What If the Big Sky Dropped to D2 in Football?

[coloradocat]

The whole conference doesn't need to drop down (would never happen anyway) but how about just a few of the schools?

What is the benefit to having 3 California schools? I always figured it was recruiting, and maybe a larger footprint for Root tv money, but do we really need all three?

Same question for Portland St. and UNCU. I'm sure we can still recruit Oregon without PSU in the conference and I don't think many guys leave the state of Colorado to play FCS football. They either go to Greeley or play up or down a level.

If we could get down to a 10 team conference we'd be more compact as far as travel and scheduling would make more sense. All we'd really lose is the bottom-feeders so the conference would be that much more competitive from top to bottom.