AP sources: Southern Miss accepts invite to join Sun Belt

By RALPH D. RUSSO
AP College Football Writer

Southern Mississippi has accepted an invitation to join the Sun Belt Conference. The decision is another blow to Conference USA, which already had six members announce their departures this week. Two people familiar with the decision told The Associated Press that Southern Miss had agreed to leave a conference it helped found in 1995 and join the Sun Belt at a date to be determined. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the Sun Belt was not yet prepared to make an announcement and was still working on more expansion moves that it did not want to address publicly.