Fullerton asked the media not to ask coaches to comment about the officiating in games and to refuse to publish and/or broadcast any negative comments that the coaches might make.
"...The ironic thing was that in the same news conference when Fullerton made this plea to the media for ignorance, he also admitted that the Big Sky's officials were prone to make mistakes. Everyone makes them, right? Well Mr. Fullerton, according to that statement, I'm still waiting for your announcement that you'll be suspending yourself. He criticized a referee didn't he? Actually, he criticized all of the referees..."
"You can observe a lot just by watching."
Yogi Berra
I admit that I am not a huge fan of his, and believe the BSC needs change for the better. The last several years I have been disappointed in the lack of basketball coverage. I am encouraged by ALTITUDE Sports broadcasting BSC regular season basketball games. That is a start, and much needed for the conference. With that said, I feel BSC fans need to step to the plate as well. I encourage every fan of any BSC team to attend BSC basketball games, especially those being broadcast on ALTITUDE. These broadcasts are a great opportunity for our conference. This will help with exposure and recruiting. Atmosphere is a HUGE part of college basketball, which the BSC has been lacking in. Please BSC fans, step to the plate and do our part to make a positive impression as for atmosphere. I want to watch any given game, hear a great atmosphere and no empty seats!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is what potential recruits want to see too!!!
We as fans are expecting our commissioner and teams to step it up. We as fans should also step it up too. We need to support basketball again. We need to get loud and create basketball atmospheres!!! This conference needs all teams and fans to step up! This needs to be done by everyone, not just Montana fans. If this is not done, in time the lack of support may lead to the demise of BSC basketball. It may lead to Montana moving onto a conference with better fan support as a whole. WE as fans need to contribute every way possible in the rebirth of BSC basketball!!! Are we up to the challenge?
With or Without Fullerton, I just want to see this conference move forward and be proactive in making it a better conference. The conference as a whole need to focus on fan support in football and basketball, beyond Montana at least. Also need to work on regional television contracts, starting with the Altitude contract and moving forward from there. Regardless BSC fans need to do all we can to support each respected program in both basketball and football more. If these things happen, I will not be calling for anyone's job.
That's what I wanna see too. Everyone knows that Fullerton is Montana biased, and all he cares about is if we do well. Not that that's bad, but he needs to treat each team equally, and bring up the conference as a whole, and get everyone excited for Big Sky athletics. Not just in Montana (and including MSU.)
I am looking at this from an overall professionalism standpoint, I guess.
Last week or so the BSC football media guide was released. I have not read it all and probably won't but the parts I did read contained numerous unacceptable errors, both grammatical and contextually e.g. On the very first page of the guide was a statement about how there is no longer a "Division I-AA (DI-AA)", it is now referred to as the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Then, in a number of places in the guide the term DI-AA or I-AA is used, including in Fullerton's bio and Kasper's bio. According to the guide, Kasper is responsible for writing/editing the media guide. When that sort of thing happens, to me, it's more than just being careless and sloppy, it's unprofessional, especially when they mention the issue right on the first page of the guide, for crying out loud. I emailed the BSC office about this and to date have not received a reply and probably won't.
Now, in a statement that was made to the media, he basically asked/suggested to them not to report lousy officiating by BSC officials and not to ask the coaches about the officiating in BSC games because it will only get the coaches in trouble. That is just not something a league commissioner does, for a number of reasons. It's absolutely unbelievable to me that he would do something like that. The solution to the issue is to get better referees, or provide more training for those the BSC has. Officiating in the BSC has never been anything to commend in my view but to now come out and address the issue with the media and ask them to ignore it is ridiculous to me.
Both of these things are just things that shouldn't happen. Is the media guide issue a big problem - no. But to me it's one of those "death by a thousand cuts" situations where no one thing is a big problem but the accumulation of little things is what ends up being the problem. Same thing but to a larger degree with the media issue. As long as Fullerton has been in that job, he should know better and he should be able to do a better job of representing the BSC, in my view.
"You can observe a lot just by watching."
Yogi Berra
