The Sun Belt is the last FBS conference that will still be split into divisions in 2024, and commissioner Keith Gill said Tuesday that’s likely to continue.

The SEC, Big Ten and Mid-American Conference have all scrapped divisional play, instead sending their top two teams in the overall standings to their championship games. The Sun Belt, however, still has 7-team East and West Divisions, though there were some offseason discussions about changing that, Gill said.

“We decided that really was the best course of action for us, relative to the games that we’re trying to play and the opponents that we’re trying to make sure our teams see regularly, what we’re trying to do to support our fans,” Gill said at Sun Belt Media Days in New Orleans. “We brought together a lot of historical rivalries when we added schools and we want to do everything we can to facilitate as many kind of competitions between those teams as possible.”

As Gill noted, the Sun Belt added four members in 2023, with Marshall, Old Dominion, James Madison and Southern Miss all coming on-board. The league did so with regional rivalries in mind, rather than large TV markets, as other conferences might have done.

“I would say that we’ll always evaluate it,” Gill said. “We certainly will as we look through this first year of the (12-team College Football Playoff), if we notice that we could put ourselves in a better kind of advantageous situation with some modifications or changes, we’ll certainly consider those. … We’re never gonna say that it’s always going to be that way. If we see factors that indicate we should change it, we’ll certainly consider that.

“But right now we feel really good about it. We feel that’s a core part of who we are and we’re gonna kind of keep moving forward in, in the direction of having divisions.”

Many Sun Belt teams have more than one traditional rival, something that would be difficult to protect in a non-division setup. South Alabama could always play Troy, for example, but might not be able to face Louisiana or Southern Miss each season with the way schedules would rotate without divisions.

Georgia Southern coach Clay Helton said he — or more importantly, his team’s fans — couldn’t imagine a setup where the Eagles weren’t playing both long-time rival Appalachian State and in-state rival Georgia State each year.

“Georgia Southern and App State that is a great college rivalry that you want each and every year,” Helton said. “I think commissioner Gill and our presidents did a great job of the decisions of being able to split the conference to keep those rivalries that we had — whether we were an FCS teams before 2014 or moving to FBS. There’s some natural, great games that our college fan bases are very passionate about, that may not happen in other conferences that are spread apart. But we have a definite region of 14 teams over 10 states that these natural rivalries happen. And because of that, I think that is a natural separation in East and West conference that provides great Saturdays.

“As a coach who has been doing it for three decades, I’m a fan of it. To be honest with you, I would never want to see that App State game not play, the Georgia State game, not play. Those are special. Part of college football is tradition and I hope that tradition doesn’t change.”

The College Football Playoff expands to 12 teams this year, with the Group of 5 conferences (Sun Belt, Conference USA, American, MAC and Mountain West) guaranteed at least one spot. A G5 champion could also secure one of the seven at-large spots should they be rated high enough.

Nevertheless, there has been talk of a G5-only playoff and even a separate Top 25 rankings for the Group of 5. Gill said those in the Sun Belt “just really aren’t interested” in such lesser accolades.

“The Sun Belt is fully committed to the CFP and only wants to participate in polls and postseason that includes all nine FBS conferences and Notre Dame,” Gill said. “We do not seek greatness with caveats. We just seek greatness.”