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I found this while reading the November 1st, 2010 Big Sky press release informing of the additions of Southern Utah and North Dakota:

"Monday’s additions bring the future Big Sky to 11 core members and 13 football playing members. The Big Sky Conference is also on the verge of announcing the addition of the University of South Dakota as a 12th core member. The Big Sky will become a 14-team football league and split into two seven-team divisions."

Now I was aware that both North and South Dakota were to join, but USD got a better offer from the Missouri Valley. What I was not aware of is that we were to have two divisions. But more importantly, why did it not go thought? Is it as simple as they did not want to have unbalanced divisions with South Dakota not joining? If Idaho football does eventually join the Big Sky, will we have two divisions then? What about a championship game? Was there any information on that? I have a lot of questions for something that never happened, but it was planned, and I am just curious as to what those plans really were. Anyone know?

1. While it was not official, scheduling was done with de facto divisions in mind.

2. Under current FCS rules, a championship game would be difficult if not impossible. The NCAA would likely not sanction one.

SuperHornet wrote:2. Under current FCS rules, a championship game would be difficult if not impossible. The NCAA would likely not sanction one.

The SWAC has a championship game. What would make it difficult? I can't say I am familiar on the rule at the FCS level.

GoldenBobcat wrote:

SuperHornet wrote:2. Under current FCS rules, a championship game would be difficult if not impossible. The NCAA would likely not sanction one.

The SWAC has a championship game. What would make it difficult? I can't say I am familiar on the rule at the FCS level.

Uh...what would make it difficult is you can't have a championship game AND play in the playoffs.

AZGrizFan wrote:

GoldenBobcat wrote:
The SWAC has a championship game. What would make it difficult? I can't say I am familiar on the rule at the FCS level.

Uh...what would make it difficult is you can't have a championship game AND play in the playoffs.

So thats the rule? Is that really why the SWAC is not in the play offs? You'd think they would drop the game so they could go to the playoffs.

GoldenBobcat wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
Uh...what would make it difficult is you can't have a championship game AND play in the playoffs.

So thats the rule? Is that really why the SWAC is not in the play offs? You'd think they would drop the game so they could go to the playoffs.

Their "classics" are more important to them than the playoffs - where they'd just get blown out by anyone they played.


Yes, it's also a rule.

Hopefully Idaho will join for football and we can have a two seven team divisions for football and two six team divisions for the other sports.

Green Laser wrote:Hopefully Idaho will join for football and we can have a two seven team divisions for football and two six team divisions for the other sports.

There's no real reason to have divisions unless it's an FBS conference.

Divisions in FCS football are pointless, since you can't make the playoffs & have a championship game. And divisions in basketball don't really accomplish anything either since everyone has a conference tournament anyway. All it would do is make scheduling more clear cut, but a conference can schedule as if there are divisions without actually having them for standings purposes.

Well, Venus, for purposes of hoops, divisions can help with seeding for conference tournaments. For example, if your conference states that you have eight teams make the tournament, you can take the top four from each division without regard to record and pit A1 vs B4, A2 vs B3, A3 vs B2, and A4 vs B1.

For football, I agree that it's not necessary at the FCS level, but if one REALLY likes the idea, I have no problem with starting the season in Week 0 so that the season ends at the same point with a week off for the title game, and then the playoffs start. Or, with the move of the chipper to January, I could see starting the playoffs later. Actually, I'd love to start the playoffs two Saturdays after Thanksgiving WITHOUT doing conference title games to support moving rivalry games to Thanksgiving. Can you imagine the Brawl on Thanksgiving? I'd LOVE to go to Causeway on Thanksgiving....

SuperHornet wrote:Well, Venus, for purposes of hoops, divisions can help with seeding for conference tournaments. For example, if your conference states that you have eight teams make the tournament, you can take the top four from each division without regard to record and pit A1 vs B4, A2 vs B3, A3 vs B2, and A4 vs B1.

But why would you do that when you could just rank all the teams together & ensure that the best 8 make the tournament? With divisions, you could have a 9-7 team miss the tourney while a 6-10 team makes it if the divisions are mismatched enough.

