If the Big Sky kicked them out, the Big West would need 3 football affiliates to begin sponsoring FCS football. The WAC could offer Northern Arizona, Southern Utah, and Northern Colorado membership in everything but football and then the Big West would be a 6-team FCS league with an automatic bid to the playoffs.

I don't see why Sacramento St should be held to a different set of rules than the other California schools. I think it would be in the Big Sky's best interest to keep all of the California schools as football affiliates rather than cutting them loose. Kick the three California schools out and they could potentially go to FBS with New Mexico St and Idaho and that block of 5 could easily lure more Big Sky schools up.

So you think Northern Arizona, Southern Utah, and Northern Colorado would leave a conference where they are full members, for a partial membership in a weaker fb conference and put all of their other sports in the worst DI conference. Why would they do that?



They aren't. Sac State needed a place to play all sports including football. The Big Sky gave them membership and the Big West never gave them an invite. The Big Sky didn't want to invite them because they were worried that allowing Sac State to further associate with them would eventually result in them leaving for the Big West. They all agreed that Sac State would not join the Big West, and if they did all 3 Cali football teams would be kicked out of the conference.

They could still invite Sac State and restart Big West FCS football with UC Davis, Cal Poly, Sac State, San Diego (if they add scholarships), and work with the WAC to get Humbolt State and Dixie State to upgrade to DI/FCS.

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Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...

I don’t see UCSD as the catalyst for an FCS shakeup.

The general line of thinking is that the Big West members want to maintain a balance of Cal State schools and UC schools. They’re were 4/4 with Pacific, now they’re 4/4 with Hawaii.

Assuming the Big West wants to add UCSD, they’d have to take Cal State Bakersfield, because Sacramento State would likely turn them down. IF what you’re saying about the FCS Big Sky affiliation is true for Sac State, UC Davis and Cal Poly (I’m not questioning you, I’d just never heard that), then Sac State would be a non-starter.

There’s simply no financial incentive in moving from Big Sky to Big West except “reduce costs” and when that happens to make your football program homeless, it’s not worth it for Sacramento State, UC Davis or Cal Poly.

The “Presidents” of Cal Poly, UC Davis and Sacramento State won’t vote to sacrifice their FCS football programs for UCSD and Sac State. General the UC four and the CS four vote in a group anyway.


So really, the only decisions for the Big West would be:
Do we take Bakersfield to get UC San Diego?
Do we add a 12th from the WAC?

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1897-1898 | 1900-06 | 1926-27 | 1929-30 | 1939 | 1942

Interesting thoughts about the a Big West and the delicacies of balancing the Cal St and UC system as well as the strange situation with Sacramento St and the Big Sky.

Here is another thought: would the Big West ever consider bringing FCS football in house? They already have Cal Poly and UC Davis. Sacramento St could join her Cal St sisters if at the same time they brought in a UC school like UC San Diego. The private school San Diego could be an affiliate in football. Grand Canyon and Utah Valley are rumored to have football aspirations and could be affiliates as well. Once a comfortable number of schools were established in the league others might feel comfortable starting or restarting programs.

I think that'd be a possibility if it was like an A-10 / Colonial situation: Northeastern joined the CAA in all-sports in 2005, their A-10 football team was the sixth CAA school with FCS football. So the conference switched from the A-10 (2 members) to CAA (6 members).

But The Big West has TWO. If they added Sac State, there would be the three. All the other west coast FCS members are either:
A. In the Big Sky now.
B. the lone non-scholarship program west of Iowa (San Diego).


So, long story short, there's simply no reason for the FCS Big Sky arrangement with UC Davis, Cal Poly and Sac State to change.

Not when all it gets the Big West is Sac State and UCSD.


The other aspect is that, IF the Big West added UCSD and a CS school for balance, they'd probably want a 12th school for scheduling. In that scenario, Sacramento State would be a less geographic ideal choice than keeping Davis/Hawaii as travel partners. Because if you add a 12th school, it can't be BOTH CSUB and Sac State, cause that's a 6-5 CS/UC split. Which makes #12 outside of California.

There's 5 LA-area schools now, so you'd be creating an extra long trip pairing SOMEONE with an LA school.

Whereas these travel partners make perfect sense:

Hawai’i - Davis
UCSB - Cal Poly
UCSD - Grand Canyon/New Mexico State
Northridge - Bakersfield
Long Beach - Irvine
Fullerton - Riverside

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1897-1898 | 1900-06 | 1926-27 | 1929-30 | 1939 | 1942

I just had this awkward vision of the Cal State schools getting fed up, leaving the Big West to die, bringing in Sac and NAU from the Big Sky, Bakersfield from the WAC, and the rather dodgy Grand Canyon. This is more for political humor than perhaps good sense, but as is evident above, politics is never far from the surface when things actually happen in this realm.

UC San Diego students vote to increase fees for move to Division I, contingent upon an invite to Big West:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... dent-fees/

The students rejected a similar move back in the recession. UCSD is a Division II powerhouse, and they would fit in every well geographically and culturally as the 10th team in the Big West.

It also might allow the conference to sponsor men's volleyball as a sport.

This is an interesting development. My first thought is that the Cal St schools won't go for it unless a Cal St school is also invited. This could either be Cal St Bakersfield or Sacramento St, should the Big Sky allow the Hornets to have the same arrangement as Cal Poly and UC Davis.

The next question is, since you're at 11, do you go for 12? Who would the Cal St and UC sides compromise on?

All of this movement is bad for the WAC and could put them out of business.

Could San Francisco State move up? It's reasonably close to Davis, and it gives the Big West a presence in the Bay Area.

If the Big Sky loses Sacramento State, it can forget keeping Montana. Montana State will definitely follow, and North Dakota would probably want to follow Montana out the door as well - that's 8 schools right there. UTRGV could stay put in the WAC and be the ninth FBS member in as little as four years.

The Big Sky is in a sort of precarious situation in which the league is overcrowded. About a third to half the members have large enough programs that they could flirt with being FBS while the rest are comfortable being FCS lifers. Couple that with North Dakota and Sacramento St not being fully committed to the league, as they are on the geographic fringes of the footprint, and the UC Davis and Cal Poly programs, two that could be suited for a foray into FBS, wedded to the geographically comfortable Big West.

FBS takes a LOT of money...

There isn't really such a big problem with the size of the Big Sky.
The FCS playoffs have plenty of at-large berths.
About 4 years ago (maybe when Villanova won), the CAA had 4 or 5 teams in the playoffs.

The money game is becoming such that the big separation will soon be between P5 and G5, and the G5 conferences will not be knocking down much more than FCS.
(See CUSA's situation).
G5's TV money is $1 million / year (give or take). BYU and AAC may do a bit better than that.
To jump from FCS to FBS, you have to pay for an additional 22 football scholarships, then probably 22 more in women's sports for Title IX.
Before long, you've squandered any TV money differential.

Article out of San Diego reporting that Big West has rejected membership bid by UCSD at http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/spo ... story.html

UCSD expected to announce rise into Division I Big West
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/spo ... story.html