The South Alabama–Troy football rivalry, also known as the Battle for the Belt, is a college football rivalry game between two public universities in the U.S. state of Alabama, University of South Alabama Jaguars and the Troy University Trojans.
The South Alabama Jaguars were co-founding members of the Sun Belt Conference in 1976. Troy joined the conference in 2004 as a football-only member. In 2005, the Trojans transitioned the rest of their sports to the Sun Belt, and South Alabama and Troy began facing each other in sports other than football, since at that time, South Alabama did not have a football team.
On December 6, 2007, South Alabama's Board of Trustees approved the addition of football to the intercollegiate athletics program. The team began play in 2009 with a planned full transition to the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (Division I-A) by 2013.
In 2012, South Alabama's football team officially joined the school's other sports in the Sun Belt Conference and started to face the conference members in a full conference schedule.
In 2015, the Student Government Associations of each school came together to officially dub the rivalry the "Battle for the Belt," with a wrestling-style belt going to the winner of the rivalry annually. According to then South Alabama Student Government Association President Ravi Rajendra, "The introduction of the trophy to the rivalry will offer a new way for Jag Nation to connect with our football program. The concept behind the Belt stemmed from our student body and was accompanied by insight from our football team; the football team really liked the concept of a wrestling belt, and the Belt also plays off of the Sun Belt Conference of which both Troy and USA are members."
In 2017, the Sun Belt Conference announced to split its football member schools to two divisions starting for the 2018 season.[8][9][10] Despite the close proximity of South Alabama and Troy, the conference separated the two, Troy in the East division and South Alabama in the West. In two separate divisions this could alter the annual series between schools. A year before the 2018 football season, the conference athletic directors at that time voted in favor of having South Alabama and Troy to play every season despite not being in the same division. This rivalry will be the only protected cross-divisional series in the conference.
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