That IS the danger, of course, but large conferences have done that for years. You can also do it NFL-style and do playoffs within the division until division champions emerge, at which point they play for the conference title. Doing it YOUR way makes the provision of byes easier, which would reward good regular season conference play more. There are many options, all of which are usually discussed among ADs and the conference head honcho. One can generally get a good conference tournament regardless of the option chosen.

The bigger issue for me is logistics: do you have a central (and theoretically neutral) location like the Big West in Anaheim (I say theoretically, because there are no BWC teams technically IN Anaheim, but there are two within spitting distance, which COULD create a home-court atmosphere), or do you have the conference champion host the tournament (like the Big Sky)? With the BWC method, everything is known in advance except which teams will be there and what the seeds will be; the CONFERENCE is responsible for locking down all the logistical details, and you can reduce costs by co-locating the boys' and girls' tournaments. With the Sky method, the team with the best record is rewarded, but logistical lead-time is reduced to a significant degree, and costs are duplicated by the potential of having to stage TWO tournaments at TWO sites. Of course, you have the potential for reduced crowds because people can't cross between tournaments. There are pros and cons each way; you just have to decide which pros you like and which cons you can live with.

From a scheduling standpoint, divisions make things a lot less complicated in larger conferences but it also allows teams to retain traditional rivalries. Can you imagine if the Montana and Montana State series took an 8-year hiatus while the round-robin schedule came back around again? Further, it gives more teams a chance at some kind of conference championship even if only a divisional one.

Libertine wrote:From a scheduling standpoint, divisions make things a lot less complicated in larger conferences but it also allows teams to retain traditional rivalries. Can you imagine if the Montana and Montana State series took an 8-year hiatus while the round-robin schedule came back around again? Further, it gives more teams a chance at some kind of conference championship even if only a divisional one.

Except you don't have to have a round-robin schedule. Right now, everyone has two "rivals" that they play every year no matter what. There's no way UM & MSU wouldn't play every year under any circumstance.

The conference can work out the schedules however they want, really.

Venus is correct there. There's the "rival" rule, though the usual definition of the word doesn't apply in every case because a true rivalry hasn't developed. There is also something of assumed divisions in scheduling for the Sky, though it is not carried out as far as standings go. In Sac's case, I believe, the rivals are true geographic rivals (UCD and CP), both of which are teams that we really enjoy playing (not to mention beating). I'm not sure UM/MSU are that lucky outside of themselves, but perhaps they get enough joy out of knocking each other senseless to make up for having "just another" school fill in for the other "rival" slot. One of their fans can chime in on that, of course. But it seems to have worked out fairly well this year. We still have the travel issue with the outliers (particularly UND), but the actual function of the schedule seems to have worked out fairly well overall.

Mvemjsunpx wrote:

Libertine wrote:From a scheduling standpoint, divisions make things a lot less complicated in larger conferences but it also allows teams to retain traditional rivalries. Can you imagine if the Montana and Montana State series took an 8-year hiatus while the round-robin schedule came back around again? Further, it gives more teams a chance at some kind of conference championship even if only a divisional one.

Except you don't have to have a round-robin schedule. Right now, everyone has two "rivals" that they play every year no matter what. There's no way UM & MSU wouldn't play every year under any circumstance.

The conference can work out the schedules however they want, really.

So what you're saying is that you want the conference to organize the scheduling so that teams play other specific teams within the conference every year. I wonder what on earth they could call such an arrangement.

Scheduling with de facto divisions in mind and having de jure divisions are two entirely different concepts, Libertine. De jure divisions implies ranking teams WITHIN their divisions. De facto divisions merely requires SCHEDULING in that fashion; teams are then ranked as ONE group. Most years, it'll be fine. Sure, there will be the odd year where you have title problems because the top teams are tied but didn't play each other, or they did, but you can't use common opponents to breakt the tie because they didn't play everyone. So you have some quirky tiebreakers like point differentials or home-and-road records or some other such nonsense. The job gets done, and you don't have to worry about the logistics of a title game interfering with your chance to go to the playoffs.

The Big Sky just proved that it works. Or, rather CONFIRMED that it works, as leagues like the CAA have been doing that for quite some time with some success.

