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Road to the 2025 Big Sky Championship

uofmman1122

uofmman1122

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As we all know, due to conference scheduling imbalances, some teams don't face the top contenders in a given year. Occasionally, like in 2019, the best teams all play each other, creating a fun title race between the best of the best. Other, more frequent times (e.g., 2015 SUU, 2022 msu/SAC), teams benefit from avoiding strong opponents. Even non-title contenders (like NAU last year) can inflate their records with weaker schedules.

This isn’t a complaint—just an observation, and I wanted to look at the schedules this season to get an idea of who might benefit from playing fewer of the perceived stronger teams.

This is my own criteria, and people may disagree, but that's part of the fun. I consider these teams to be the top potential 5 right now that are legit playoff contenders:
cats
Montana
Sac State
Davis
Idaho

Weber, Idaho State and NAU were honorable mention, but I can't really make a case for any of the other teams. For this exercise, I left them all out of the top teams (because I don't think they will be).

Based on this, the team that has the WORST schedule in the conference is Idaho State: They play 4 of the top 5 teams (msu, UM, UCD, and Idaho), with 3 of those games (msu, UCD, Idaho) all on the road.

The team with the EASIEST schedule is...........

The neighbors lol did you think it would be anyone else?

The cats play just 2 of the other top teams (UM, UCD), and only the game against us is on the road. They do have a potential trap game @ NAU, but the rest of their schedule should be a walk in the park.

The Griz, thankfully, don't have too difficult a slate, even though we play Sac, msu, and Idaho--only one of those games is an away contest. Sac is in a similar boat, with only one away game against the other top teams. Idaho and UC Davis play 3 of the other top teams, with 2 of those games on the road each.

Throughout the season, I'll come back to this thread and take stock of which teams avoided top teams, especially if something crazy happens, and teams we don't consider contenders somehow step up. I may even make a Google doc where people can pick their own top teams and see how the schedules' difficulty changes. Here is the number of top teams each school plays based on my top team assumptions for the whole conference:

*Top team
TeamHome games against top teamsAway games against top teams
msu1 - (UCD)1 - (UM)
UM2 - (msu, IDAHO)1 - (SAC)
SAC2 - (UM, IDAHO)1 - (UCD)
IDAHO1 - (UCD)2 - (UM, SAC)
UCD1 - (SAC)2 - (msu, IDAHO)
CP2 - (msu, UCD)2 - (UM, SAC)
ISU1 - (UM)3 - (msu, UCD, IDAHO)
WEB2 - (UM, SAC)2 - (msu, UCD)
EWU2 - (SAC IDAHO)2 - (UM, msu)
PSU2 - (UM, SAC)1 - (IDAHO)
UNC2 - (msu, UCD)2 - (SAC, IDAHO)
NAU2 - (msu, IDAHO)1 - (UCD)

If I somehow made any mistakes in this, please let me know, I did this in between work, and may have gotten some things wrong.
 
I think you need to factor in non-conference schedules too. When you do this, then you’ll see Idaho State’s schedule is even more vicious road games at UNLV, New Mexico, and SUU.

Plus the cats schedule is significantly tougher when you factor in a road game at Oregon and the home opener against South Dakota State. There’s a legit chance they start 0-2.
 
I believe the OP mentioned and was talking about conference schedules.

Every year it is NAU NAU NAU they will be good, they will make a run they have a great new coach rinse and repeat.
 
Griz til I die said:
I think you need to factor in non-conference schedules too. When you do this, then you’ll see Idaho State’s schedule is even more vicious road games at UNLV, New Mexico, and SUU.

Plus the cats schedule is significantly tougher when you factor in a road game at Oregon and the home opener against South Dakota State. There’s a legit chance they start 0-2.
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I believe his pourpose is strictly the road to a Big Sky con championship. Im hoping I shouldn’t have to tell you where I’m going with this😁.
 
Mavman said:
I believe the OP mentioned and was talking about conference schedules.

Every year it is NAU NAU NAU they will be good, they will make a run they have a great new coach rinse and repeat.
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Well they did finish 6-2 last year and in a tie for 3rd with Idaho and only behind the Cats and UC Davis. Now Brian Wright has a season under his belt and Pennington is a damn fine quarterback.
 
Love all this speculation.
You really got me remembering that awesome 2019 team that opened the flood gates for winning again at Montana. What an electric group that was. Dalton Sneed at QB (one of the best ever), Samori Toure, Sammy Akem, Jerry Louie-McGee at receiver. JLM returning punts. . .Mr Electricity. Flowers starting his dominance as a kick returner. Marcus Knight setting school records and leading the nation rushing the ball (TDs) and bringing back the running game as a dazzling force for the Griz. Future NFL lineman, Dylan Cooke at right tackle and Conlan Beaver at left tackle with Moses Mallory rubbing himself on opposing D linemen. As well, you had Jesse Sims (a legend #37) dominating in the middle of the Defensive Line, along with the emergence of Alex Gubner. You had the Buck Buchanan award winner with Dante Olson at LB and the Jace Lewis along side. Probably one of the best DBs to ever play safety with Gavin Robinson, and of course the future conference leading tackler with Robby Hauck. And, I do believe they had the strongest/toughest schedule in the country for the FCS or in the top 3-5 for sure. Shoot they even showed well against an incredibly dominate Oregon team that year (one of Oregon's best of all time teams with Justin Herbert leading the way). Just an outstanding team that I might say is the best Griz team (most talented) over the past ten years for sure. And that does include the team that went to the Championship game in '23. I am not sure they could have even competed with the 2019 team. Lot's of fun to watch! Respectfully, maybe one of the all-time great Griz teams that should be remembered more. Just a massive amount of NFL level talent. Some got a shot, some did not. . .but all outstanding Griz players. If this year's team is half as talented as that 2019 team, they should walk away with the conference title.
 
