Big Whoopee! Idaho Slumming To Play Eastern

The Big Mystery here on the eve of the Big Game - well, the Little Big Game - is just how many of you fully comprehend yet the difference between the Big Sky and the Big West.

What do you mean, “Big Deal?”

This is Big Stuff. You may recall that the University of Idaho had to go through approximately 37 NCAA hearings and prolonged groveling before the state board of education just so it could run away and join the Big Time and not have to associate with the Eastern Washingtons of the athletic world anymore.

By the way, kickoff for the Idaho-Eastern game Saturday is 3:05 p.m.

What? Certainly they still play each other. It’s really all quite civilized. It just doesn’t make much sense.

Nonetheless, here the Vandals are, safely spirited out of the Big Sky Conference and into the Big West - a move that the school’s president, athletic director and football coach once insisted was vital to the future well-being of Idaho athletics. We were going to check back with them this week to see how they were all holding up at the helm of this bold adventure, but - surprise! None of them work here anymore!

Well, no matter. It’s done. It’s our job now to help you through the transition.

Now, the Vandals again have a talented football team which, were they still in the Big Sky, might very well be contending for a championship. In the Big West, however, they’ve been given up for toast - not because the competition is so much stronger, but because they’ve already lost one conference game and only two schools in the league play football.

Only joking. Big West football is a mighty conglomerate of six. What’s confusing is that in abandoning the podunkishness of the Big Sky, the Vandals find themselves schlepping off to equally podunkish Big West burgs like Logan and Denton. None of the league’s California sophisticates offer football any longer, though they’ll slink back into the picture for hoops - and, truth be known, are still the Big West’s reason for being.

And you probably already know that Big West schools offer more football scholarships - which, theoretically, equates to better athletes - and occasionally offer themselves up sacrificially to Top 25 teams. This is the prestige factor. Likewise, while Big Sky schools can merely set their sights on winning a national championship, Big West schools lustfully eyeball the Las Vegas Bowl - which is to the college bowl picture what pyrite is to the gold standard.

The fact is, the greatest differences between the Big Sky and Big West aren’t line items and 40-yard-dash times. Part of the debate over whether it was appropriate for Idaho to make this move - and whether it was appropriate for the Big Sky to fill the void with the likes of Northridge and Sac State - was about geography and attitude and feel.

For instance, Greg Brady probably went to a Big West school, where he became president of the Young Republicans. Grizzly Adams probably went to a Big Sky school, where he became the mascot.

The Big Sky got its name from an A.B. Guthrie novel. The Big West got its name from the Big East.

If a Big Sky school wanted to cheat to land a blue-chip recruit, it’d buy him a pickup truck. A Big West school would help him hotwire an Audi. The patron saint of Big Sky basketball is Jud Heathcote.

The patron saint of Big West basketball is Jerry Tarkanian. The Big Sky is Hank Jr.

The Big West is Letters To Cleo. In choosing an academic major in the Big Sky, the question is often “Forestry? Or animal husbandry?” In the Big West, the question is, “Academics?”

The Big Sky made Eastern Washington wait 10 years for membership, and Portland State 20. The Big West popped the question to Idaho and Boise State on the first date.

The patron saint of Big Sky football is Jim Sweeney. The patron saint of Big West football is … OK, Jim Sweeney, too.

The Big Sky is the land of the Unabomber, the Freemen and the Militia movement. The Big West is the land of Tupac Shakur.

As fundraisers in the Big Sky, schools stage “casino nights” in their student unions. In the Big West, they stage “casino nights” at Caesar’s and Circus Circus.

Aside from football and basketball, the Big West’s most noteworthy sport is baseball. Aside from football and basketball, the Big Sky’s most noteworthy sport is elk season.

In the Big West, play-by-play announcers give you down and distance. In the Big Sky, they say, “Beat me, whip me, make me watch The 700 Club, but please don’t make me watch these Montana officials.”

Big Difference, right?

, DataTimes