TROY, Ala. — As Neal Brown stood in front of his Troy football team after its first Saturday morning scrimmage of preseason camp, he wanted to make damn sure the team knew the score. The standard is higher than ever here now. And if anybody thinks they’ve made it, they’re mistaken.



“When you watch this film, you own it,” Brown told his players. “If you did good, feel good about it and get better tomorrow. If you did bad, you own it. Because let me tell you something, this video here is going to be humbling for some of you. And some of you need to be humbled. It’s going to be real humbling for some of you, I promise you that. Because we think we’ve arrived at some spots, and we haven’t arrived.”



No, the arrival hasn’t quite happened. Troy has won 21 games over the past two seasons. It beat LSU and won the Sun Belt Conference title last season. Its 38-year-old head coach is the real deal. Its season...