Sports
As of the 2012–13 school year, the Big Sky sponsors championships in men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross country, football, women's golf, women's soccer, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's indoor and outdoor track, women's volleyball, and softball. The sport most recently added is softball; the 2012 expansion gave the Big Sky enough softball-playing institutions to form a softball conference. Cal Poly and UC Davis participate as football-only affiliates, with the rest of their sports participating in the Big West.
The Big Sky is unusual among Division I all-sports conferences in not sponsoring baseball. The conference originally sponsored baseball, with all members participating. When Boise State and Northern Arizona arrived for the 1971 season, competition was split into two divisions of four teams each, with the winners in a best-of-three championship series. Montana State and Montana soon dropped the sport and by the 1973 season, only six teams remained but the divisions were kept, and Boise State moved over to the North Division for two years. In May 1974, the Big Sky announced its intention to discontinue five of its ten sponsored sports. It retained football, basketball, cross-county, track, and wrestling, and dropped conference competition in baseball, golf, tennis, swimming, and skiing. Of the eleven Big Sky baseball titles, four each went to Idaho (1964,'66,'67,'69) and Gonzaga (1965,'71,'73,'74), and three to Weber State (1968,'70,'72). Gonzaga won the final title in 1974 over Idaho State in three games, after losing the first game in Pocatello. Southern division champion Idaho State chose to end its baseball program weeks following the conference's announcement, and Gonzaga, Idaho, and Boise State joined the new Northern Pacific League (NorPac) for baseball in 1975. Boise State and Idaho competed in the NorPac for six seasons, then discontinued baseball after the 1980 season.
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Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belong to his Neighbour.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)