Fact: With the near-certain move of UCLA and S. Cal to the Big 10, there will be a major re-shuffling of athletic conferences over the next 3-4 years.
Numerous times, I’ve asked this question: Should Montana remain in the Big Sky?
The attendance data for 2022 below should be reason enough to consider alignment changes.
Montana and Montana State – by virtue of the schools’ attendance numbers – would make good candidates to move to the Mountain West Conference (more on this soon). To do so, the schools would have to add swimming and Diving, while Montana State would have to add softball (which I have heard it’s unwilling to consider).
Since the Big Sky Conference no longer publishes attendance data on its web site, I obtained the data below from the web sites of each Big Sky all-sports member school. I excluded Cal Davis and Cal Poly from the list. Those schools, however, recorded per game attendance numbers just over 8000 per game.
Big Sky Conference 2022 Football Season Paid Attendance Totals, Ranked top to bottom
1. MONTANA Total: 165,178 (including 1 playoff @ 13,390). SIX rs home games: 151,788 total @ 25,298 rs pg average (23,500 if playoff game is added to average).
2. Montana State Total: 158,416 (includes two playoff games att 16,397 & 14,367) SIX rs home games: 127,652 @ pg 21,275 avg (19, 808 if playoff games added to average).
3. SAC State Total: 100,369 (includes two playoff games att 9136 & 13,722). FIVE rs home games: 77,511 @ pg 14,338 avg.
4. Weber State Total: 57,406 (includes one playoff game att 4495). SIX rs home games: 52,911 @ pg 8818 avg.
5. Idaho Total for FIVE home games: 44,460 @ pg 8,892 [/b]pg avg.
6. NAU Total for FIVE home games: 38,449 @ 7689 pg avg.
7. ISU Total for FIVE home games: 31,312 @ 6262 pg avg.
8. EWU Total: Total for FIVE home games: 25,650 @ pg 5,130 pg avg.
9. UNC Total: Total for FIVE home games: 22,755 @ pg 4558 pg avg.
10. PSU Total: Total for FIVE home games: 21,413 @ pg 4282 pg avg.
Notice two dramatic drops: After Montana, after MSU and then the plunge after SAC.
Compiled this all manually, & double-checked, but errors are possible. Let me know if you notice any errors.