Dear Summit League Fans:
Let me see if I can put a polite hand over the collective yawn from our fan base over your post yesterday.
Geography: Even though many Big Sky teams are in the Mountain Time Zone, our orientation has always been toward the West Coast, not the Midwest. As one example, here are some distances by miles from Missoula to major metropolitan areas in the West: Seattle, 475; Portland, 549; Salt Lake City, 523; Denver, 894; San Francisco, 978; Los Angeles 1210. Meantime, the nearest large metropolitan area in the Midwest is Minneapolis, 1118, with Chicago next at 1558.
Scheduling: Not only do we travel West to play Portland State, Sacramento State and Davis in our own conference, we have in the past several years scheduled several Pac 12 teams (Arizona, USC, UCLA, Stanford, Oregon and Washington, with wins at UCLA, Stanford and Oregon in recent memory), and also several teams from the WCAA--Pepperdine, Pacific, St. Mary's, Gonzaga, San Francisco, San Diego and Loyola Marymount. This year we play New Mexico out of the Mountain West, and have in the recent past also scheduled Fresno State, Colorado State and Wyoming from that conference.
Recruiting: One major reason to schedule teams from the West Coast is that it is a huge recruiting area for us. On this year's roster we have seven players from California and two from the state of Washington. Not only do players like to return to play in front of their families and friends, it helps future recruiting as well.
Traditional Rivalries: Gonzaga, Nevada and Boise State area all former members of the Big Sky Conference, while New Mexico, Utah, Utah State, BYU, Colorado State and Wyoming are all former members of our old old conference, the Skyline Conference. And while basketball rivalries are not nearly as intense as football rivalries (such as potentially between Montana and North Dakota State), in basketball our fan base is much more eager to schedule Gonzaga, and would love to see Boise State, Nevada or Wyoming back in Missoula. The Summit League? Not so much.
I know it makes some sense: Two mid-major conferences r-e-a-s-o-n-a-b-l-y close to each other, but I'm afraid the structural differences I've outlined will prevent this from ever really in any important way amounting to anything, or generating much interest from our fan base.