SuperHornet wrote:Scheduling with de facto divisions in mind and having de jure divisions are two entirely different concepts, Libertine. De jure divisions implies ranking teams WITHIN their divisions. De facto divisions merely requires SCHEDULING in that fashion; teams are then ranked as ONE group. Most years, it'll be fine. Sure, there will be the odd year where you have title problems because the top teams are tied but didn't play each other, or they did, but you can't use common opponents to breakt the tie because they didn't play everyone. So you have some quirky tiebreakers like point differentials or home-and-road records or some other such nonsense. The job gets done, and you don't have to worry about the logistics of a title game interfering with your chance to go to the playoffs.

The Big Sky just proved that it works. Or, rather CONFIRMED that it works, as leagues like the CAA have been doing that for quite some time with some success.

Yes, this was basically my point.

If you have divisions, you have to actually rank the teams in divisions and not just schedule that way. It's doing the standings by division that's pointless.

Mvemjsunpx wrote:

SuperHornet wrote:Scheduling with de facto divisions in mind and having de jure divisions are two entirely different concepts, Libertine. De jure divisions implies ranking teams WITHIN their divisions. De facto divisions merely requires SCHEDULING in that fashion; teams are then ranked as ONE group. Most years, it'll be fine. Sure, there will be the odd year where you have title problems because the top teams are tied but didn't play each other, or they did, but you can't use common opponents to breakt the tie because they didn't play everyone. So you have some quirky tiebreakers like point differentials or home-and-road records or some other such nonsense. The job gets done, and you don't have to worry about the logistics of a title game interfering with your chance to go to the playoffs.

The Big Sky just proved that it works. Or, rather CONFIRMED that it works, as leagues like the CAA have been doing that for quite some time with some success.

Yes, this was basically my point.

If you have divisions, you have to actually rank the teams in divisions and not just schedule that way. It's doing the standings by division that's pointless.

I'm not sure where Hornet is going here. I get the concept but not the argument. No conference in FCS has ever had a title game interfere with going to the playoffs and they all -- divisions or no divisions -- have quirky tiebreakers that get the job done. Further, up until very recently, the CAA did have divisions and proved that that worked as well as the alternative.

To sunpx's point about the standings, that just doesn't make sense. The point of having divisions is that they serve as an organizational imperative and, if you have divisions, then you have divisional standings. It's only pointless to teams at the bottom of them.

Personally I support the idea of two 7 team conferences, I would prefer to have 6 games against opponents I will see every season instead of 2. Also it would not go away from playing the other Big Sky schools, have them play a 6 games for their division along with 3 from the other division for 9 games. Would give them 3 games to schedule any needed money games, D2 smack downs or other FCS teams. Would be easier with 2 six team divisions but looks like North Dakota is here to stay.

SUUTbird wrote:Personally I support the idea of two 7 team conferences, I would prefer to have 6 games against opponents I will see every season instead of 2. Also it would not go away from playing the other Big Sky schools, have them play a 6 games for their division along with 3 from the other division for 9 games. Would give them 3 games to schedule any needed money games, D2 smack downs or other FCS teams. Would be easier with 2 six team divisions but looks like North Dakota is here to stay.

I agree! The winner of each division should get a automatic qualifier to the playoffs. The Big Sky always qualifies at least two playoff teams anyway. Currently with 13 teams, rotating schedule, and difference in SOS, there can no longer be a clearly recognized BSC champion. We just need Idaho or another football playing member to have two seven team divisions.

Green Laser wrote:

SUUTbird wrote:Personally I support the idea of two 7 team conferences, I would prefer to have 6 games against opponents I will see every season instead of 2. Also it would not go away from playing the other Big Sky schools, have them play a 6 games for their division along with 3 from the other division for 9 games. Would give them 3 games to schedule any needed money games, D2 smack downs or other FCS teams. Would be easier with 2 six team divisions but looks like North Dakota is here to stay.

I agree! The winner of each division should get a automatic qualifier to the playoffs. The Big Sky always qualifies at least two playoff teams anyway. Currently with 13 teams, rotating schedule, and difference in SOS, there can no longer be a clearly recognized BSC champion. We just need Idaho or another football playing member to have two seven team divisions.

At that point split into 2 different conferences. There will be no divisions for the BSC at the FCS level. There should be divisions for the Oly sports as that will minimize travel. As far as the hoops tournament goes, only guarantee the top team in each division a top seed in the tournament and then fill out the rest of the field with the best remaining teams regardless of division.