• Hi Guest, want to participate in the discussions, keep track of read/unread posts, upgrade to remove ads and more? Create your free account and increase the benefits of your BigSkyFans.com experience today!

Montana's to WAC?

Green Cookie Monster

Green Cookie Monster

Moderator
Staff member
WAS conference invited non-football playing school UT-Arlington. UTA dropped its football program in 1986 and it is rumored they will restart the program.

Big rumor rolling around is that Montana and Montana State will leave the Big Sky for the WAS. What will happen to Big Sky without its founding members present?
 
Anything is possible. The entire state of Montana has less than 1M people living in it. TV dollars are driving this whole conference realignment which is why UTA (Dallas = 6th largets DMA @ 6.6M people) was invited. UTA is slated to open up a new arena which will be the best in the conference. UTA starting football was not a condition of their invite, although this could help a “restart football” campaign. The UTA athletic budget will be the lowest in the WAC at about $10M.

The Montana’s would shore up the WAC’s football needs but that is all they can offer. ESPN won’t significantly increase a TV payout based on number of Montana TV sets and I don’t consider Montana recruits to be something FBS schools are chomping at the bit to gain access to.

For the pro Sac to the WAC folks, this move is good. This would allow for the Olympic sports to be split into Divisions and more importantly this invite shows the WAC is highly coveting schools that are located in a large DMA (The Sac/Modesto/Stockton DMA is the 17th largest @ 4M people). It also shows that the WAC isn’t looking at what type of a budget a department currently has. We are at about the $15M range. Plus Sac has a talent rich area that the WAC would love to have its members have a presence in for recruitment. IMO, it will be the budget issues that keep us from making a move to the WAC. There will be a $750M cut the CSU system and this cut could/will increase if/when the optimistic tax revenue projections aren’t met by the middle of the fiscal year.

The other unknown is SJSU. Cuts are going to ravage them more so than Sac State so if they decide to bail on the WAC for Olympic sports and join the BW; that would kill any reason/benefit for Sac State to join the WAC. They didn’t apply for BW membership when the BW was looking for new members, but I doubt the BW would turn them down if they requested to join that conference.

The bottom line is I doubt any move to the WAC will be made soon. The major issue is the budget problems. Gonzalez can’t increase an athletics budget to play FBS football while the academic budgets will be facing cuts. This would be a negligent decision as his job is to ensure the overall well being of the entire university. The faculty would want his head on a stick if the decision to move was made now. Now if Gonzo forcibly increases the student fee to pay for this move…well then ignore my last statement.

PS: Damn you GCM for starting a WAC thread, I though we’d make it through this whole off-season without any of this nonsense. :lol:

http://www.plaindealer.com/advertising/documents/mkt_overview/Top20MktsMetro.pdf

EDIT: I just notice I used DMA info from ’08 and I’m too lazy to lookup more current DMA numbers. Hopefully they haven’t changed much in the last 3 years. :|
 
Green Cookie Monster said:
WAS conference invited non-football playing school UT-Arlington. UTA dropped its football program in 1986 and it is rumored they will restart the program.

Big rumor rolling around is that Montana and Montana State will leave the Big Sky for the WAS. What will happen to Big Sky without its founding members present?
Click to expand...
They are just rumors at this point, have not heard anything of the sort. I am sure there are some who would want to move up but I am sure at this point the Cats are happy in the Big Sky!!!
 
Haha, I tried not to post anything about the WAS, but I couldnt resist when the Montana's were mentioned, again with some credibility.

I agree, adding two FBS programs in Montana won't really add anything except more red ink to the bottom of the expense ledgers. But, unlike Kalifornia, Montana has oil and is willing to get it which means surplus to the state coffers along with NODAK. Maybe the state wants to add FBS to draw more attention to an otherwise sparsly populated state? I guess if Nevada can do it so can Montana.

Sac State
PSU
EWU
ISU
UNC
Weber
NAU
UCFE (football)
CP (football)

Could increase our chances of having football win a conference again.
 
