VIENNA, Va. - Former University of Montana defensive end Dustin Dlouhy - who finished his career at UM last fall - has been named to the 45-man Team USA squad that will play in the World Championship of American Football in July.

Dlouhy is the only player selected from the Big Sky Conference and from the state of Idaho.

The announcement was made by Team USA Football executive director Scott Hallenbeck and head coach John Mackovic.

This is the first time the U.S. will play in this international event. Team USA is training at San Jose State University from June 20 to July 4 prior to leaving for Japan.

The six-country tournament will take place July 7-15 in Kawasaki. This year’s event is the third staged by the International Federation of American Football.

read more at http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/05/29/sports/griz/gr56.txt

With the release of the forum there was a different template used.  I wanted the site to have a uniform layout and appearance throughout so I have been developing a new template as you can now see live on the blog side of the site.  Please let me know your thoughts and any ideas you may have to improve the look of bigskyfans.com.

The forum is now open! Join now and help build this online Big Sky Conference community!

Click the forum link to the right

The Bigskyfans.com forum is now open, please register now and be a part of the new Big Sky Conference Community. Use the link to the right for the forum. For features and info for the new forum please read this post http://www.bigskyfans.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15 Enjoy!

We have also made a small change to the logo, hope you like it better!

This concludes the major features of the site.  I will of course still be developing the site and fine tuning the features that are here now and adding additional functions to the site.  Once again,if you have any ideas of what else you would like to see here, please let me know.

Montana State University Athletic Director Peter Fields announced Friday that the University is exercising its option to terminate the contract of Mike Kramer, MSU’s head football coach for the past seven seasons.

“Looking at the football program as a whole and in light of the recent criminal activities of former student-athletes connected to it,” Fields said, “I believe there is something broken with our football program, and we need to take decisive steps to fix it.”

More here: http://www.msubobcats.com/news.php?sid=fb&nid=2048

Bigskyfans.com has been upgraded with new back end software. This should allow for a faster site, more features and overall a better experience for you!

A major development milestone took place today with the release of the Bigskyfans.com Gallery. You can access the gallery via the right navigation on the index page. This gallery is broken down into different sections on a school and Year basis. For example, any pictures for Northern Colorado in the 2007 year will be in Northern Colorado > 2007 > Albums.

You are allowed to post comments on the photos, view the photos and download them. Within the albums there will be a thumbnails page of all of the photos. Click a thumbnail and it will take you to the intermediate sized picture. Click this picture and the full sized version will be displayed. Click the full sized version again to minimize it.

Enjoy and if you have any questions on the Gallery, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks, Chris

The site is still in development and I thought I would post some changes made to the site recently.

1) Added a contact form. You can now use this form to contact us with questions, comments and anything else.

2) You now have the ability to subscribe to posts comments if you leave one yourself. Basically, if you leave a comment on a post, if there are any additional comments on that post an email will be sent notifying you of the new comment.

3) We now have a countdown clock to the first Big Sky Conference football game this fall.

4) We are now hosting the NAU Fans Forum in addition to the UNC Fans Forum. These will be great communities for all fans.

5) The Bigskyfans.com forum is getting much closer to being fully developed and will hopefully be available soon on this site.

UM meets NCAA’s academic marks
By FRITZ NEIGHBOR of the Missoulian

The figures are in for the third year of the Academic Progress Rates, the academic reform program instituted by the NCAA, and the University of Montana is nearly aces.

Of the six men’s and eight women’s sports at UM, just men’s basketball had a multi-year APR under the NCAA goal of 925. That rating was 921, and not subject to penalty because of a “squad-size adjustment” that gives programs some leeway.

The other men’s sports rated thusly: Football 942, tennis 941, cross country 929, indoor track 929, and outdoor track, 926. A rating of 925 is roughly equivalent to a 60 percent graduation rate.

The women’s sports APRs ran from 975 for golf to 943 for tennis. In between were basketball (972), indoor track (968), cross country (966), outdoor track (962), volleyball (955) and soccer (950).

Correction: Three Four of the 34 schools (49 programs) flagged as chronic academic laggards are Big Sky Conference Schools all within the football program.

Idaho State: football
Montana State: football
Sacramento State: football
Weber State: football

From USA Today

The NCAA stepped up a crackdown on academics Wednesday, subjecting 81 poor-performing teams to immediate scholarship reductions and flagging more than four dozen as chronic offenders that could be hit with harsher sanctions a year from now.

The NCAA has identified 49 teams at 34 different schools as chronic academic laggards, warning them by letter that they face stiffening sanctions next year if they don’t improve their Academic Progress Rates (APRs). For the worst offenders, those penalties entail a 10% or greater cut in scholarships and loss of one day of practice per week during the season.

Each scholarship player on each team generally can earn two APR points per semester for remaining at the school and academically eligible, and the NCAA has determined that teams should hit 92.5% of their possible total — an APR of 925 — or face the initial scholarship sanctions. A 925 roughly projects a 60% graduation rate.

The second-stage penalties target teams that post even lower APRs: below 900.

Fail to show improvement or obtain a waiver, and the sub-900 teams will face a 10% or greater cut in scholarships and loss of one day of practice a week during the season. That’s starting in 2008. Teams that have shown improvement will draw lighter slaps: a 5% or greater cut in scholarships and reduction in practice time by four hours per week.

For programs that continue to lag, the NCAA will start handing out postseason bans in 2009.