Big Sky Commissioner Wistrcill Outlines Conference Vision, Signs Five-Year Extension

Tom Wistrcill has been watching college football's tectonic plates shift since he took over as Big Sky Conference commissioner in December 2018, and he sees a bigger rupture ahead. Speaking at the league's football meetings at Northern Quest Resort and Casino in Airway Heights and in a separate March 9 interview at the league's postseason basketball tournament in Boise, Wistrcill laid out a vision built not on chasing the Power conferences but on cementing the Big Sky's identity as the dominant force in FCS football west of Texas.

The timing carried institutional weight: Wistrcill agreed to a five-year contract extension through 2030, the financial terms of which were not disclosed. University of Idaho president C. Scott Green, who chairs the Presidents' Council responsible for the commissioner's employment, framed the extension as a continuity play in turbulent times. "His keen grasp of the myriad issues around college sports, their potential impact on our membership, and how to navigate this unprecedented space has us positioned to not just survive but even thrive in today's modernized NCAA," Green said.

The conference Wistrcill is navigating into 2030 looks meaningfully different than the one he inherited. Sacramento State jumped to the FBS after last season, assuming that transition goes through smoothly, and North Dakota State, long expected to make the leap, officially did so when the Mountain West announced in February it will add the Bison as a football-only member beginning with the 2026 season. Wistrcill acknowledged both departures but reframed them as evidence of Big Sky's gravitational pull rather than its decline.

"What's kind of shifted in what's happening is if you look back 10 or 15 years, we've always been a strong football conference, but we weren't always looked at as the dominant football conference," Wistrcill said. "I would say what's happened recently has even further shifted to the Big Sky being the dominant conference now."

The practical work of sustaining that dominance runs through a scheduling puzzle. With Southern Utah and Utah Tech joining to replace Sacramento State, the Big Sky will operate with 13 football teams in 2026-27, an odd number that collides with the NCAA's adoption of a 12-game FCS schedule. Wistrcill's solution: a nine-game conference schedule in which one team plays only eight conference games each season. Southern Utah and Utah Tech will alternate in that role as part of the terms of their membership agreement, an arrangement Wistrcill said will last "for the foreseeable future."

The geographic result is striking. Starting in 2026-27, the Big Sky will include all but one FCS school west of Texas. The lone outlier is San Diego, which plays in the nonscholarship Pioneer Football League. Cal Poly and UC Davis participate as football affiliate members, and Francis Marion joins this year as an affiliate in men's golf. On the question of whether the conference will push further, Wistrcill was direct: "We're really focused on making sure we integrate what we have now for next year and haven't really thought about anything beyond that."

The larger backdrop Wistrcill kept returning to was the accelerating separation at college football's top. He predicted that the Power 4 conferences, already operating at a financial remove from the rest of Division I, will eventually fracture into something entirely apart. "Those at the top are running so far ahead of the others, there's going to be something that happens within that (Power 4) group at some point," he said. "I don't know if that's two years away, five years away, 10 years away — but it's coming."

Against that backdrop, Wistrcill positioned the Big Sky not as a conference trying to climb out of FCS but as one choosing to define what FCS excellence looks like. "We're not trying to be something we're not going to be. We're very secure in who we are," he said. "The good news is there's still 125, 130 schools in FCS. So we've still got a big number. I do believe that there still is a strong future in FCS.