Here are more current DMA numbers:

http://www.tvb.org/media/file/Nielsen_2010_2011_DMA_RANKS.pdf

WAC DMA’s:

Dallas-Ft. Worth: 5th, 2.59M TV Households
San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose: 6th, 2.52M TV Households
Seattle-Tacoma: 13th, 1.87M TV Households
Denver: 17th, 1.57M TV Households
Salt Lake City*: 32nd, 0.95M TV Households
San Antonio: 37th, 0.84M TV Households
Austin: 44th, 0.71M TV Households
Spokane*: 75th, 0.42M TV Households
Shreveport*: 83rd, 0.39M TV Households
El Paso (Las Cruces): 97th, 0.32M TV Households

*La Tech is about 70 miles from Shreveport, Utah State is 85 miles from SLC, and Idaho is 80 miles from Spokane. If that proximity is good enough to say these schools have potential to market those areas, then Sac State also draws the Bay Area TV market. :roll:

Possible additions:

Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto: 20th, 1.41M TV Households
Portland: 22nd, 1.20M TV Households
Santa Barbara/Santa Maria/San Luis Obispo: 122nd, 0.24M TV Households
Bakersfield: 125th, 0.23M TV Households
Montana’s:
Missoula: 166th, 0.11M TV Households
Billings: 170th, 0.11M TV Households
Great Falls: 190th, 0.065M TV Households
Butte-Bozeman: 191st, 0.065M TV Households
Helena: 206th, 0.028M TV Households

Lost WAC DMA’s:

Fresno-Visalia: 55th, 0.58M TV Households
Honolulu: 72nd, 0.43M TV Households
Reno: 108th, 0.27M TV Households
Boise: 113th, 0.26M TV Households

Obviously just being in a large DMA does not guarantee a significant portion of that market tunes into the WAC members athletics, but it can obviously be used as a bargaining chip in TV deal negotiations. If the WAC can produce an interesting product, their TV contract value will increase.
 
Green Cookie Monster said:
Haha, I tried not to post anything about the WAS, but I couldnt resist when the Montana's were mentioned, again with some credibility.

I agree, adding two FBS programs in Montana won't really add anything except more red ink to the bottom of the expense ledgers. But, unlike Kalifornia, Montana has oil and is willing to get it which means surplus to the state coffers along with NODAK. Maybe the state wants to add FBS to draw more attention to an otherwise sparsly populated state? I guess if Nevada can do it so can Montana.

Sac State
PSU
EWU
ISU
UNC
Weber
NAU
UCFE (football)
CP (football)

Could increase our chances of having football win a conference again.
Click to expand...
Yeah but Nevada has a large city with ridiculous amounts of entertainment opportunities; Montana not so much. Also you left out SUU and UND from your list. A move by the Montana’s just makes the UND add look even more retarded. That trip to Grand Forks for all the Olympic sports is going to tear a big hole in the athletic budget. :ohno:
 
I did forget SUU and UND.

I guess they added UT-Arlington because it will provide excellent Olympic sport opportunities for LaTech and NMSU along with TXST and UTSA. I was at TXST when Arlington dropped football, so it doesnt have a strong history of loving football like other Texas schools. They dropped football for a reason.

I bet the SJSU Spartans are gnashing their teeth and beating their chest right about now. Talk about a fall, from a respectable conference to being in the Southland Conference. Closest WAS opponent for SJSU is now 800 miles, ouch, and state mandated CSU cuts to follow soon.
 
It does look like the WAC is going after the biggest markets they can find, and without regard to geography. At this point, I think the WAC would take a team from NJ is they could get them to bite. The WAC is desperate.

These moves and the inclusion of the Montana schools only make sense if they are going to be a large conference with 2 divisions with a couple of new CA schools included. Otherwise it's a travel nightmare. There would be no benefit for Sac State to move up and significantly increase their budget to play against no natural rivals in the worst conference in the FBS. Not when we're in what is considered a top flight FCS conference. Move up to the WAC and play against SJSU, Nevada, Fresno, Hawaii sounds awesome. Move up and play our away games at second rate Texas schools does not sound very enticing.

I'm one of the ones who would love to be in the FBS, but I think we may have missed the boat on this one. Big Sky football may even be better or competitive talent wise compared to the WAC once their biggest 4 teams jump ship next year. The Big Sky should just apply to move their whole conference to FBS........I understand the problems with this. I'm just sayin..
 
Green Cookie Monster said:
WAS conference invited non-football playing school UT-Arlington. UTA dropped its football program in 1986 and it is rumored they will restart the program.

Big rumor rolling around is that Montana and Montana State will leave the Big Sky for the WAS. What will happen to Big Sky without its founding members present?
Click to expand...

Is this a typo or are you going for something like "Western Athletic [Bleep]"?

