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Big Sky Conference

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Big Sky Conference

The Big Sky Conference is a collegiate athletic conference, affiliated with the NCAA's Division I with football competing in the Football Championship Subdivision. As of 2024, ten full member institutions are located in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Two affiliate members from California are football–only participants, and a South Carolina school joined for men's golf in July 2025. Sacramento State will leave at the end of the 2025–26 school year, with Southern Utah and Utah Tech joining.

Initially conceived for basketball, the Big Sky was founded 62 years ago on July 1, 1963, with six members in four states; four of the charter members have been in the league from its founding, and a fifth returned in 2014 after an 18-year absence.

The name "Big Sky" came from the popular 1947 western novel by A. B. Guthrie Jr.; it was proposed by Harry Missildine, a sports columnist of the Spokesman-Review just prior to the founding meetings of the conference in Spokane in February 1963, and was adopted with the announcement of the new conference five days later.

Starting in 1968, the conference competed at the highest level (university division) in all sports except football (college division). The sole exception was Idaho, in the university division for football through 1977 (except 1967, 1968). Football moved to the new Division I-AA in 1978, which was renamed Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) in 2006.

In 1974, half of the Big Sky's ten included sports were dropped (baseball, skiing, swimming, golf, and tennis), leaving football, basketball, wrestling, track, and cross country skiing.

Women's sports were added 37 years ago in 1988, moving from the women's-only Mountain West Athletic Conference (1982–88).

The 2012–13 season marked the completion of a half century of athletic competition and a quarter century sponsoring women's collegiate athletics. Before the season the league introduced a new logo to celebrate this.

The 25th season of women's athletics also marked a first for the league, as Portland State won the league's inaugural softball championship. From 1982 to 1988, women's sports were conducted in the Mountain West Athletic Conference.

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