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This Day In Sports…April 27, 2016, 10 years ago today:
Reports surface and are subsequently confirmed that the University of Idaho football program will end its FBS affiliation and return to the Big Sky, effective with the 2018 season. The official announcement would come the next day at a press conference. The previous month, the Sun Belt had declined to extend the football-only contracts of Idaho and New Mexico State beyond 2017. The Vandals would thus become the first school ever to drop from the FBS to the FCS since the latter’s inception as Division I-AA in 1978.
At least UI would keep on playing. Four Division I-A schools had dropped football since the FCS was formed—Wichita State (1986), Long Beach State (1992), Cal State Fullerton (1993) and Pacific (1996). Idaho had moved to Division I-A in 1996, but conference stability was a constant problem. When the Big West dropped football after the 2000 season, the Sun Belt threw the Vandals a lifeline. Then Idaho finally got an invitation to join the WAC in 2005 and rode that out until the conference dropped football following the 2012 campaign. The Vandals muddled through as an independent in 2013 before the Sun Belt came to the rescue again.
Idaho’s only option to remain FBS past 2017 was to go independent a third time (it spent 1959-64 as an independent after the Pacific Coast Conference—the forerunner of the Pac-12—parted ways with the Vandals). But UI had logged only two winning seasons in the FBS in the new century, with a record of 46-144 since the dawn of 2000. In that time, they had no league championships and one bowl bid (the 2009 Humanitarian Bowl victory).
The Vandals had a standing invitation to return their football program to the Big Sky, the conference it played in for 31 seasons from 1965-95. “The Big Sky allows us to renew traditional rivalries and offers our athletes the opportunity to excel at an appropriate level of competition,” said university president Chuck Staben. The Vandals, who were regular participants in the Division I-AA Playoffs from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, would have a legitimate shot at the postseason again.
Ironically, the football season that followed the announcement was one of the Vandals’ best in the FBS, a 9-4 campaign capped by a wild 61-50 win over Colorado State in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. That gave naysayers of the move down to the FCS a platform, and indeed fans were slow to warm up to the return to the Big Sky. It didn’t stop the losing seasons—until the arrival of coach Jason Eck in 2022. Eck led the Vandals to three straight FCS Playoff appearances, entirely changing the dynamic in the Kibbie Dome. His successor, Thomas Ford, went 4-8 last year, but the foundation has been laid for sustainable success.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
