There are now just seven Saturdays until Georgia Southern football returns to the gridiron and this past week, the first of several preseason teams and odds have surfaced.

Phil Steele’s Sun Belt preseason team

Phil Steele is one of the nation’s most well known and most brilliant college football analysts. Every year, Steele releases a magazine with more than 300 pages of college football stats, schedules, predictions and everything needed for college football fans to understand the upcoming season.

Part of this magazine comes with preseason all-conference teams, including the All-Sun Belt team.

Highlighting the 2018 All-Sun Belt team is senior defensive end Logan Hunt. Hunt played in all 12 games last season, racking up 32 total tackles, 11 of those being tackles for loss.

Though Hunt was the lone Eagle to receive a first-team honor, 10 other Eagles were listed on the publication’s preseason team.

Senior running back Wesley Fields, sophomore defensive end Raymond Johnson III, junior cornerback Monquavion Brinson and redshirt junior kicker Tyler Bass were all named to the second-team All-Sun Belt.

GS had three third-team selections in senior offensive linemen Curtis Rainey and Jeremiah Culbreth and redshirt sophomore quarterback Shai Werts. Redshirt senior tight end Ellis Richardson, senior inside linebacker Tomarcio Reese and junior cornerback Kindle Vildor on the fourth-team rounded out the Eagles’ 11 selections.

Sun Belt championship futures in Vegas

Sports betting was legalized earlier this summer and that makes gambling more widespread. While betting hasn’t been legalized in Georgia, there are ways to place bets on the Sun Belt Championship after the future odds were released by the Las Vegas SuperBook over the weekend.

The Eagles begin tied with Louisiana-Monroe at 12-1 odds, earning them the fourth best odds to win the inaugural Sun Belt Championship game.

6-time Sun Belt champions Arkansas State has the best odds at 5-4 followed by last season’s co-champion Troy at 9-5. The other co-champion from 2017, Appalachian State, opens as a 5-2 team to win the conference.

Georgia State and Louisiana are tied at 30-1 odds to win with South Alabama close behind at 50-1. Coastal Carolina and Texas State have the worst odds to win the conference at 100-1 odds.

The Eagles will begin preseason camp on Friday, Aug. 3, just under a month before their first game of the season on Sept. 1 against South Carolina State.

McClain Baxley, The George-Anne Sports Editor, gasports@georgiasouthern.edu