(02-14-2018 01:51 PM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(02-14-2018 01:02 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(02-14-2018 12:53 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Probably an exit fee of around $500K. But UND showed that may not be necessary, just sufficient notice of over one year. So in theory Sac State could pull it's Olympics from the Big Sky and put them in the Big West, say in 2019 or 2020 if they gave notice this spring without incurring an exit fee.

These things are governed by conference by-laws. If you follow those, no politicking matters.

That assumes of course:

1) Sac State administration wants to be in the Big West
2) They could arrange a football home (or drop football)

It’s very hard to find a home for football teams out west in FCS. Truthfully, the only real option for scholarship football is the Big Sky, and I can see why Sacramento State wants to leave football in there & pull out Olympic sports. The only other option is to put football in the non-scholarship Pioneer League, but unlike the USD Torerros, Sacramento State is a state institution, not private, and probably could not justify the expense of being in the Pioneer League, so basically, it’s Big Sky or bust.

The cost of Pioneer League football travel is far less than the cost of 63 football scholarships. And if you don't have the 63 football scholarships, then you also need fewer women's scholarships to comply with Title IX, so a Pioneer League football team is probably saving its school the annual cost of more than 100 athletic scholarships as compared to a school that is fielding a full-scholarship FCS team.