgetown on Aug. 26, Radford and George Mason in September, and four straight games in September and October against Portland, Maryland, USC Upstate and Appalachian State.
The Chants travel to Clemson on Oct. 16 to start a four-game road trip. The regular season ends with a home game against Georgia Southern on Nov. 2, and the Sun Belt Conference Tournament will be held Nov. 8-11 in Statesboro, Ga.
In Sun Belt basketball, the CCU men will host all conference teams but Arkansas State and Little Rock, and the women won’t host Georgia Southern and Georgia State.
The conference will utilize an 18-game conference schedule for each men’s and women’s program for a third-straight year in 2018-19.
The conference schedules will feature a mirror schedule format for the first time, however, as men’s and women’s teams will play at different venues, and not play doubleheaders, over the course of a Thursday-Saturday conference game week.
This story was originally published June 16, 2018 at 12:47 AM with the headline "How a college football bowl game in the Myrtle Beach area is a step closer to reality."