College Football: End of the FCS Vs. FBS games?

Looks like you're going to see a lot less games between FCS and FBS football teams. If you have watched college football at the beginning of most football seasons, you will see match-ups between FCS and FBS teams.

A lot of these FCS teams depend on these guaranteed games to fund their athletic departments. These games pay a lot of money to FCS team that is willing to travel to the FBS team’s home field and play a football game. Many times these football games are a lopsided game and then the FCS school gets a big lucrative pay day.

Ralph D. Russo, Associated Press --- Larry Scott said he still wants FBS to have a "so-called big tent," with more than just the top five conferences being included.

"That's why the reports of a possible breakaway and things like that are overcooked," he said. "That's not anyone's agenda."

He said the move toward more nine-game conference schedules and an emphasis on strength of schedule in the upcoming College Football Playoff will lead to fewer games between the big five conferences and the other five FBS conferences (Mountain West, American Athletic, Sun Belt, Mid-American and Conference USA). But there still will be competition between the two groups.

What likely will decrease are games between FBS and FCS teams and so-called guarantee games, when a school from a power conference pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to a school from a lesser conference to play a road game.

Some FCS and lower-level FBS programs, especially those in the Sun Belt and MAC, rely on those guarantee game payouts to fund their athletic programs and losing them could be a problem.

To me, this smacks of elitism. I understand the bigger teams not wanting to play the smaller schools. But some of the big schools are getting beat by FCS schools on a regular basis.

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Is the Big Sky and the WAC merging?

This is a story that is beginning to emerge on Big Sky Conference fan message boards and now the newspapers out west are beginning to pick up the story as well. Since UND is now in the Big Sky Conference, this could potentially affect North Dakota sports. The WAC was blown up last summer during conference re-alignment and is left with 4 remaining schools - NMSU, Idaho, Seattle, Denver - Boise State is headed to the Big West.

Jason Groves, Las Cruces Sun News - The Big Sky Conference has emerged as a potential lifeline for the dwindling Western Athletic Conference.

In a radio interview with a Boise radio station, Big Sky commissioner Doug Fullerton said his league is exploring a merger with the Western Athletic Conference that could save the WAC as a non-football league in 2013-14 while keeping two automatic qualifiers for the NCAA basketball tournament in the west.

"There may not be anything but it's something we need to look at before it (the WAC) goes black," Fullerton said.

WAC commissioner Jeff Hurd said on Thursday that a merger between the Big Sky and WAC is realistic, but still extremely preliminary.

"Doug and I led a commissioner's meeting in June in Chicago and it was an idea that originally he brought to my attention well before that," Hurd said. "I re-approached him in June with a different version. We both feel there is some merit to it."

Fullerton said New Mexico State has been slow to join the discussion in hopes of securing Mountain West, Conference USA or Sun Belt membership, whereas Idaho has had in-depth conversations with the Big Sky about merging certain Big Sky teams with the WAC for Olympic sports while Big Sky teams remain under the Big Sky umbrella for football - currently at the FCS level.

NMSU, Idaho, Seattle, Denver and Boise State are the remaining WAC schools for Olympic sports in 2013, but Boise State is expected to join the Big West before school starts in the fall.