When listening to the Sun Belt Media Day pressers, it gets a bit monotonous. A bunch of long-time football coaches are trying to build excitement but not reveal their hands. And for 13 of the coaches, there was a common thread in that they indulged the annoyance over NIL, paying players, the transfer portal, unlimited transfers and everything over the last four years that makes up The Current Landscape of College Athletics.

It’s a common refrain of fans, mainly because either they don’t understand it or they really don’t think college athletes should be paid.

Oh, how we hate this! Why can’t it be like it used to be!

It was a chorus the former App State Head Coach would join in on. A man uncomfortable with NIL and the transfer portal who had to embrace it.

Then you got Dowell Loggains. Publicly, he seems perfectly fine with it. His reasoning is simple: he was an NFL coach and is used to contract negotiations. It’s the same thing now in college.

Dowell sounded completely different than every other Sun Belt coach. A breath of fresh air? Maybe. What he does sound like is why Athletic Director Doug Gillin hired him.

Paying players, the transfer portal and agents for these players isn’t going away. That’s what Dowell pitched to App State and why he’s the head coach. And the whole “can build offenses around the personnel” thing.

Dowell told a story of last year, when the South Carolina coaches went on vacation before fall camp, he completely rewrote the offensive playbook. Imagine any of the previous App State coaches doing that? The last one was Jerry Moore in 2004, going to the Spread Option, and he wanted to abandon it after the opening game. In that instance, it was known that App State was changing offenses and what it was changing to.

In 2025? The fans have no clue. And even after Friday, they might not have a clue when next week looks like. Or the next week. It could be a different QB, different setup, different defense, different everything. And Dowell seems like the type of coach that would change things.
In some ways, Dowell is that breath of fresh air, but in others, he’s suffocating. No two-deep, no starting QB, we don’t even know which coaches are in the booth and on the field. But we know he texted with Matt Hasselbeck and Danny Amendola last week.

Dowell is selling NFL dreams to his players. It’s the endgame for every college player, no matter the odds. Dowell knows all these NFL players and communicates regularly with them. It gives hope to players that if they buy into his system, he can get them to the League.

The late Mike Leach had a great quote about the NFL. He says it makes certain people feel good to say those initials. The N. F. L. It’s like Huckleberry Finn saying some days you’ve got to swear to get a good taste in your mouth. Dowell Loggains feels fulfilled when he mentions the National Football League, the end-all, be-all of the sport of football.
Dowell speaks not of championships, but of getting his players to play their absolutely best and getting the most out of them.

Through that, and eliminating mistakes, Dowell believes he can win football games. And at App State, winning football games gets the program to what is The Important Thing: winning trophies and rings.

Every FBS school has The Important Thing, and it’s different everywhere. Alabama is winning the National Championship and winning every game. At Kansas, it’s to be fun and unproblematic until basketball season and try to beat Kansas State.

At App State, it’s winning conference championships and a bowl championship. But if you talk to Dowell, that’s not The Important Thing to him. As I write this Wednesday night, The Important Thing to him is to have a great Thursday practice. He preaches one day at a time. Can’t win in November unless you show out at Thursday practice and get this install ready.

There have been tidbits of what the gold in Fort KBS looks like this year. Word is that the team is more together this year, with the locker room not divided into position groups. Doubling up 11v11s at practice has led to increased reps for everyone. The defense is flying around like sharks. Besides that, we don’t know. There are hints that reps depend on schemes and formations, and thus, this is a big reason for the lack of a depth chart.

What we do know is the schedule. And as Woody Paige always says, look at the schedule.

8/29 (Friday)	vs. Charlotte (BoA Stadium)
9/6	Lindenwood
9/13	at Southern Miss*
9/27	at Boise State
10/4	Oregon State
10/11	at Georgia State*
10/18	Coastal Carolina*
10/25	at Old Dominion*
11/6 (Thursday)	Georgia Southern*
11/15	at James Madison*
11/22	Marshall*
11/29	Arkansas State*

Charlotte is a weird one. Neutral-site game, two teams with new coaches and new personnel. Whose QB can put their team into good positions?

