Silvertip said:
Good grief! Don't these folks with their cockamammy conference alignments pay attention to what's been going on for the past 18 months. The MWC is set, the PAC12 is beyond reach, the Sun Belt and ConferenceUSA are non starters and the WAC is a handful of left behinds searching for an identity. Montana is paying the price for a series of administrations that have sat on their backsides waiting - waiting for what? The moment has come and gone for the foreseeable future...
Agree, there won't be intermingling of MWC and Big Sky teams. The MWC has much higher budgets and markets.
1. What could happen: NDSU, SDSU, USD accept invites to the Big Sky. (14 full time FCS members plus Davis and Poly as associated members plus Idaho as FBS in the Sun Belt ).
2. In a year or two: 6 Big Sky teams that want FBS now are invited to the WAC for football only but stay in the Big Sky other sports. (possibly Montana, MSU, NDSU, UND, PSU, Sac St) Those 6 begin the FBS transition and NMSU and Idaho later rejoin WAC football from the Sun Belt. Nine Big Sky teams remain in the Big Sky as FCS.
3. Once the transitions are complete, NMSU is offered a Big Sky spot and accepts. The six FBS schools finishing their FBS transition rejoin the Big Sky in football as well as Idaho, and voila, the Big Sky now has 8 members and meets the definition of an FBS conference. The 9 FCS members can continue under the Big Sky umbrella too, but as a separate division.
4. The other FCS Big Sky schools (N Colo, SDSU, USD, Weber St, S Utah, N Ariz, UC Davis, Cal Poly, and EWU) can now choose to upgrade to FBS any time.
What's in it for the WAC? The WAC will get leftover Summit League members: Omaha, W Ill, maybe Denver, and possibly IUPUI and IPFW to make a Midwestern division with Chicago St and UMKC.