Trojans

Larry Blakeney spent nineteen seasons on the sideline at Troy, and it is his name that still marks the turf at Veterans Memorial Stadium, where the field carries his own. He arrived when the program was still finding its level and left it a Sun Belt Conference power, which says something about how far this club has travelled since it first took the field in 1909, four decades after the university itself opened its doors as a teacher-training school.

The Trojans were not always the Trojans. For four decades they went by the Red Wave, a name dropped in 1973 because it sat too close to Alabama's Crimson Tide for comfort — students voted for a change, reviving a nickname that had briefly surfaced back in the 1920s.

Troy's honours read like a record of level-jumping: an NAIA title in 1968, then two NCAA Division II championships in the mid-1980s, won as the school pushed toward bigger competition. Since arriving in the Sun Belt Conference, they have taken the league outright eight times, including three straight years either side of 2023, proof the climb never really stopped.

None of that means as much in Troy, Alabama, as the first Saturday the Trojans meet South Alabama. The two sides play for the Battle for the Belt, and whichever way that game goes tends to set the tone for how the whole season is remembered around here.