Lindenwood is the FCS game on the schedule. The game App State is supposed to win. If the team is struggling at halftime, there will be loud whispers, as there should be.

Going to Southern Miss is fascinating. By all reason, they’re the defending Sun Belt Champs, with the Marshall players and coach in place. It’s a late game, but still in dog-ass southern Mississippi during the summer. Can you contain a mobile QB in 95% humidity?

Two weeks before Boise State will be needed. That’s going to be a tough one. Went to the damned College Football Playoff last year. No Jeanty, but they’re still Boise, and it’s still in Albertson Stadium. App State will likely be a big underdog going in.

Oregon State comes to Boone born out of the wait before the revived Pac-12 takes shape next year. The Beavers need to fill their schedule in 2025, so they’re going to see the foliage out east. They’ll probably come in as slight favorites, but it seems like a toss-up for a team in transition.

Georgia State never plays App State close in Atlanta. They play better in Boone than they do at home. The Panthers seem like a team still a year away, although they were in many one-score games last year. Strike early, and you can break their spirit.

Coastal has the psychological edge over App State with three wins in a row. For the first time since 2019, the Boone leg of this series is on a Saturday. And it’s Homecoming. And peak leaf season. And the Woolly Worm Festival weekend. And a lot of other things. Coastal, despite its App State success, isn’t feared by many. People don’t think Tim Beck is the guy. This sets up for a potential revenge game for the Apps.
Old Dominion in the 757 could be Ricky Rahne coaching for his job. His scheme worked well against App State each of the last two years, but was undone last year by turnovers. This won’t be easy, unless the Monarchs are in free fall.

The Old Enemy comes up for a Thursday clash, where it has mostly been in the series history: late October/early November. This Georgia Southern team is getting some hype, but they have a brutal start to the season. If Clay Helton is sitting at .500 coming in, Statesboro will be restless, and he’ll need a win in Boone.

James Madison is the out-and-out Sun Belt favorite, but I’m more tepid on the Dukes. Still, this sets up as a massive JMU revenge game for the last two years, and the Apps will need to play flawlessly to win in Harrisonburg.

Marshall, like App State, reset after last year. Even as defending Sun Belt Champs, they’re favorites for a massive dropoff. And they have trouble winning in Boone unless Randy Moss is on the team.

Arkansas State is another team that seems poised for a breakthrough, but doesn’t have the full confidence of its fanbase. Butch Jones has built the Red Wolves up after it was nothing, but is he the guy to take the next step? Or will Arkansas State fans be thinking about hunting season more by this point?

At the risk of sounding like a defeatist or completely insane, I think it’s worth remembering the reasons you go to the games. Yeah, the winning is nice, but there’s so much more than your favorite team winning. At least, there should be. We, as fans, are passengers in this Buick driven by someone who has never driven a Buick before. That someone rebuilt half the Buick in the last several months, and maybe it’ll purr on the interstate. Or we’ll be on a jack sinking into the soft clay south of Hickory. That means it won’t be good.

Some App fans don’t like Dowell because he’s not an App State Guy, for whatever that’s worth. But at least App State Guy D.J. Smith is leading the defense; we know we can trust him. Just like all the App State Guys on the previous staff that got fired.

Will it be fun? I dunno. Will it be memorable? Maybe. Will we learn who the players who play the plays are? That’s likely. Regardless, we’ll be there.

Six years ago, I remember seeing Drinkwitz and his terrible haircut hamming it up at some local event. I looked at him and thought in my soul that the 2019 App State team was going 8-4. I was wrong, but Halloween 2019 felt like four losses. Today, I met Dowell for the first time for a grand total of two seconds. I did not get that same feeling. But screw it, we’re going 8-4. Lose a game we shouldn’t have, and win one we shouldn’t have.