Question is answered about its authenticity.
From today's Missoulian....
An e-mail written by University of Montana athletic director Jim O’Day, apparently sent to an unidentified Grizzly booster, has ruffled feathers across the Big Sky Conference and beyond.
Big Sky Conference commissioner Doug Fullerton said Friday that he’d been on the phone much of the day with commissioners around the Football Championship Subdivision, the future of which is questioned in an e-mail from O’Day that was made public this week.
In it, O’Day addresses several points, from the financial strain the FCS playoff system puts on participating schools to a potential merger of the Big Sky and Western Athletic conferences. Montana’s pursuit by the WAC, a Football Bowl Subdivision conference in upheaval, is at the center of it.
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But O’Day’s five-page memo struck Fullerton as favoring a move up to the FBS. Several points jarred the commissioner, including the question: “Should the FCS fail – which is another possibility, especially with Appalachian State, James Madison, Villanova, Delaware, Georgia Southern and Richmond and others being considered for moves (to) FBS conferences – would (UM) be all alone?”
“That drew the interest not only of the commissioners of the other FCS conferences, it got the attention of the people at the NCAA,” said Fullerton, who maintains the death of the FCS is greatly exaggerated and in fact feels the growth of super conferences puts several FBS programs on shaky ground.
“There’s a real concern that the FBS is unsustainable, particularly at the lowest levels,” Fullerton asserted. “The (cost) increase is happening so fast, people are saying, ‘OK, how are we going to sustain this level of football?’ ”
Fullerton has expressed hope that Montana has all the facts before it moves into a conference that is losing big-ticket members Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada.
“The FCS is going to become an ever more major player in the future,” Fullerton added. “And the NCAA is going to talk about learning-based decision making. People need to understand that developing your brand and having athletics do what it’s supposed to do for a university, often has nothing to do with moving up a level. You find the level that works for you and you stay there, where you can afford to do it.”
Publicly, O’Day has made fans aware of the potential cost increases of moving up, and addresses many of the concerns along with the potential for added revenue, particularly from television contracts.
But O’Day’s written assertion that the $100,000 TV contract for the Cat-Griz game was unfairly geared toward MSU when it was the home team – the MSU athletic department earned $60,000 from the game, the Griz $35,000 – was misleading, Fullerton said, as was the line: “The television money should be following UM, but we get outvoted on this 8-1 whenever it comes up.”
“About six years ago we changed the TV money at Montana’s request,” Fullerton said. “We used to have a much more socialistic approach and used to spread the money throughout the league to help make the teams stronger.”
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Montana, which has had all of its games televised for several years, fought to keep more of the money and succeeded, Fullerton said.
“That’s the only time it was ever brought up; there’s never been an 8-1 vote,” Fullerton said. “We’ve never stood in the way of them making their TV money.”
Fullerton also said for the Cat-Griz game the home team gets more money to guard against a bad-weather game hurting the gate, though it should be noted the games are quickly sold out regardless of the weather.
“It’s really a red herring,” Fullerton concluded.
O’Day could be construed to be “spit-balling” his way through an informal response.
“It was a personal letter to somebody, explaining how complicated a potential move up could be,” O’Day said Friday after a Grizzly function in Denver (the Griz play football at Northern Colorado Saturday). “Basically, the letter stands on its own.”
O’Day does make valid points: The FCS title game was moved to Frisco, Texas, this season in the hopes of generating more revenue in football-crazed Texas, but its Jan. 7 date will coincide with the Cotton Bowl in nearby Dallas.
He also bemoans the welfare of the student-athlete who plays four extra weeks of football – five, possibly, with the addition of another playoff tier – at the FCS level.
O’Day noted that Montana lost $150,000 by making the last two FCS title games, and added that UM made around $100,000 for its three home playoff games last season while producing $1.1 million of last year’s FCS $2.5 million playoff budget.
In closing the letter mentions that incoming UM President Royce Engstrom will have the final say, pending support from the Board of Regents.
“Wish it were easier, but it isn’t,” he wrote. “At least UM has options – others are only followers in all of these discussions."
“As you can see, there are no easy answers,” he added. “And it is very, very complicated.”
Fullerton’s stance is that O’Day didn’t make things any easier with the e-mail.
“His job is to get all the information out there,” Fullerton said, before adding that that’s his job as well.
“My job is not to stand at the door, arms out, saying, ‘You can’t leave,’ ” he added.
O’Day apparently sent out a follow-up e-mail apologizing for his remarks, though Fullerton didn’t confirm that. Whatever the case, this may take a while to blow over Griz Nation and the rest of the FCS.
“It’s going to be hard to get this back in the bottle,” Fullerton said.
