It always feels like a kick to the nether regions when a Big Sky school like Idaho State loses a highly successful coach to a larger program.

It certainly felt that way when Andrew Rich, the most successful softball coach in Idaho State history, announced this week he was moving back across state to run the Boise State program where he cut his teeth as an assistant before ISU hired him five years ago.

Rich, who is one of the most personable coaches you’ll encounter, developed a lot of friends in Pocatello who will hate to see him and his family go on a personal level. He also developed a lot of fans for the softball program, who will hate to see him leave after building the dominant softball program in the Big Sky Conference.

Rich’s departure certainly comes as no surprise to anybody who watched him win three conference regular season titles, as well as the program’s first-ever postseason tournament championship and NCAA tournament appearance this spring. ISU fended off suitors for Rich last year, signing him to a contract extension that nominally would have kept him in Pocatello until 2028. As we all know, however, contract extensions are only as binding as the buyout clause they contain.

When Boise State’s head coach departed for an assistant’s job at Arkansas this spring, the writing was on the wall. Rich coached at BSU for three seasons, developed a great reputation as a recruiter there, a reputation he continued to build during his time in Pocatello, and was a natural fit when the Bronco job came open.

As they say, money talks, and BSU spoke loudly, signing Rich to a contract that will pay him $140,000 a year over the next three years. At ISU, Rich had a base salary of $78,000, with incentives that could earn him as much as $16,000 per year. ISU is now advertising the salary for the coaching job as “$80,000 to $95,000.”

Of course, it’s not just about the money when a PAC-12 program like BSU comes calling. The PAC-12 ain’t what it used to be, that’s for sure, but it’s still a few steps up from the Big Sky Conference. For example, a quick look at the BSU athletic department’s staff directory shows 309 positions listed. (That’s not exactly 309 employees, because some staffers fill more than one position.) By contrast, Idaho State’s staff directory shows 123 positions.

A nearly three-to-one difference in support between BSU and ISU? That sounds light considering Boise State’s athletic department budget is $75 million, compared to ISU’s $15 million. The point is that when you go to work as a coach at BSU, you have a lot of resources at your disposal that you’re not going to have at any Big Sky school, including ISU.

As ISU was winning another Big Sky title this spring, I asked both Rich and Sydney Groves, the Bengal first baseman that Rich brought in as a transfer from BSU, what the biggest difference was between the Mountain West, the conference the Broncos are departing, and Big Sky play. Both said depth of pitching.

You could see that Rich was trying to imitate the Mountain West environment he came from at ISU by building a pitching staff that was abnormally deep for a Big Sky team. The Bengals had five hurlers that Rich felt comfortable using in any circumstance, including Kasey Aguinaga, another former BSU player who Rich lured east.

Groves, who led the Big Sky in home runs and RBI during her only season in Pocatello, had a highly successful career at Boise State, perhaps demonstrating that a good hitter in the Big Sky is probably going to be a good hitter in the Mountain West. Given that the renovated PAC-12 is really just Oregon State, Washington State and half the former Mountain West, it might be fair to say that players who were outstanding at Idaho State might be pretty good in the PAC-12 as well.

And that leads us to the other piece of Rich’s departure that is likely to inflict another one of those kicks to the unmentionables — the transfer portal. The current transfer portal for NCAA softball closes June 24. But under NCAA rules, current Bengals will have another opportunity to enter the transfer portal five days after ISU announces its next softball coach.

So that means returning Bengals, like shortstop Camryn McDonald, who led the Big Sky in hitting, all-conference catcher Jenna Kearns and pitcher Megan Miracle, who tossed a perfect game last season, will have the option of leaving the ISU program, and perhaps joining their former coach at BSU if Rich is interested in their services.

Also, before he left for BSU, Rich recruited an incoming freshman class that he was touting as comparable to the ISU senior class that dominated the Big Sky over the past four years. Under NCAA rules, those freshmen can opt out of their commitments to Idaho State without penalty since the coach that recruited them has left. If they chose to do so, it wouldn’t surprise anybody if some wind up on the BSU roster this fall.

The transfer portal has really doubled down on the pain inflicted when a larger school takes a successful coach from a smaller program. The good news, I guess, is that when ISU hires its new coach, there’s always a chance that coach will bring some good players from their former school to Pocatello. We shall see.

The other positive aspect of this situation is that Rich generated enough positive energy behind the program that ISU Athletic Director Pauline Thiros and her staff were able to raise a significant amount of money to improve the softball facilities on campus. The biggest and most impactful improvement came from Direct Communications, who ponied up the money to install a state-of-the-art synthetic field turf that allowed ISU to play far more home games than the weather would have allowed in past seasons.

This past spring, a group of ISU softball alums made a significant “lead gift” to kick off fundraising efforts for a joint women’s golf-softball practice facility that would include indoor batting cages and a covered infield. Rich told me the facility would be a huge recruiting tool, and he was hopeful to begin construction after next season.

In many cases, ISU athletic programs have long lacked appropriate facilities, the history of success and the fan base in order to be consistently successful. That is no longer the case with the softball program. But there is likely to be a transition period as the new coach tries to find enough impactful players to replace a significant draining of talent from the ISU program. Hiring the right person as the next coach, then, is critical to continuing the momentum that Rich created in his five years in Pocatello.