On Sunday, the University of Nebraska at Omaha announced that they have received an invite from the Summit League, the same league where Southern Utah has camped their basketball program awaiting an invite from the Big Sky Conference. The catch, is to drop football and wrestling. These sports are not sponsored by the Summit League.
The reason for dropping these sports is the amount of money that Omaha campus uses to subsidize their sports. While basketball at the Division I level is a money maker, football at the FCS level is not. It requires more scholarships, not just for football players, but for female athletes as well.
The chancellor and athletic director said in the news conference that making this move will reduce the amount of money that is needed to subsidize athletics, but ending 100 years of football tradition in Omaha. It will honor existing scholarships, find schools for athletes to transfer to and provide severance packages to laid off coaches. The wrestling program, which just won it's third consecutive national championship is also being dropped as boosters attempt to find ways to save it.
At a personal level, I enlisted in the Air Force after completing 3 years of study at Weber State. Then, when stationed at Offutt AFB, completed my Bachelor's degree at UNO. Many former Offutt Airmen hold UNO degrees. This one is a personal loss for me, as me an my young family enjoyed our Saturday evenings at Al F. Caniglia Field. The "Alf" will soon be converted into a soccer stadium and will become the home of a different kind of football, should this proposal be approved.
Of interest to my readers, one option for the Maverick program would be to become the 14th member of the Big Sky Conference. But traveling to locations like Flagstaff with the chance to renew former rivalries with Northern Colorado and North Dakota did not appeal to the UNO athletic department. An east/west Big Sky alignment would not have spared them at least two trips to California or Portland every football season. Once South Dakota passed on Big Sky Conference membership and joined the MVFC taking the spot that UNO coveted, football at UNO was doomed.
However, divisions in the FCS are different than the FBS. Which would mean 3 trips to California every 7 years and a visit to Flagstaff once every 7 years; Cedar City, Utah once every 7 years; Portland once every 7 years and Cheney, WA once every 7 years. The farthest UNO would have to regularly travel to with an East/West Big Sky alignment would be Ogden, Utah; Pocatello, Idaho and Missoula, Montana.
Big Sky Divisions
East
Idaho State
Montana
Montana State
North Dakota
Northern Colorado
Weber State
(UNO--if they change their minds about dropping football)
West
Cal Poly
UC Davis
Eastern Washington
Northern Arizona
Portland State
Sacramento State
Southern Utah
(Without a 14th school from the East, Southern Utah will likely be in the East division with instate rival Weber State.)
If you wish to help UN-Omaha save football and wrestling, you can like the Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/SaveOurSports
Other Conference Expansion News
In other news, with the WAC not losing Utah State or another program to the Mountain West Conference; it seems that the august conference will take it's time on rebuilding. After all, there is no rush. The bowl slots are gone, but the automatic NCAA tournament bid is not. Therefore, there is no rush.
Without UNO, the 14th football member of the Big Sky Conference may be...no one? The Big Sky Conference will need to rely on a D-II school to upgrade or another western school to re-instate or add football to round up to 14 or a combination of the two. Cal-State Fullerton or Santa Clara seem to be the ones most likely to bring back football...but neither would work well with the Big Sky. CSUF would likely join the WAC if they brought back football (Considering what the WAC has been through, they would be very foolish to pass on this, plus CSUF has good basketball and baseball programs) and Santa Clara is a private school and there are no private schools in the Big Sky Conference. UCSD is considering a move to Division I but does not sponsor football. Nebraska Kearney may follow UNO's lead; move to Division I but drop football. The football movement at Utah Valley is going nowhere and the Orem school has sights set on the WAC (yes, there are schools that want to join the WAC). It seems that the Big Sky is doomed to remain at 13 in football for now and that is where it will peak. The best options at this time are Central Washington or Dixie State, but neither seems to want an upgrade at this time. Adams State, a large D-II school in Grand Junction, CO is another option, but they are not entertaining an upgrade either. Of course, it may have been Commissioner Fullerton's plan all along to over-expand in case someone decided to move up to the FBS.
Of course another possibility is that the spot was left open for Idaho.
If you have additional information, please post a comment. I would love to hear from you.
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