BrownBear9501 said:
That team was talented….no doubt. But they got pounded by Sac and the Cats. Should have made it further with that talent and been able to win one of those two aforementioned games. 5 picks vs Weber didn’t help either in playoffs. What was that team missing?
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The defense & offense weren't playing their 1/11th. To many gaps.
 
BrownBear9501 said:
That team was talented….no doubt. But they got pounded by Sac and the Cats. Should have made it further with that talent and been able to win one of those two aforementioned games. 5 picks vs Weber didn’t help either in playoffs. What was that team missing?
Click to expand...

I believe it was experience in a winning culture. The last big win here was the 2015 opener against NDSU. 4 years of mediocre resulted and never knowing how to fight in tough environments. Records of 8-5,6-5,7-4,6-5 (2015-2018) heading into the 2019 season.

They were the group that re-established that here. Yeah they had 2 bad losses. That defense played lights out against Weber, and a banged up Dalton had his worst day ever.

We bitch about not having the success of Hauck’s first tenure which is fair, but that 2019 team got us on to a 52-19 record over the last 6 years (5 full seasons + covid spring). What could have been with that group in 2020 had we kept Toure who was all in and a healthy Marcus Knight with that defense. Instead we started 2021 with all sorts of injuries and had to use a freshman slot back as a running back. Still had the attitude to take bake the brawl.
 
ABQCat said:
I believe you under valued NAU. They will make a run at the playoffs this year IMO. Their coach is legit. That road game has me concerned to say the least.
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$10 bucks says Fisty has ABQ’s home address and he knows it.

IMG-3284.png
 
ABQCat said:
Well they did finish 6-2 last year and in a tie for 3rd with Idaho and only behind the Cats and UC Davis. Now Brian Wright has a season under his belt and Pennington is a damn fine quarterback.
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They also missed playing MSU and UC Davis, the two best teams in the conference, and lost to the only two conference teams they played with a winning record (UM and Idaho). In fact, I don't believe they beat a single team with a winning record last year. Their best win of the year was against Idaho State.

As mentioned in the original post, they were exactly the type of team that benefited from a hugely favorable schedule, which was one of the main points of this thread lol.

They have a slightly favorable schedule this year, but I don't think they'll be better than UM, MSU, Sac, Davis or Idaho.
 
Griz til I die said:
I think you need to factor in non-conference schedules too. When you do this, then you’ll see Idaho State’s schedule is even more vicious road games at UNLV, New Mexico, and SUU.

Plus the cats schedule is significantly tougher when you factor in a road game at Oregon and the home opener against South Dakota State. There’s a legit chance they start 0-2.
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I'm only talking about the conference schedule. Maybe I'm wrong, but even with the OOC schedules, I don't think a team from outside the top 5 I picked here will be more likely to make the playoffs than the ones I picked. I also feel like they are just the 5 strongest teams.
 
ABQCat said:
Well they did finish 6-2 last year and in a tie for 3rd with Idaho and only behind the Cats and UC Davis. Now Brian Wright has a season under his belt and Pennington is a damn fine quarterback.
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And they also gave the Griz headaches in a game I attended. I was so pissed at that game after sitting through losing in OT to Weber the week before it was apparent the cohesiveness of 2023 was lacking.
On the other hand, that was NAU's last game against a team with a team with a winning record before the playoffs. They took a beat down from UIW 38-14 in addition to the loss in the playoffs to Abilene 24-0.
The Big Sky as a whole now has a year's worth of film to go over on NAU and I used to buy into the hype too, but I think they're just a middle of the pack swing and a miss yet again.
I thought they earned a home game when the bracket came out for 2024, but when you look at the playoffs from last year, they were straight chalk after the first round. The four teams (all from the CAA) I had the biggest issue with that got home games and seeds were 10th seed Rhode Island who barely beat the virtual bye week CCSU 21-17, 9th seed Richmond who lost their hall pass to Lehigh 20-16, 11th seed Villanova who choked on EKU 22-17 and 16 seed New Hampshire pounded by UT Martin 41-10.
If the Ivy League started their automatic bid in 2024, NAU would probably have missed out on their one and done appearance. If I'm not mistaken, NAU has only won one playoff game ever. 2003 in a road upset of McNeese State and followed that with a thrashing at home from Florida Atlantic. It's in their DNA.
 
ABQCat said:
Well they did finish 6-2 last year and in a tie for 3rd with Idaho and only behind the Cats and UC Davis. Now Brian Wright has a season under his belt and Pennington is a damn fine quarterback.
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This is correct. I watched them live and their QB1 is excellent. If he stays healthy, they will be in the playoffs.
 
BrownBear9501 said:
That team was talented….no doubt. But they got pounded by Sac and the Cats. Should have made it further with that talent and been able to win one of those two aforementioned games. 5 picks vs Weber didn’t help either in playoffs. What was that team missing?
Click to expand...
Sneed got hurt at Sac St. It took the wind out of the Griz. Sneed was a fireball.
 
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