BOZEMAN — In about a month, Big Sky Conference schools will face an important deadline. March 1 is when universities must decide if they’re going to opt into the House v. NCAA settlement for the 2025-26 academic year.
, and plan to opt in, although questions remain. Will other Big Sky Conference schools opt in or out? Will the opt-in colleges do it right away or wait at least a year? Will the Big Sky set a scholarship cap? Neither those questions nor others related to the House settlement have definitive answers yet, but Big Sky commissioner Tom Wistrcill provided some clarity during a phone interview with 406 MT Sports last week. He also talked about revenue sharing and how the settlement’s $2.
8 billion in damages will be funded. Big Sky Conference commissioner Tom Wistrcill speaks to the media at the 2024 Big Sky Kickoff in July in Spokane, Washington. The Big Sky and ESPN extended their media rights deal for 5 years through the 2029-30 academic year.
TW: Let me start at the 30,000-foot view. What we're working off of is this March 1 deadline, where every school will have to choose — you're either opting into the settlement or you're not. The NCAA is still working out kind of how physically that's going to happen.
Schools are probably going to have to log in and check a box. It might be something as simple as that. If you choose not to opt in, then you're just following the current set of rules that everyone is under.
If you opt in, then obviously you've got to foll.
