This is part of our two-part interview with Big West Commissioner Dan Butterly.
Commissioner Dan Butterly believes, and the data backs it up, that The Big West Conference has made real strides as a basketball league. He also knows staying there will be even harder in the current era of college athletics.
When Butterly took over in 2020, the league was generally viewed as a mid-tier conference in men’s basketball, somewhere in the mid-20s nationally by most metrics. This past season, The Big West climbed into the low teens, moving ahead of leagues such as Conference USA, the two-bid Mid-American Conference, and the Sun Belt in many evaluations. The rise has been real. The next challenge is making sure it lasts.
For Butterly, the path forward is becoming clearer: stronger basketball investment, firmer institutional standards, and a more serious approach to competing in the NIL and revenue-sharing era. He is not simply talking about rewarding the top of the league. He is pushing for a model that raises the conference floor and gives more programs a chance to retain talent, stay competitive, and matter deeper into March.
This is not about a cosmetic tweak. Butterly is talking about investment, standards, and the uncomfortable reality that mid-major leagues can no longer pretend the NIL and revenue-sharing era will sort itself out on its own. The gains The Big West has made in recent years have been meaningful, but his point is that they will be difficult to sustain without a stronger foundation.
“100%,” Butterly said when asked whether the conference is actively discussing strategic plans and investment minimums for men’s and women’s basketball revenue sharing. “We’ve got competitive improvement strategies. (Assistant Commissioner) Dom Drury and I have been actively working on them. We presented them to the board of directors at their meeting last month for review.”
The proposals are still moving through membership discussion, but the direction is clear. The Big West wants to build on the basketball progress it has made under Butterly’s leadership, and that likely means setting a minimum standard for how member institutions support their programs moving forward.
“These are institutions that have been obviously very highly prestigious academic institutions,” Butterly said. “But I think any mid-major right now is finding it a significant challenge to keep student-athletes, particularly in men’s and women’s basketball, on their rosters, particularly those that are first and second team, all-defensive team at any mid-major.”
Retention is at the heart of the conversation. In a transfer-heavy era where top talent can be poached quickly, Butterly believes the league has to raise its floor. This is not the usual offseason talk about improvement. It is about whether The Big West can build enough internal support to keep its best players and prevent the gap between the top and bottom of the league from widening.
“These are built to try to maintain the growth that we’ve created in the Big West,” he said. “I think we were rated 24th or 26th when I came on board as a conference in men’s basketball, and we’ve gotten up to 11th in that respect with some investment, but not the significant overall investment now that it’ll take.”
The Big West has established itself as one of the stronger mid-major basketball leagues in the country, with a profile that compares well nationally. Butterly knows, though, that sustaining the climb will be harder than making it. Getting to this point required improvement. Staying here will require commitment.
“In the revenue share and NIL space that exists, the numbers that are thrown out there for high major programs and what they’re spending in the space are significant,” Butterly said. “We need to set baselines moving forward to try to bring the bottom up and make sure those that are investing can continue to excel and potentially compete for an at-large or a better seed.”
Asked directly whether that means a revenue-sharing floor for men’s and women’s basketball programs, Butterly did not dodge.
“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re talking about,” he said. “Trying to set a minimum standard there or at least try to get into that revenue distribution or revenue share space, as some of our programs may not be there at even a minimal level at this point.”
That is where the broader challenge comes into focus. It is one thing to agree on the need for more investment. It is another to identify where that money comes from in a league where most schools are not flush with athletics-generated revenue.
Butterly acknowledged as much when discussing the actual mechanics of revenue in a mid-major environment.
“I don’t think there’s any mid-major that’s actually making money or net revenue in that respect,” he said. “It’s finding the revenue sources you have.”
He used a straightforward example to explain the tension.
“If a school’s budget is $20 million in expenses and they’re only generating $1 million in revenue, I mean, are they basing their revenue off that $1 million because it’s technically ticket sales, sponsorship, and broadcast revenue?” Butterly said. “This thing was originally planned for actual revenue, not just pay for play.”
That challenge is heightened in The Big West, where many institutions operate in public university systems that sometimes rely on student fees. Simply put, it makes the path more complicated. In that kind of environment, innovation is required.
“Finding the revenues is always going to be a challenge,” Butterly said. “But we just got to continue to be innovative and find ways to compete.”
That word, compete, comes up often with Butterly. So does the idea of making each game and each championship matter.
Even as he pushes the conference to think more aggressively about basketball investment, he remains committed to the value of postseason championships across the board. The Big West now sponsors 21 sports and 21 championships, up from 18 sports and 15 championships when Butterly took over. Basketball may be the headline right now, but Butterly does not present that as a reason to neglect the rest of the conference portfolio.
“It elevates the student-athlete experience in the Big West,” Butterly said. “Every student-athlete has an opportunity to compete for a postseason championship. In many of our programs, the postseason experience is the Big West championship.”
That philosophy carries over to basketball, where Butterly said he has been willing to ask bold questions, including whether the conference should continue its basketball championship at all. But every time the conversation comes up, the membership lands in the same place.
“What I hear from the membership is, yes, we want to continue to have a basketball championship,” he said. “It’s a great postseason opportunity for all of us to get together and be a part of that opportunity.”
There is also a competitive reason to keep it.
“You don’t want teams that don’t have a shot, let’s say you didn’t have a basketball championship, you don’t want teams that are out of it, that they’re only going to be maybe third or fourth place, just to not care about the rest of the season,” Butterly said. “There’s still something on the line if you’ve got a postseason championship.”
Butterly wants more programs to feel like they have a real shot, not just at participating, but at competing. That is part of why his comments on baselines and minimum standards matter. They are not only about budgets. They are about national relevance.
That urgency also shapes how he views the league’s future membership. With Utah Valley and California Baptist joining from the WAC, and Sacramento State from the Big Sky, Butterly believes The Big West is adding institutions that can sharpen the conference’s profile immediately, particularly in basketball.
“I’m very excited about the additions we’re making to the Big West,” Butterly said. “I’m excited about the basketball. We brought in the number one and number two programs from the Western Athletic Conference into the Big West.”
That enthusiasm comes even as the conference absorbs change elsewhere. UC Santa Barbara has announced it will leave for the WCC in 2027, a reminder that no conference can fully insulate itself from movement. Butterly’s public response was calm and measured.
“We wish them well and will continuously monitor and prepare for all scenarios,” he said. “We are in a great spot with our current member institutions and look forward to the coming months and years of success.”
Still, there is little doubt Butterly believes the conference can emerge stronger if the right standards are put in place now. He is trying to grow basketball without pretending the old model still works. He is trying to protect Olympic sports while embracing new realities. And he is trying to do it in a league where financial creativity matters just as much as competitive ambition.
That balance may define the next stage of The Big West more than anything else. The conference has already shown it can improve. The next question is whether it can invest enough, and broadly enough, to stay there.
Butterly is convinced it can.
