Griz, Cats opt out of Big Sky spring football

MISSOULA — The first-ever spring championship football season is over before it begins for the Bobcats and Grizzlies, after Montana State and Montana announced Friday they are opting out of the Big Sky Conference schedule.

A six-game spring season had been planned to begin Feb. 27 and run until April 10, with the Big Sky sending teams to an already slimmed-down postseason for the Football Championship Subdivision.

Instead, according to press releases from both schools, they’ll develop a modified schedule that allows each team up to two “live competitions” by April 17.

That implies the possibility of a Cat-Griz spring game, but that’s highly doubtful.

“I don’t foresee us playing any other Big Sky Conference schools,” Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said in a Zoom press conference Friday. “Our focus is trying to find some opponents that we can bring into Missoula, and those will likely be non-Division I opponents.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and Montana’s late-winter weather pushed Montana and MSU to join Sacramento State, which opted out last fall, and Portland State, which opted out Friday, as Big Sky schools not playing the full spring schedule.

“Throughout the pandemic, we have made decisions in the best interest of the students,” UM president Seth Bodnar said in a release. “After much discussion with the athletic directors and coaches at both schools, we feel this decision allows our student-athletes to compete with adequate time to prepare.”

“This decision was difficult,” said MSU president Waded Cruzado, “but it will help ensure our student-athletes are as safe and healthy as possible when they do take the field again.”

Weather is a factor, if not the deciding one: Snow in Bozeman curtailed the Bobcats’ spring drills in 2019 to the point that coach Jeff Choate moved his entire 2020 drills to after MSU’s spring break. Then the pandemic canceled everyone’s spring ball.

Grizzlies’ coach Bobby Hauck usually splits his 15 spring practices around UM’s spring break. MSU’s break is March 8-12; UM did not schedule one this year, instead going with three 3-day weekends because of the pandemic.

Haslam said his department was ready from that side of things, with testing and contact tracing in place.

“We were ready to go,” he said. “But … COVID-19 doesn’t change the weather or change how you prepare.”

It’s worth noting that neither UM nor MSU has an indoor practice facility for football.

“We want to compete this spring,” Hauck said via Zoom. “We don’t believe playing a complete conference schedule is in the best interest of our team.”

“Preparing to win a championship in February with no indoor facility would be difficult at best, if not impossible. A modified schedule will allow our players to compete, which is what they want, and we’ll focus on the fall of 2021 moving forward.”

In a statement Choate said: “Here in Montana we’re uniquely challenged in keeping our student-athletes safe and healthy, which is our top priority, while preparing and playing in deep winter conditions.

“This is nearly impossible to accomplish given the Big Sky Conference schedule timeline.”

Beyond the timeline is the ongoing uncertainty with the pandemic and the vaccine rollout.

“There’s no promise that the FCS is actually going to host a championship this spring,” Choate said via Zoom Friday. “There’s a high level of uncertainty about that alone. The tipping point for me is these kids have been through enough. And if I can control what this schedule is going to look like… with a high level of certainty, then that is in our best interest.”

Haslam said the optimism he and others felt about the spring schedule dissipated as February drew closer. Post Thanksgiving, he said, he began talking with MSU athletic director Leon Costello and other officials. The school presidents spoke with Big Sky commissioner Tom Wistrcill not long after New Year’s; they informed him of the school’s decisions Wednesday.

“I’ll be the first to admit in late summer, as we saw fall kind of falling apart, I was always the really hopeful one on spring,” Haslam said. “I was probably looking at it from an athletic director’s perspective as opposed to a student-athlete that has to do fall football camp in the middle of January.”

There remains questions about crowd size — as of now, no fans would be allowed into Washington-Grizzly Stadium. Haslam remains optimistic on that point.

“As we move to April hopefully we do have a few thousand people that we can get in here and help feed their appetite for Grizzly football,” he said. “Our plan is to get two games, regardless.”

Hauck was brusque with some questions, including if the team took the news well (“They didn’t cry and they didn’t throw a party”) and if scrimmaging another school was attractive.

“If we play somebody else, it’s a game,” Hauck said. “And we’ll look to play some games, yes. So am I fired up about that? Yes. But what matters is the guys wearing the helmets are going to be fired up about that.

“We need to go compete. We need to go play a little bit.”