The school this week informed the conference of its intention to leave as it will move all of its sports programs but football to the Big West Conference. The Big West doesn’t sponsor football and the Hornets are currently awaiting a decision from the Division I Council on its attempted move to FBS and the related request to waive the requirement to have an invitation to a conference.

That decision will determine if Sac State plays football as an FBS independent or FCS independent. Either way, the Hornets are out of the Big Sky. This comes on the tail of new arena and stadium projects, and record-setting donation pledges for the school. The football program may end up hung out to dry but apart from what becomes of it, the rest of the teams will have a geographically great fit in joining California siblings (and Utah Valley) in the Big West.

That leaves nine full members in the Big Sky after the upcoming school year concludes. What will the league decide to do next — or, more accurately, what aims do the nine school presidents have in mind for the future?

“Given the expected nature of this development,” the Big Sky announced Wednesday, “the league’s membership already has begun a strategic process to determine its best course of action moving forward.”

Bob Solorio, Sacramento State Athletics

Those choices range from doing nothing (or almost nothing), going full-tilt into expansion, or other options in between.

Below are considerations of at least some of the options.

ALLIANCE/AFFILIATES

If the Big Sky adds no members for the 2026-27 school year, it will have 11 football teams, nine playing basketball and volleyball, and eight playing women’s soccer. Football would still have more teams than can play a true round robin, and basketball and volleyball teams would have 16 conference games each season. That’s enough, though coaches for those sports would likely tell you they’d prefer not to chase scheduling an additional two nonconference games if they didn’t have to.

But it’s enough to stand pat, if desired, except for in two sports: men’s golf and softball.

Softball’s plugged away with six core members since Montana got its program running in 2015. The Big Sky played with eight schools for the next four years before eventual defections by North Dakota and Southern Utah. Now, Sac State’s departure would leave five softball-playing schools, which is not enough to retain an autobid to the NCAA Tournament.

Same goes for men’s golf. Most of the men’s golf programs played the 2024-25 school year in the Summit League but the Big Sky announced the sport would return with six schools under its umbrella for the 2025-26 school year with Eastern Washington launching a program and Francis Marion (South Carolina) joining as an affiliate member.

So what’s the next move? Asking more schools to launch new sports is a big request; for example, how long would it take for, say, Idaho or Northern Arizona to get a softball team and a place to play? (Both schools currently sponsor swimming and diving programs instead, while Montana State has skiing and rodeo.)

One solution might be to forge an alliance with an existing conference for either or both sports, like the WAC and Atlantic Sun have done in FCS football.

Another might be even easier: invite Southern Utah and Utah Tech as softball and men’s golf affiliates. Big Sky bylaws currently require full members to house a football team in the conference but, purely out of self-interest (and maybe some pettiness?), the Big Sky could save the autobids for those two sports and leave the two Utah schools searching for permanent answers for its other programs by extending only an affiliate agreement.

ADD UTAH TECH (AND SUU?)

To some, the most obvious solution would be for a Big Sky presidents’ vote to extend full membership invitations to Southern Utah and Utah Tech. The schools fit the geographic footprint in a triangle between Weber State, Northern Arizona and Northern Colorado.

Such a move would offer a lifeboat to both schools in every sport and solve the aforementioned Big Sky problems in men’s golf and softball. Having been a member of the Big Sky from 2012-2022, Southern Utah already offers the exact roster of sports played in the Big Sky (except for gymnastics, but the Flippin’ Birds already compete in the MPSF for gymnastics anyway).

Utah Tech has a similar roster but would need affiliate homes for baseball, men’s soccer and women’s swimming. (The Trailblazers currently also only sponsor men’s cross country but not track, while the women compete in both).

The two additions would give basketball and volleyball 11 members; women’s soccer programs would probably rejoice in expanding to 10, with the prospect of playing nine conference games instead of seven, and softball would sit at seven teams (allowing for a more robust 18 conference games instead of the current 15).

With the football conference already larger than makes a round robin possible, expanding back to 13 (where it was when SUU and North Dakota were in the league) wouldn’t hurt too much — though, there seems to be a looming prospect of UC Davis, which is joining the Mountain West as a non-football member, ultimately moving to FBS as a full MWC member in the near future. In that scenario and with no expansion, the Big Sky football conference would then sit at 10 teams, which is probably at least on the minds of some coaches and athletic directors.

That’s because if the proposal to move to a permanent 12-game football schedule comes to fruition in the FCS, the Big Sky could vote to increase conference games from eight to nine, which would then have the league playing a true round robin (no shared championships?) for the first time in a long time.

Would football drive the bus for that one positive if coaches from all other sports (and likely with athletic directors in their corners) all push their presidents for expansion?

