Where Do You See The Big Sky Conference In Next 2 Years?

[ES2X]

What do you think is going to happen to Big Sky Football say by 2028? (I was going to ask about 5 years, but that's 2031 and that sounds like the future too much)

So, next 2 years..


Sacramento State departs and becomes FCS independent biotch.. so Cal Poly has one less in State Big Sky opponent, with Davis kind of acting like they are too cool for school as well, but doing us all the huge favor of sticking around for now (sarcasm). Davis does not depart before 2 years in the future though for sure so.. maybe 5 if they are lucky.


Cal Poly loses 1 Conference team in state after BallSacs departure and then becomes one of only 3 FCS football teams in the Great State of California.. and becomes more isolated geographically.


Utah Tech (Dixie State) joins Big Sky.

Southern Utah gets to come back to Big Sky and everyone's acting like nothing happened (akward).


Utah becomes the state with the most Big Sky teams, surpassing California. The more Utah-Centric Big Sky pulls the geographical center of mass of the conference further to the north..

Cal Poly finds itself in a challenging situation with the Big Sky Conference travel costs and lack of very close rival teams which hurts attendance, forcing it to ponder (great word) other options: A. Stay and shore up the ship. B move to another FCS conference. C attempt to go FBS.

Regarding A. The FCS move seems extremely unlikely as there really isn't a much better geographically fitting conference.

Weird scenarios could be a move to say the Pioneer or Patriot League, but that wouldn't decrease travel costs, but might increase overall post-season apperances.. However, most of the problems Cal Poly has been facing would be solved by moving to either of those Conferences.

Cal Poly to the Missouri Valley Conference? It would be kind of ironic, don't you think, if that happened? Stranger things have happened, I mean, Cal and Stanford play in the ACC now.

Maybe if Cal Poly was offered a large media deal and the MVC wanted to expand their media footprint into California more.. Cal Poly gets to re-unite with NDSU and SDSU like the old days of the Great West Conference.


If an FBS move was made, it wouldn't be in the next two years, but most likely destination would be the Mountain West to re-join former rival UC Davis in a scenario where they move on.. I don't see the Pac-12 happening any time soon. Both FBS conferences would require a significant investement in the stadium to move up - a total tear down and re-building of the east side of the stadium for sure.

 

[GoPoly]

Interesting scenarios, Expand. I’m still of the mind that in the long term a move to FBS may make the most sense. However, I’m not convinced there is a “bow wave” of interest nor stomach in SLO to back what is required to make this kind of commitment. I think a focus group should be formed including as many of the stakeholders (university reps- athletics, students,etc; local government, businesses, etc) as possible to assess a trade study of FBS pros and cons, what investments are required, infrastructure (stadium) improvements, airport requirements, parking, transportation (trackless train- hat tip to Expand), etc.

Also, an assessment should be performed of the current FCS landscape and how this is envisioned in a future state in light of NIL and movement of other FCS programs.

Go Poly!