OGDEN -- Is Big Sky commissioner Doug Fullerton really holding open a door for Utah State and Idaho to join his expanding league?
"When I invite Utah State and Idaho to join the Big Sky," he says, "I'm basically about 40 percent serious and 60 percent trying to make a point. The point is they always talk about taking our teams. Why would our teams go?"
With 13 football playing schools in 2012, Big Sky teams will have three to four postseason opportunities in football, compared to one for WAC schools.
"We can win championships; they're going to compete against $140 million (athletic budgets)," Fullerton told a group of about 30 people at the Lindquist Alumni Center on Thursday in an event sponsored by the WSU Young Alumni Association. "I'm fearful for their ability to do that. So yeah, I'm half-serious when I invite them in."
Fullerton said. the gap is widening between college football's haves and have-nots.
"There is great strain on the (Football Bowl Subdivision)," he said. "The FBS is now getting stretched. The top budgets in the FBS are $140 million a year in their athletic programs alone. The bottom budgets in the FBS are $14 million."
Fullerton said the top Football Championship Subdivision conferences are in a stronger position than lower-tier FBS leagues.
"The best conferences at our level are now in better financial and competive shape than the last quartile in FBS. That's a hard thing for people to get their minds around when they try to fight us off."
"Because we've competed out of the FCS, we've been able to build successful programs. We get wins. They've had to play out of that fourth quartile against that $140 million budget, they aren't getting very many wins. They aren't building their programs."
In answer to a question about continuing rumors of Big Sky schools Montana and Montana State accepting invitations to join the Western Athletic Conference, Fullerton said things could change tomorrow, but all the Big Sky schools' presidents seemed tremendously committed to the league during their meetings in June.
With the WAC officially adding the University of Texas-Arlington as a non-football playing school Thursday, Fullerton said he had also spoken to a Big Sky president in the last two days who reported to him that their university had been approached by the president of a WAC school.
Weber State athletics director Jerry Bovee also spoke to the group.
"Last year, when times were tumultuous in collegiate athletics, I would get a lot of you that were emailing me or talk to me about, what's Weber doing?" he said. "Some of my colleagues in other areas were a little nervous that when the music stopped, they were wondering if they'd have a seat to sit in. We knew we'd have a seat to sit in. Our goal from the beginning is to be the best we can be in our current state. It was really telling for me when Montana, probably the most marketable program and brand in our conference, decided it was in their best interest to stay in the Big Sky at that time."
Looking at the state of the NCAA, Bovee pointed out that out of 346 Division I schools, only 22 made money on their athletics programs last year, "There is going to be more change," Bovee said. "There has to be."
The disparity between the big money BCS conferences and the lower-tier schools is coming to a breaking point, Fullerton said.
"When (Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney) says things like, 'If you blow up the (Bowl Championship Series), we're going back to the bowl system,' that's a warning. If he gets poked out too much, 'We're going to break off that top group and the rest of you guys aren't going to get a smell.'"
History may repeat itself, Fullerton said, in the way Division I athletics split into Division I-A and I-AA (now called the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision) decades ago.
"If you watch carefully over the next couple of years, it's a real possibility that football breaks again," he said. "Quite frankly, what I advocate is drawing another line. I don't think there's anything scary about that. It's reapportionment. Times change, schools' fortunes change. Some schools grow, some schools don't. So we redraw the line and we take the Big Sky Conference and we merge it with those (FBS schools) in the bottom quartile. I tell you what, it would be better for all of us."
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