:rofl:
 
Good points H25. I agree the WAC will be pretty pathetic starting in 2012, but the conference will rebuild and jump ahead of the MAC and Sun Belt in a matter of 2 or 3 years. The 2 best basketball schools will remain in the WAC (Utah State & NMSU); the WAC will have a lot more talent to go after in Texas so hopefully the WAC football programs can take advantage of that. If the WAC can solidify a presence in CA, it would have multiple members in 2 of the 3 most heavily recruited states in college sports. If the WAC can add another large DMA or 2, their TV contract will improve as the WAC product improves. When looking at a move, you have to look at the long term and not the short term. Sure the WAC is laughable right now, but that conference has shown some resiliency and with the new NCAA rules, the WAC will never go away.

It all comes down to if the administration is content with FCS. The WAC offers a platform to get the Sac State brand to a large audience as well as generating some excitement among the alumni and fan base. This is something the BSC or BW will never be able to offer. Look at the pathetic local media coverage Sac State has received in the past. Even the FCS playoffs get little attention on a national stage. I understand a move to FBS involves a lot of risk and cost, but if the goal of the administration is to turn Sac State into a regional hub of influence (remember Destination 2010?), the WAC offers a great media platform to do just that.
 
Well, the Great West Conference already has NJIT, one of the worst hoops programs in history. Why NOT have them go to the WAC?

:rofl:
 
Destination 2010, what is that? Gonzo put his head in the sand the second he received the vote of 'no confidence' from the nazi faculty.

The tail definately wags the Sac State dog.

I agree, how can you be a 'destination campus' when you are a 'minor league' classification in football in America?
 
Green Cookie Monster said:
Destination 2010, what is that? Gonzo put his head in the sand the second he received the vote of 'no confidence' from the nazi faculty.

The tail definately wags the Sac State dog.

I agree, how can you be a 'destination campus' when you are a 'minor league' classification in football in America?
Click to expand...
That was mainly a knee jerk reaction to them not getting their way with funding. The economic collapse derailed the remaining capital improvement projects of Destination 2010. Who knows what would have been done if the bubble held on for a few more years.
 
Green Cookie Monster said:
Destination 2010, what is that? Gonzo put his head in the sand the second he received the vote of 'no confidence' from the nazi faculty.

The tail definately wags the Sac State dog.

I agree, how can you be a 'destination campus' when you are a 'minor league' classification in football in America?
Click to expand...

Seriously? Gonzo has done more for the school than all presidents since Guy West. You want someone like Gerth back, who clearly WAS the tail of the dog?!
 
SHA: Let's just say that in no way am I happy with Gonzo's performance specifically WRT athletics, but that said, he's LIGHT YEARS better than Gerth. The bait-and-switch with the arena is the nail in the coffin for Gonzo, but he IS at least better than the Fat Man.
 
I’m with SHA on this one. Gonzo has gotten a lot of stuff built on campus and it’s not even the completed D2010 plan he originally planned. Gonzo has also provided the AD with enough funds and support to win 36…let me repeat that…36 conference championships in the last 5 years. Sure we don’t have a new arena but he has made an effort to get one completed, and it probably would have gotten completed if the biggest economic recession since the 30’s hadn’t have hit. I agree there is plenty more to do but the university facilities saw some massive upgrades under Gonzo’s tenure. Let’s just hope he ain’t done yet. :nod:
 
I didnt say Gonzo hasnt done anything. Just that he has been pretty absent from the public since the NC vote.

BTW...I am no Gerth fan, but he was on watch and authorized the football stadium build.
 
A HUGE problem with the Fat Man (pun intended) is that he was generally a no-show to ALL sporting events unless someone did something amazing. THEN he'd show up at the celebration to soak in all the glory as if HE were the one to have done it.

:ohno:
 
With all the Texas additions, why would the Montana's want to move to a conference that is moving from the WAC(Western Athletic Conference), to the SAC (Southern Athletic Conference)?

That conference would cost the Montana's big time money.
 
From what I gather on the message boards, UM has a lot of facilities they would need improvement for both football and their Olympic sports. Plus they are having some Title IX issues which they need to address. A move to FBS would only further impact those Title IX issues. If I were the WAC I’d be concerned with having to take both Montana schools in a package deal. I just have a hard time seeing a state the size of Montana supporting 2 FBS schools.

Also Fullerton was at WSU and had a BSC press release. Some of what was discussed can be found in the link below:
http://standard.net/topics/sports/2011/07/14/big-sky-conference-dreams-big

I think Fullerton hit on a lot of issues pertaining to FBS football that everyone should be aware of…and that is the richer getting richer and the poor sucking. The BCS schools have all the leverage and money to do whatever they want.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top