It seems, then, that the two additions seem pretty natural. Easy peasy? Not so fast.

The Big Sky had given Southern Utah quite the opportunity to move into full membership in 2012, handing the SUU football program a big platform after it moved up to I-AA/FCS in 1993 but had gone through two conferences and eight years of independence in the next 20 years. SUU pushed that aside for new promises in the resurrected WAC in 2022, where Utah Tech already had a home transitioning from Division II and where a group of Texas football schools seemed to give the WAC a future again.

But most of those schools are now gone, either moving to FBS or other conferences, and the WAC has fallen apart — not just in football, but all sports. Even Utah Valley and Cal Baptist (Big West) and Seattle (finally going back home to the West Coast Conference) said goodbye.

It’s been said that bridges were burned in SUU’s departure. Some league coaches didn’t necessarily like the trip to Cedar City, either. So it’s a roadblock.

It’s worth noting, though, that those decision-makers are no longer at SUU. School president L. Scott Wyatt left SUU just six months after deciding to leave the Big Sky to take a directorship job in the Utah System of Higher Education. The Thunderbirds are now a couple of athletic directors away from that decision as well.

Debbie Corum was the AD when SUU decided to leave the Big Sky but retired 18 months later, in the summer of 2022 exactly when the school was moving to the WAC. Doug Knuth was hired in December that year but resigned this week, under at least some scrutiny after a May report from longtime college sports reporter Brett McMurphy that said SUU was under investigation for violating Title IX protections. Knuth, who was involved in four Title IX investigations over 10 years as AD at Nevada, according to a USA Today report, refuted that report as “false.”

Southern Utah has appointed retired judge and alumnus Tom Higbee as interim athletic director, and his main task is likely to solve the T-Birds’ conference crisis before the WAC goes kaput next summer. Perhaps his involvement as an outsider to previous SUU and Big Sky relationships, alongside a different school president, could make the reunion happen.

At Utah Tech, meanwhile, is athletic director Ken Beazer, the Weber State alum who was SUU’s AD when the Thunderbirds got the invitation to join the Big Sky in the first place. That can’t hurt prospects in St. George, at least. UTU’s new president, Shane Smeed, started the job May 1. He’s a Utah County native and was president at Park University in Missouri for nearly five years.

Big Sky presidents could vote to add Utah Tech only, thumb their noses at SUU and still solve the above problems. But the prospect of such an easy travel duo for road-tripping basketball, soccer and volleyball teams might be good enough to let bygones be bygones.

ADD ALL THE WAC-ERS?

Sports offerings at Abilene Christian and Tarleton State almost exactly match the Big Sky’s roster. Both play baseball and would need a home for that sport. UT Arlington does not play football and would currently not meet the Big Sky’s football requirement for full membership.

Adding both Texas schools (ACU, Tarleton) and both Utah schools (SUU, Utah Tech) could consolidate power but would also balloon the Big Sky to 15 football teams (14 if UC Davis ends up leaving) and 13 in basketball and volleyball. That’s probably too big. It would also make nonconference football scheduling more difficult. Women’s soccer, in this scenario, would expand to 12 teams and softball would be at its largest roster yet with nine schools.

Some sports (football, track) might be especially interested in making an official connection to Texas. Overall, though, I’d think the return on investment while adding onerous travel would make the prospect of adding two Texas schools a no-go for most university presidents, even though Stephenville and Abilene, which are a 1.5-hour drive away from each other, could make sense as travel partners for sports like basketball, soccer and volleyball. Other schedules would take more inventive reimagining.

LOOK AT DIVISION II

With Southern Utah and Utah Tech already firmly in Division I and in the footprint, I’d consider the possibility of the Big Sky looking at Division II schools remote, even if there are a substantial number of possible candidates in the west.

There are a few reasons for that. One is that the Big Sky needs quick solutions for keeping softball and men’s golf bonafide programs with autobids.

In the RMAC among football-playing schools, CSU Pueblo and Colorado School of Mines both play men’s golf and softball, but both also play baseball, men’s soccer and have swimming and diving programs. Colorado Mesa plays men’s golf and softball, but also sponsors baseball, lacrosse, swimming and diving, and wrestling.

Elsewhere at, say, football-playing Central Washington or Western Oregon, they too would be creating problems for a program like baseball while not even offering men’s golf.

The number of geographically sound candidates in Division II that have Division I aspirations, can and want to pay the $1.96 million reclassification fee, can double the number of football scholarships, can make the move without disrupting a diverse set of athletic programs they already sponsor, and are willing to be ineligible for postseason competition for three years, might be zero.