PARK CITY, Utah — For the first 30 years of the Big Sky Conference, stability ruled supreme although expansion and retraction have long been a part of the storied history of the conference.
The league founded in 1963 included charter members Idaho, Idaho State, Montana, Montana State and Weber State. In 1970, Boise State and Northern Arizona joined the fold. In 1978, the league elected to move up from Division II to play I-AA football and the following year, Nevada joined the conference. In 1987, Eastern Washington came aboard, giving the Big Sky nine teams, a number that would hold steady for most of the next 20 years despite departures and replacements.
In 1992, Nevada left for the Big West. In 1996, Idaho and Boise State followed suit, forcing the Big Sky to add Cal State-Northridge, Sacramento State and Portland State. CS-Northridge cut football in 2000, leaving the Big Sky in search of a ninth team for more than half a decade. In 2006, Northern Colorado made the jump to Division I and is now entering its second decade in the Big Sky.
Although 17 different schools have called the Big Sky home over the last 53 years, the league held no more than nine teams for most of its history, giving the conference the ability to play an eight-game round-robin schedule and determine a true champion. With the most recent expansion in 2012 — the Big Sky absorbed the Great West of North Dakota, Southern Utah, UC Davis and Cal Poly — the league has created new challenges internally with a field of 13 teams. Each season, each respective school does not play four other members.
“The bigger you get, the more issues you are going to have scheduling,” Weber State head coach Jay Hill said. “Can you just keep adding and adding? Then it becomes a logistical nightmare.”
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The evolution only stands to continue. In 2018, the University of Idaho will rejoin the Big Sky as a full-time member after a 20-year football hiatus. The Vandals rejoined the league in all other sports in 2014.
“What does scheduling for football look like moving forward going to a 14-team league?” new commissioner Andrea Williams said at the Big Sky Kickoff media conference earlier this week. “We don’t have it all figured out yet and we don’t have all the answers but those are conversations that we will continue to have whether it’s an 8-game conference schedule or whether it’s nine.
“We are going over any different scheduling format as we move forward not only to ensure that the integration of Idaho goes smoothly but also that the Big Sky continues to be competitive across the country when it comes to FCS championships.”
In her first official address to the league — Williams officially took over for Doug Fullerton on July 1 — the Big Sky’s new commissioner said discussions in terms of the future of the league, from further expansion to retraction to potential divisional play were all on the table. She said divisional play could ease the burden on student-athletes when it comes to travel and the financial burden of member schools in the vast geographical conference.
She emphasized that she wanted member school presidents, athletic directors and head football coaches to all be involved in the decisions. Williams said the number of member schools was “arbitrary” and that the league needs to continue to search for “what’s right for the Big Sky.” She also said a primary concern regardless of if the league expands, retracts or stands pat at 14 teams is the issue of continuing to build competitive non-conference schedules in the future.
“Our teams are scheduling out to 2020, 2021 already. How are we sensitive and mindful to what those contracts are that are out there that exist already? We need to be,” Williams said.
When the league last expanded in 2012, the thought was the raise the Big Sky’s national profile in an effort to get at least four teams into the playoffs each season. During the days of the nine-team league, the Big Sky earned three playoff bids four different times. Over the last four seasons, only once has more than three teams from the league advanced to the FCS playoffs.
With the addition of a 14th team two years from now, the further emphasis on garnering national prominence and lobbying for more guaranteed spots in the 24-team postseason field becomes more essential.
“There are some teams in this league that I thought should’ve been in the playoffs last year,” Portland State head coach Bruce Barnum, who’s team earned the No. 6 seed in last season’s playoffs, said at the Big Sky Kickoff. “I’m just a coach but I want the playoff situation addressed. Let’s do it so those decisions aren’t made on the final day, the final hour.
“Maybe have (the committee) meet in San Francisco, the West Coast. Your meeting starts at 11. Here’s some coffee, one day out of your life, get you some muffins. We’ll send you some Voodoo Donuts for Christ sake. That way it’s fair across the time zones and our teams aren’t getting left out last minute.”
Last season, the Vikings screamed to a pair of FBS victories along with wins over five ranked FCS teams to earn a seed and a home playoff game. But Southern Utah was sent on the road for the first round of the playoffs despite its first-ever Big Sky title and a roster flush with NFL talent. North Dakota won three straight games down the stretch and held a resume that included a win at Portland State and an FBS win over Wyoming, yet UND was left out of the playoff picture. Northern Arizona stormed to seven victories and scored more than 40 points every week the last six weeks of the season but a season-ending 49-41 loss to Southern Utah kept NAU out of the playoffs as well.
“Hopefully, we can work something that gets more teams in the playoffs,” said Montana head coach Bob Stitt, who’s Grizzlies beat South Dakota State 24-17 in the first round of the playoffs before being eliminated by North Dakota State. “This is a great league and a lot of teams deserve to be in the FCS playoffs. I felt like we probably got shorted a couple of teams last year.”
Barnum, for one, wants divisions. He said he has no preference for East-West, North-South or other ideas. He just wants to form something with continuity that might mean more postseason recognition for the league.
“I’m about as complicated as a duck in the mud,” Barnum said. “But I want two Divisions. I don’t care if it’s guys in the middle, guys on the outside. I want to parlay that to some more guaranteed playoffs spots. Give us four, that’s our minimum. There’s enough schools out here to do that and we deserve it.”
New Montana State head coach Jeff Choate has spent the last 11 years as an assistant at various FBS schools. He’s made stops in the SEC (Florida), the Mountain West (Boise State) and the Pac 12 (Washington State and most recently Washington). He has seen divisional play since the beginning of this decade and is not sure how it would translate to the Big Sky.
“It does help the scheduling but I don’t see a value other than that at our level because we are not going to play a league championship game so it could actually hurt you in some regards,” Choate said. “The first domino that has to fall is are they going to go to a 12th game at the FCS level? If we go to a 12-game schedule at the FCS level, we have to go to a nine-game conference schedule.
Williams comes to the Big Sky after spending the last 11 years in the Big Ten. One of America’s biggest and most prestigious football conferences still has eight of its founding members from its inaugural year in 1896. The league has continued to grow, adding Penn State in 1990 along with Nebraska in 2011 and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014, the latter three during Williams’ time with the conference.
Expansion is prevalent across the college football landscape as realignment continues. Earlier this week, the Big XII stated its intent to add two teams to return to its moniker of 12. Boise State and BYU were potential suitors, additions that could affect the Big Sky.
“That’s what you are seeing from the top and if they are doing it, why not us?” Sacramento State head coach Jody Sears said of his thoughts on expansion. “This is good football. We have guys in the NFL. We have teams who have won national championships. But the core values of the conference and the unity we have has to stay. I think we have a good brand, a good identity and with now with the new commissioner, we are extremely healthy.”
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