Brothers fight. A key part of every fraternal bond is tormenting, teasing, and fighting each other. But every young man with a brother knows the code: I get to pick on my brother, but nobody else does. Over my dead body will I watch a stranger beat him up. That’s my job.
Montana and Montana State are often characterized as brothers. And like all good brothers, they love to beat each other down and mock each other mercilessly. But occasionally, the two fan bases can find common cause in a shared injustice.
Such an occasion has arisen in the middle of the 2026 season, and it has to do with FCS polling. In Week 5, the Bobcats took a severely undermanned roster into a difficult environment on a short week to face a desperate conference opponent coming off a bye. They lost by one point in a game marred by considerable controversy surrounding the officiating. Their reward? They dropped from No. 1 to No. 6 in the STATS FCS Top 25. In Week 6, the Grizzlies took a banged-up defense on the road to a dome at 7,000 feet of elevation to face one of the better offenses in the Big Sky, and they lost by a score in a game featuring some big-time penalties that were also highly questionable. Their reward? They dropped from No. 2 to No. 7 in the same poll.
I’m here today on behalf of fans of both MSU and UM to tell you that these polls are completely worthless. They suffer from an inherent flaw that makes them totally farcical: They presume a level of parity across FCS conferences that simply does not exist. Right now, three of the top four teams are from the UAC, Southland, and Patriot League, respectively (No. 2 Tarleton State, No. 3 Stephen F. Austin, and No. 4 Lehigh). Such a ranking would make sense only if those conferences were comparable to the Big Sky Conference (BSC) and the Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC). The problem is that they aren’t comparable — not even remotely. And I can prove it.
The FCS playoff tournament provides the perfect environment for determining the relative strength of various conferences. For this article, I want to consider the past five seasons of playoff results (2021–2025). Over that span, BSC and MVFC teams have faced teams from outside those two conferences a total of 45 times. Here are the results:
- BSC/MVFC teams are 37-8 overall.
- They are 31-3 on their home fields.
- They are 6-5 on the road.
- The average point differential is +18 in favor of the BSC/MVFC team.
So teams from the Big Sky and Missouri Valley average more than seven wins per playoff season against the rest of the FCS combined. On the other hand, teams from the rest of the subdivision average fewer than two wins against the BSC and MVFC per tournament. Some may point to home-field advantage, and certainly, that is a major factor in the FCS playoffs. Nevertheless, BSC/MVFC teams still have a winning record in these matchups on the road. Furthermore, they aren’t just squeaking by. Their average margin of victory, looking only at their wins, is 24 points. By contrast, the average margin in their losses is just 12 points (half of the wins by non-BSC/MVFC teams have been by one score, while 65% of BSC/MVFC wins have been by two or more scores).
Further underscoring this discrepancy is the reality that BSC and MVFC teams dominate the later rounds of the tournament. Over the past five postseasons, these two elite conferences have accounted for 24 of the 40 teams in the quarterfinals (60%), 17 of the 20 teams in the semifinals (85%), and all 10 teams in the championship game (100%). As stark as those numbers are, they actually undersell the reality: Most of the non-BSC/MVFC teams that reached the quarterfinals did so without having to face a BSC/MVFC team along the way. In fact, only three of the 16 teams that reached the quarterfinals beat a BSC/MVFC team to get there. Teams from the Southland, UAC, Patriot League, Ohio Valley Football Conference (OVFC), and other leagues typically beat each other to advance before losing as soon as they run into a Big Sky or Missouri Valley opponent. In 83% of the cases in which a BSC/MVFC team has lost in the playoffs over the past five tournaments, it has fallen to another team from one of those two conferences.
This isn’t about disrespecting Tarleton State, Stephen F. Austin, Lehigh, or anyone else. It’s simply a clear-eyed observation based on what I believe is compelling data. History would suggest that maybe one or two teams from outside the BSC and MVFC belong in the top 10. In the top five? That number is probably zero. FBS pollsters have figured this out. They know that the Big 12, Pac-12, and Mountain West aren’t comparable to the Big Ten and SEC, and they vote accordingly. FCS voters need to follow suit.
This is personal for me. The unrealistic rankings produced by FCS pollsters have placed me in the unenviable position of sticking up for my BSC brothers in Missoula. They need to correct their mistake and put both Montana schools back ahead of these pretenders so we can dispense with the friendliness and get back to picking on each other. I don’t want things getting too chummy around here.
