The Big Sky and the playoffs: Examining the league's struggles in the national tournament

The Big Sky football season ended early again.

When James Madison and North Dakota State met for the FCS title last Saturday, it had been nearly a month since a Big Sky team had played a game (Weber State’s heartbreaking loss to the Dukes in the FCS quarterfinals). Much to the chagrin of the conference, that has been the norm as of late.

Since Eastern Washington’s national championship run in 2010, the Big Sky has yet to return to the national title game. And in that time, only the Eagles have made it past the quarterfinals.

For a conference that sees itself as one of the powers of the FCS, that's an issue.

The Montana prestige doesn’t permeate outside of the league as much as it once did. It’s been three years since Montana State last made the playoffs. And despite having nine different teams make the playoffs over the last four seasons, only four Big Sky teams have recorded a playoff win during that time.

So what is causing the ongoing playoff failure? And what can be changed?

The problem with regionalization

One of the most common complaints from Big Sky fans is the regionalization of the FCS tournament.

The NCAA dictates to the FCS selection committee that they are to group teams together that are within a 400-mile radius as much as possible. That means Big Sky teams are often on the same side of the bracket, making for early round matchups.

That was the case this past season with Weber State and Southern Utah, the Big Sky co-champions, meeting in the second round of the tournament.

“I would really like to see us seed the top 16,” Idaho State AD Jeff Tingey said. “The top 8 have a first-round bye and then the next 8 are seeded accordingly and then we put together the bracket according to that.”

Tingey, who serves as the Big Sky representative on the selection committee, said that Weber State was two spots away from being a top 8 seed. So if the top 16 teams were seeded, the Wildcats would have been No. 10 and wouldn’t have faced Southern Utah until the national championship game.

“In order to create a fair bracket, you have to seed all the teams,” SUU AD Debbie Corum said. “The football championship should be a big enough championship that the NCAA alleviates the restriction of playing regionally. They need to seed every team.”

In theory, seeding the whole bracket would help the Big Sky. But that might not necessarily be the case. A number of brackets over the last few years were set up to have Big Sky matchups early in the tournament -- but many of those matchups never occurred.

In 2016, No. 2 Eastern Washington and No. 7 North Dakota were due to meet in the quarterfinals, but the Hawks were upset in the second round. In 2015, Portland State and Montana would have met in the quarterfinals, but both teams fell in the second round. A Weber-SUU matchup guaranteed at least one Big Sky team made it through.

Lack of success

Regionalization arguments have often drowned out the fact the Big Sky just hasn’t been good in the tournament.

Since the conference expanded to 13 teams in 2012, the conference has won a total of 12 playoff games — and seven of those victories are by Eastern Washington. The Missouri Valley Football Conference, the league the Big Sky often compares itself to, won eight playoff games in 2017.

The lack of success has made it hard for the conference to get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to seeding and getting more teams into the tournament.

“You could have made an argument that Weber should have been a seed and Southern Utah should have been a higher seed,” Eastern Washington athletic director Bill Chaves told ESPN 102.9 in Missoula.

And since expanding to 13 teams, the league has only got four teams into the playoffs twice.

“We should have four teams every year,” Tingey said. “We are a very strong conference. The bottom three in our conference this year, one was North Dakota, who won it last year, one was Cal Poly, who was in the playoffs last year, and one was Portland State, who was seeded two years ago. In any given year, anyone has a chance to win the conference title.”

Many can win the conference title, but few have shown an ability to compete on the national stage.

Lack of exposure

Following James Madison's quarterfinal win over Weber State, JMU head coach Mike Houston said that he "didn’t know what to expect because no one in our conference has ever played anyone in the Big Sky.’”

Not a lot of teams out east knew about Weber State. After nearly beating the Dukes, they learned about the Wildcats.

Weber State finished the year ranked No. 5 in the FCS STATS poll and FCS coaches’ poll following its playoff run. A No. 5 seed in the tournament may have propelled the Wildcats into the semifinals -- and maybe even further.

“What we got to work on in the Big Sky is more exposure to the members of the selection committee,” Corum said.

Corum said that the conference and the institutions should look into inviting members of the committee to games to help them better evaluate the teams.

“If I’m the commissioner of the Big Sky, I’m thinking maybe have a more of an invitation to have some of these people come here and watch us,” Corum said. “And maybe on our dime. It might be worth it.”

The league’s deal with Pluto TV, which began this season, has helped, but Corum said the institutions and conference need to be more proactive in making sure their games are being viewed.

“Whether it’s emails, or inviting selection committee members to come to our games, picking up the phone and calling committee members to really holding them accountable and making sure they are watching us,” Corum said. “More consistent communication earlier in the season will be helpful.”

And getting them out to Big Sky country could help them see some of the unique challenges teams face.

“You think of Eastern Washington playing in Cedar City, going from (2,300 feet) to 6,000 feet and how that affects them,” Tingey said. “Sacramento State going to Flagstaff, where they are playing at 7,000 feet. Idaho State going to Montana State, playing in a game where it was 4 degrees at kickoff and at the end was seven below. Those sort of things.”

Scheduling conundrum

According to Tingey, as the committee members looked at Weber State’s case for a seed there was one thing they couldn’t overlook: the Wildcats’ 76-0 win over Montana-Western.

“It hurt Weber State significantly playing a non-D1 game,” Tingey said. “They won 76-0, but that didn’t help them in any way.”

Weber State proved it belonged among the best in the FCS with its playoff run. But that game, along with playing a Big Sky opponent (Sacramento State) in its non-conference schedule, made it difficult to evaluate the Wildcats against the rest of the nation.

But getting quality non-conference opponents has proved to be difficult for many Big Sky teams.

"We try to schedule those teams all the time," Tingey said. "But those teams on the East Coast, they don’t want to come back west. I’ve struggled for the last couple years to get non-conference FCS matchups and all of those schools say the exact same thing: 'We don’t need to travel 2,000 miles for a game.'"

And sometimes scheduling a difficult non-conference schedule hurts, too. Eastern Washington went 7-4 and was left out of the playoffs. Those four losses were to Texas Tech, North Dakota State, Southern Utah and Weber State — an FBS team, the FCS champion and the Big Sky co-champions.

“On Sept. 9, if we didn’t play North Dakota State and pick a school,” Chaves said on the radio. “We played somebody and won the game and we are 8-3, would we have been in? Probably. I don’t know what message that sends.”

Said Tingey: “Sometimes those games are good, sometimes they are bad. A couple years ago, Montana played North Dakota State and beat them and that propelled them immediately.”

Proving it on the field

The league has shown off its depth in recent years. Over the last four seasons, nine teams have made the playoffs and four different teams have won at least a share of the title. But that depth hasn’t translated to success in the playoffs and that hurt the conference this season, especially when it came to seeding.

“It just seems anytime Southern Utah is sitting at the top, the conference doesn’t get noticed nationally,” SUU head coach Demario Warren said in November. “I don’t think we are beating each other up. I just think when unfamiliar teams are at the top of your league, you don’t get as much credit, nationally.”

Weber State and Southern Utah were both unfamiliar. Are they now? Was Weber’s upset bid at James Madison enough to help change the national perception?

“The more they continue to have great seasons, they are going to elevate themselves,” Chaves said on the radio. “The one thing that has to happen is you have to make deep playoff runs.”

And that's one thing that's been pretty rare for Big Sky teams.

