Montana Grizzlies against FBS?

[J-Rod]

MrTitleist, I noticed something the other day when looking at the tentative schedule for Big Sky schools. It seems every BSC school plays at least 1 FBS school a year, every school other then Montana anyway. Ever since the Griz played UH on Maui I only remember them playing Iowa a few years back. Any reason they shy away from the FBS schools? Or is it the other way around........

[MrTitleist]

We played Oregon in 2005 as well. We had Wyoming in 2000, Hawaii in 2001. Idaho in 2003. Iowa in 2006.
There's a variety of reasons the Griz don't play up. The neggies will say that it's because we're scared to play up and test ourselves. The real reason is that we don't need to play up. The Big Sky teams play up because they need the money. Idaho State is taking on both Oklahoma and Arizona state for a combined $1million. They need the money to keep their athletics alive. Same goes for the other schools. UM is different because we're self sustaining. We played Iowa to pay off a deficit we had, now it's paid off, no need to play up and take a loss. We make almost $1million per home game.. no other Big Sky school comes even close to that. Montana State would be next, but they need a play-up game sometimes to balance the budget. Montana was offered games against Clemson and Minnesota.. but they didn't offer us enough money to justify playing them.. we were going to make more off of a home game vs. going on the road to play up. Plus lower tiered teams (Idaho, USU, etc) don't want to play us because they'd probably lose. Idaho has refused to play us (and to come back and get their brown jug) after we beat them in 2003 (I think it was 03). So yeah, offer us enough cash and we'll consider it, if not, Idaho State is available for slaughter.

[J-Rod]

Yeah that would make sense. I imagine if USU or Idaho grew a pair of balls(Not going to happen) the Griz would play them often, would definitely send a message upstairs to Mr. Benson(WAC Commish).....

Oklahoma will no doubt be up by 60 at halftime against ISU.

[MrTitleist]

Sadly, UM packs more people into WA/Griz than Idaho and USU put in their stadium. We have 18,000 season ticket holders and a waiting list to go with it. Student section is allocated 3000+ tickets, so the rest are snatched up by the general public, which sells out the first day tix are on sale. But they won't come to our house, soo.....

[J-Rod]

Wow.....sounds like a program that's ready to move up to the FBS. Hawaii averages around 45K, Fresno is 38K, and Boise has no choice but to average their maximum 30K. Beyond that there is nobody in the WAC that eclipses those stats you provided.....unfortunately.... Despite having good football programs...La Tech, Nevada, and San Jose State call 20K a good night.

[MrTitleist]

These discussions happen on eGriz all the time, a lot of "why don't we move up" threads. Most of them really go no where, but there's a few reasons, IMO, they can't move up. 1. We'd probably have to bring Montana State with us. They're working on expanding their stadium to about 20,000 and the plans for it look really nice, but they're 3 years away from that. 2. We don't quite have the local economy to support the extra money needed to field more scholarships and sports teams. Football scholarships would increase from 63 to 80'ish, we'd have to take on a couple more womens sports and probably another men's sport. Boise is pretty well sustained with the various tech giants that live in Boise, Reno is fed from the gambling, Hawaii from the tourism, Fresno from Silicon Valley, the list goes on. Notice how the bottom feeding teams in the WAC have no local economies.. Moscow, Las Cruces, Ruston, etc. Missoula is a large town, but no where near the economy of Boise. 3. We're a big fish in a small pond.. we have history, tradition of winning, etc. We move up to the WAC we'd risk the chance of falling into mediocrity, and as such, the football team would lose interesting, attendance would drop, we're just like the middle of the pack WAC schools. A lot of bandwagon fans wouldn't renew season tickets if the team started losing a handful of games a year. Boise, UNR, Idaho all used to be in the Big Sky.. only Boise has really stood out as being a successful move-up, but even for them it took some time. However, seeing the Idaho State's and Eastern Washington's of the world is getting old, as they typically provide a nice punching bag in most sports..

[Wyokie]

Theree's an actual law there that basically states that if Montana wants to move up they have to take Montana State with them and from what I've read on the internet MU doesn't want to move up so...