Part two of a three part Interlake series
By DILLON TABISH The Daily Inter Lake | 0 comments
Rob Spear and Max Corbet can remember 14 years ago like it was yesterday.
Spear is the current athletic director at the University of Idaho and Corbet has been at Boise State University for 23 years and currently serves as the assistant athletic director and head of media relations.
Both longtime school officials can give a vivid account of what it was like in 1996 when the decision was made that the two Idaho schools were leaving the Big Sky Conference and making the jump to full Division I competition.
The opportunity to play in a bigger spotlight, especially in football, and the revenue benefits of doing so were too good to pass up and the two universities concluded it was the right time to make a move. Also, there was a fear that staying put would stagnate or even diminish the programs.
“We just felt it was the right move at the time,” Corbet said of Boise State’s decision to join the Big West Conference in ’96. “The president was a forward thinker and (athletic director) Gene (Bleymaier) is the same way. Sustaining the same thing over and over again, we felt, was like going backwards ... It was still scary though. There was a lot of unknowns out there.”
The University of Montana could be in a similar situation in the coming years.
According to UM Athletic Director Jim O’Day, the athletic department is in the beginning stages of weighing its options in preparation of a possible seismic shift in NCAA conferences and member schools in 2011.
“UM is very comfortable staying where it is right now,” O’Day said recently, but an internal assessment is being taken to look at all aspects of Grizzly athletics in the event of a conference invite.
The football program at Montana is the only non-Division I team and plays in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly called I-AA.
Joining the ranks of the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) could be one of the biggest corners the program has turned in its 108-year history.
In that event, the athletic department as a whole would be affected.
If an invitation for membership was extended from a conference like the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) or the Mountain West, the university would need to add two more sports to reach 16, the minimum required for a school competing at that level.
With that in mind, an internal study is going to measure facility needs, Title IX implications and other areas needed to successfully compete, O’Day said. Also, the football program would need to increase scholarships by 22.
Recently the athletic department announced that due to budget cuts and rising costs any number of out-of-state scholarships could be dropped in the coming years.
Currently, the UM athletic department receives roughly $4.5 million from the university and $1 million from student fees. Last year, the football team broke attendance records in five of six regular-season games and brought in the most revenue of all sports at roughly $4.3 million.
In the current climate, schools across the country are searching desperately for revenue sources, and television contracts remain the largest. The second largest is conference allotments, with payouts for FBS schools more than doubling those of FCS schools in most instances.
“It’s important to see that the revenues are going to be there to offset the costs,” Spear said. “The conference revenues we see now are significantly more than they were when we weren’t Division I. That’s probably the most significant piece to the puzzle.”
Whenever the topic comes up about the possibility of the Griz football team leaving the Big Sky, two contrasting examples are most commonly used to try and forecast the result — Boise State and Idaho.
Those who believe the Griz have outgrown the Big Sky and FCS use Boise as Exhibit A.
“Boise State is a poster child for (moving up),” Montana State Athletic Director Peter Fields said. “They changed conferences and they had success and schools look at that and wonder if they can do that. The thing with Boise is they had a lot of population base and they had manufacturing and corporate support in the area. So you have to weigh all those things.”
Two years after playing in the I-AA national championship in 1994, Boise State gambled success and made the move. The Broncos were invited and joined the Big West Conference and barely missed a step, winning two conference championships over the next five years.
In 2001, the rising program moved to the WAC and since then the Broncos have won seven conference titles, compiled a 68-4 conference record and won two nationally televised Bowl Championship Series (BCS) games.
And it all started with those first wary steps.
“One of the biggest things, we had a lot of luck to go with it. It wasn’t just that we turned it on and there we were,” Corbet said.
The transition of moving to Division I in full was generally supported by the community and seen as a necessary step in order to sustain progress, Corbet said.
Upstate in Moscow, the level of success hasn’t been anywhere near Boise State’s.
Since ’96, the Idaho Vandals have gone 58-105 in football and last year achieved their first winning season since 1999, going 8-5 in the WAC.
Spear, a Butte native who received his MBA at Montana, has been at Idaho since 1989 and was named A.D. in 2004.
The decision to make the jump was not received by the community as well as it was in Boise, he said.
“I can tell you it was pretty controversial,” Spear said. “There were people on campus who didn’t feel like we should move up. Then we had the other groups who thought we should move up.”
Spear said the final call came based on distinct factors like bringing in more revenue, staying aligned with peer institutions and, not to be discounted, remaining alongside its in-state competitor.
“It think there was additional pressure because Boise State made that decision to move up and we didn’t want to be perceived to be second rate to them in any way,” Spear said. “That played a role. I’m not sure how much of a role.”
In the case of Montana’s two state schools, Fields said that MSU is not currently conducting a study of the viability of changing.
But other FCS members likely are.
O’Day said many other schools similar to Montana have already completed or are in the process of completing internal studies, such as Georgia Southern, Sam Houston State and James Madison. Others are expected to follow shortly, he believes.
Appalachian State, an FCS member and the second winningest football program behind Montana over the last decade, is not currently conducting a study, according to Mike Flynn of the school’s media relations.
On the other end of the spectrum, the University of Wyoming recently completed an internal study to see if it should drop down to the FCS level, according to O’Day.
“That’s one thing we probably learned from Idaho is that they probably didn’t have the infrastructure in place,” O’Day said. “Now they’re getting there but it’s been 10 years down the road to get to that point where they can then be competitive. Boise had the infrastructure in place when they left.”
If Griz fans had to choose which path to follow — Boise State’s or Idaho’s — it’s a no-brainer.
But in the case of deciding to move up, there’s no telling which path is which, not until it’s too late.
“There needs to be an in-depth study done so you make sure you know all the expenditures that are involved,” Spear said.
“But the other thing is you really have to evaluate the competitive nature. I can tell you it took us awhile to get where we are at where we were able to compete at this level ... We’re starting to turn the corner, but we still have a long way to go.”
(This is the second in a three-part series about the future of Montana Grizzly athletics)
Sunday, Part III: Staying competitive at a higher level, and thoughts from Griz Nation
Reporter Dillon Tabish can be reached at 758-4463 or by e-mail at
dtabish@dailyinterlake.com
