Welcome back, oh great and wonderful college football fans! It’s JoJo back again on the blog! I’ve been under the weather recently and working my summer job and moving, but now I am back working for the GCR! I’m also about to start student teaching soon to finish up my degree at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (go Mocs!), but I will write as many blog posts for the football season as I can! As the season gets closer, I get more and more excited to watch some good college football again! I hope to watch as many games this season as I can!
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This week, I am going to be talking about the 15th most challenged conference in D1 college football this season using our (my dad’s) preseason SOS (Strength of Schedule) metric. That conference is the Big Sky conference! The Big Sky conference has 13 teams, and is located in the western United States. The Montana State Bobcats were crowned the FCS champions last season after defeating the Illinois State Redbirds in overtime, so I look forward to watching how the reigning champions will do this season. Will they be able to hold the title two years in a row? Or will a new champion be crowned at the end of the season? We will have to watch to see what happens! Another powerhouse in the conference that made it to the FCS Championship semifinals is the Montana Grizzlies! The semifinal round of Montana State versus Montana was an interesting watch and I cannot wait to watch this matchup again during the regular season! In other conference news, the Southern Utah Thunderbirds have rejoined the conference after their leave in 2021 to play for the UAC from 2021-2025. I can’t wait to see how they play in this conference this season!
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As a further reminder, the FBS is made up of the Core 4 (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, Notre Dame) conferences and the Group of 6 (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac 12, Sun Belt, UCONN) Conferences. The FCS is made up of the other D1 conferences (Big Sky, Big South/Ohio Valley, CAA, FCS Independents, Ivy, MEAC, Missouri Valley, Northeast, Patriot, Pioneer, SoCon, Southland, SWAC, and UAC). Non-D1 teams are either Division II, Division III, or NAIA. In the table below, (4) indicates a challenge against a Core 4 team, (G) indicates a game against a Group of 6 opponent, (F) indicates a non-conference FCS foe, and (D) indicates a non-D1 game. There are no scheduled neutral site games. The mean PS-SOS for the MVC is 4.021 and the average PS-SOS member rank is 185.1 out of 266. With no further ado, we are proud to present the 2026 Big Sky Football Conference.
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That’s it for today! Tune in on Wednesday for the 12th of the series aka the 14th most-challenged conference! Thank you for reading and for helping us grow by sharing our work with others! Until next time, JoJo and G.
