New USM coach unbothered by another round of low summer expectations
The Sun Belt coaches placed Southern Miss 5th-place finish in the West according to the preseason poll released by the league Monday and did so without selecting a single player to the first or second all-conference team.
The Golden Eagles are under the management of their third head coach in three years and are 138th out of 138 teams in returning production, per ESPN.
The only believer the league has in USM is the head man himself, Blake Anderson, who gave the Golden Eagles a first-place vote in the poll.
“I picked us to win our division because my expectations don’t change,” Anderson said Thursday at Sun Belt Media Days. “We have got to find a way, I don’t care what it looks like. Whatever it takes to win.”
Anderson said he’s surprised league coaches didn’t pick the Eagles to finish last. If that sounds familiar, Charles Huff said the same thing on the same stage a year ago when USM was again picked to finish fifth.
Huff and company would land in a three-way tie for second by season’s end, but that was a different situation from Anderson’s. Huff had returning FBS production littered throughout the roster, even if much of it came in a different uniform.
Southern Miss has one returning starter on offense in center Brock Roman and none on defense. It did not add standouts from conference rivals and added few FBS snaps in general.
Anderson said he has more than 70 new players on the roster. For those keeping count, that’s actually less turnover than Huff’s roster flip. But Anderson’s new group comes from FBS practice squads, FCS call-ups and even Division II.
“If you’re looking at us on paper, there’s probably very few expectations and from a lot of people,” Anderson said. “We see the exact opposite. We see the challenge and opportunity to go out and do something extremely special.”
On the flip side of the SBC coaches estimate is James Madison, defending champions and the preseason’s projected East Division winners despite coming into the year 136th in returning production under first-year coach Billy Napier.
But the Dukes have something USM doesn’t: stability amidst chaos. James Madison is on its third coach in four seasons and yet has done no worse than 9-4 over the last three years despite significant portal losses and coaching staff transitions.
It helps that Napier is a former SBC championship winning head coach having done so at Louisiana. And though he has a roster with 63 players that were not in Harrisonburg for JMU’s run to the College Football Playoff, he has over 40 that were.
“Success leaves behind clues,” Napier said. “There were a lot of conversations with coaches that have been here in the past. We’ve leaned on the players, a little bit. The 49 players that are returning from last year’s team have been huge... We’re fortunate that a big chunk of those guys have played for (Curt) Cignetti and (Bob) Chesney. They’ve been through a transition year before.”
But coaches in general brush aside their own summer polls. Troy third-year coach Gerad Parker knows firsthand the futility of projecting a transfer portal-era Group of Six field.
The Trojans were picked to finish second in the West ahead of Parker’s debut in 2024 largely due to being the reigning back-to-back Sun Belt champs and completing ignorant of an entirely new roster and coaching staff. Troy would finish 4-8 and sixth in the division.
Sun Belt coaches nailed Troy sixth in the 2025 preseason poll the following summer. It would go on to win eight games and a division title.
“The expectation was set on January 13 to win the league, certainly not on polls,” Parker said. “You can’t pay any attention to it.”
Southern Miss will challenge the few expectations laid out for it beginning Sept. 5 when it hosts Alcorn State to open the season.
This story was originally published July 16, 2026 at 4:31 PM.
