Big Sky Commissioner on FCS Playoffs and NCAA Antitrust Settlement

SPOKANE — The NCAA antitrust settlement, the FCS playoffs and conference realignment were among the topics discussed during Big Sky commissioner Tom Wistrcill’s State of the Conference address July 22.

Oh, and the conference’s new contract with ESPN, which goes into effect in 2025.

“They gave us a really nice increase in dollars, and our schools did a great job of embracing ESPN on the production side,” Wistrcill said. “We make every game look like a high-quality TV production, and we showed them we can attract a large audience, whether it’s part of our ESPN+ package or a late night Saturday football.”

The new agreement will run through 2030, Wistrcill announced. The previous agreement, signed in 2021, called for two Big Sky football games, one regular-season men’s basketball game and the men’s and women’s basketball championships to be broadcast on ESPN2 and ESPNU. The new agreement will also increase the number of broadcast football games to four per season.

There will also be football games played in Big Sky on Friday night, Wistrcill said.

“It gives our teams incredible exposure,” he said. “8 p.m. may seem late here, but for anyone on the East Coast of the Midwest who’s at home or at a bar watching football, they’re watching Big Sky football.”

The format of the FCS playoffs will be a bit different this winter. Instead of the top eight teams, only the top 16 will be seeded.

“Seeding 16 teams will help us avoid games like last year, when North Dakota State played Montana State in the second round,” Wistrcill said. “You had two of the top six teams in the country, (and) one of them didn’t go very far. It spreads the power across the country.”

The FCS championship game will also change, having been moved to Monday, Jan. 6. Last year, the championship game between Montana and South Dakota State was played on Sunday and competed with the NFL for viewership.

The opportunity to move the game to Monday night comes with the expansion of the FBS College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams for the upcoming season.

“The fact that we were the only football game in the world that night was a really big deal,” Wistrcill said. “We worked really hard on it—the timing was right. ESPN saw that it was a crowd pleaser, so they were excited to do it, too.”

Wistrcill also spoke about upcoming financial penalties resulting from the NCAA antitrust settlement, which involves three cases — House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA — relating to back pay for student-athletes dating back to 2016.

As a result of the settlement, Big Sky members will have to pay between $180,000 and $350,000 over the next decade.

“I’m using the phrase that Weber State money is going to go into the pockets of Joe Burrow and Zion Williamson because that’s exactly what’s going to happen,” Wistrcill said. “We had no say in the matter, we were just dragged along by the NCAA when they made the decision, ‘Here’s how we’re going to pay the compensation.’”

Wistrcill said Big Sky member institutions did not have to cut any athletic programs to make room for the financial penalties, but discussions have been held. In order to accommodate the penalties, schools will have to make “difficult decisions” about travel and staffing.

“If you have a budget of $17 million and suddenly you lose $300,000, that’s a significant penalty,” Wistrcill said.

Conference realignment remains a hot topic in college sports, but mostly at the Power 5 level. Wistrcill noted that the Big Sky is monitoring potential moves across the country but has not seen any changes in the conference — largely because of the financial implications.

“If someone is going to go from FCS to FBS, they have to pay $5 million up front to do it,” Wistrcill said. “Then they have to invest $8 million to $10 million a year to be at that level, the average Mountain West level. For our schools, that extra $8 million to $10 million, I don’t know where they’re getting it from.”