We take you now to a place far away from national rankings, 80,000-seat stadiums and sideline reporters. We take you to a place the traveling GameDay set has never visited. We take you to the Sun Belt Conference.

It isn't just for basketball anymore.

It is a place for dreamers. This jangling confederacy of geographically incompatible schools, strung out from the Idaho mountains to the Louisiana swamps, share exactly two things in common: oversized ambition and undersized football programs.

	Dwone Hicks rushed for 1,143 and 20 TDs last year.

Most are I-AA programs on steroids, puffing up their stadium capacities and football budgets just enough for admittance to the I-A brawl. It's a hard life down there at the bottom of the food chain: you get paid to be drilled by the likes of Georgia, Washington, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma (never at home), you generally occupy triple-digit power ratings in the 118-member I-A ranks, and you rarely draw the kind of crowds that will help the program turn a profit.

Mostly, you rarely win.

Last year the Sun Belt was 1-4 against I-AA opponents and won just five non-conference games. Six of the seven teams lost at least seven games. Its first-ever official league champion and bowl representative had a 5-7 record. (Take a bow, North Texas, which according to a photo caption in the Sun Belt media guide was awarded the "runnerup" trophy in the New Orleans Bowl. Um, we're pretty sure there was no third-place hardware for that one.)

So, yeah. There is reason to expect better things in Year Two. Which is why you need to meet Dwone Hicks, the embodiment of Sun Belt Conference aspirations.

He is the league's Heisman Trophy candidate, at least theoretically. The Middle Tennessee running back has his own web site, Hicks4Heisman.com, dedicated to the pie-in-the-sky goal of making him the least-likely Heisman winner ever.

(So unlikely that this very web site's story lising the 2002 Heisman contenders, long enough to include everyone but Beano Cook's grandkids, somehow failed to include Mr. Hicks.)

Dwone Hicks ran for 1,143 yards and 20 touchdowns last year, both marks that led the league. The 5-11, 225-pound hammer did that fine work as No. 33 -- but he'd always wanted to wear a single-digit number, and he asked the coaches about it heading into his senior year.

No problem, they said. Hicks was eyeing No. 3, but Middle Tennessee sports information director Mark Owens, a veteran of hyping Memphis basketball players earlier in his career, got an idea.

Why not No. 4? And why not a web site, Hicks4Heisman?

	“	I'd be a super longshot. But as long as I'm out there working hard, I think me and Middle Tennessee will be catching some people's eye this year. ”
		— Middle Tennessee RB Dwone Hicks on his Heisman hopes

Well, why not?

"I'd be a super longshot," Hicks said with a chuckle. "But as long as I'm out there working hard, I think me and Middle Tennessee will be catching some people's eye this year."

The same could be said for the whole Sun Belt, which at least is putting the necessary building blocks in place: