• Aggie Ascent - Facilities Master Plan Release
    sounds like it needs some optimization to make the menu and process work. For a staff that may be inexperienced or doesn’t work together every day, you need menu items that are single step and don’t have to be prepared to order during a rush. For example, foil-wrapped brisket sandwiches and hot dogs can be fulfilled as fast as the customer can say the word because prep can stay just ahead of fulfillment. Beef nachos, while delicious, are better suited to a seat delivery or mobile order model due to their multi-step made-to-order nature. Pizza is hard to execute well in a stadium. It’s also important to make sure the soda wells and kegs are iced down hours ahead or beverage service will slow down in foam. Someone in athletics can PM me if they want. I’m pretty familiar with making this sort of thing work.
  • Aggie Ascent - Facilities Master Plan Release
    it’s been a long time since I’ve been there. What do they typically have on the menu?
  • Membership
    oh for sure! Could you imagine they’d probably want us to circle up to chant the principles of community in iambic pentameter.

    But it’s fun to be able to have provoking if not spirited conversation and debate here without it devolving into the gutter. One of the better corners of the internet for sure.
  • Sac State's bid for the Pac 12 Thread
    what we are seeing unfold is basically the equivalent of a wacko on MUNI yell delusions at no one in particular right before they take a dump in a Burger King cup. Don’t make eye contact and move to another car at the next stop.
  • Membership
    I don’t have inside knowledge but I would predict that to be tricky unless it was a paid advertisement. If the university endorses something like a forum, they are probably going to want to moderate the content.
  • Aggie Ascent - Facilities Master Plan Release
    If we are talking only direct revenue, almost no stadium projects other than rental tents and trailers pencil, even at higher levels. This is an investment with more risk perhaps, but also greater potential for indirect dividends. As to whether the suites are poorly placed, I can’t say, though I will concede perching a building on top of the press box is likely to look weird and I’d probably suggest just removing the current press box and integrate into a new structure for more space.
  • FCS Playoffs Quarterfinals: Illinois State (10-4) @ #8 UC Davis (9-3)
    Can the problem be solved externally? - Yes. Should the problem exist in the first place? - No.

    For as much joy as coaches and professors may find, mid-level bureaucrats in areas like student affairs and student housing have found none, long suffering from stubborn policy absolutism. Hopefully they can find what joy is.
  • Pinnick honors
    It’s hard to know what motivates people. Probably fair that most people are convinced by money most of the time, but it isn’t always the case. One time I turned down a considerable promotion because I wasn’t feeling it with boss or the city I would have had to move to.
  • FCS Playoffs Quarterfinals: Illinois State (10-4) @ #8 UC Davis (9-3)
    Plough mentioned this was a problem even for guys on the team living in the dorms - potentially have to sleep on floors or get hotels. I’d love to hear a compelling reason from student housing why people can’t stay till Sunday even if no dining hall. It’s not like they’re paying OT to clean the hallway carpets on the weekend.
  • 2026 Football Recruiting
    yeah I doubt they were planning for anything like that back then and it’s a non-sexy investment now because you can’t see it. But there’s also the matter of being a responsible property owner. Even if you don’t care about streaming, calls and texts still need to go through, even for 6 days a year. Bad situations in a crowd get worse real fast if emergency calls and texts don’t go through.
  • 2026 Football Recruiting
    In 2006 when the stadium was being built, 2G was the prevailing technology. The first iPhone in 2007 did not have a camera! The lower frequency was better at bouncing around from terrestrial towers into the sunken bowl. Modern high frequency signals like 5G have much better data capacity, but have shorter range, require line of sight, and get absorbed more readily by bodies in a crowd setting. If the university has not added 5G sites, service in the bowl has likely degraded in the last 5 years since the carriers shut off 2g/3g. From public maps it looks there are macrocells at Hutchison Field to the east and Garrod Dr west of 113. If they didn’t add 5G small cells all over campus they likely do have poor density coverage and makes sense why the stadium bowl is in a shadow.

    As a short term solution, they could rent a temporary microcell trailer from Crown Castle. The carriers want out of the infrastructure business, so companies like CC actually own a lot of it now. You need shore power and a connection to a fiber backbone and then ATT, Verizon, and TMobile supply edge routers to CC to carry their network. This is ugly but not actually that prohibitive to rent and will provide ok service.

    The correct permanent way to build this out is a distributed antenna system, with fiber to radio heads all over the stadium. Modern radio heads can broadcast cellular and WiFi signals. Under the seats or on railings is actually ideal so you keep the cells small and a lot of radio traffic at leg level - we have less water mass in our legs. Carriers have no interest in funding this sort of thing beyond providing an edge router and at that they will make you wait 6-12 months. Probably a $3M job all in if you want a system for reliable mass live streaming.
  • SAC ST Coach OUT
    hopefully, for their own sake, the title of this thread eventually changes to Sac St President Out. This guy is an ego junkie pretty high on himself and the financial/academic malfeasance is going to collapse on him sooner or later. I wonder what his exit strategy is? Is he going to cash this check for however many years it takes the state to fire him or is he going to get one of those negotiated deals where he gets promoted to some state board for more money and less responsibility?
  • 2025 FCS Playoffs
    appears that way. In our time block, ABC conflicts with the other game, ESPN has men’s basketball, ESPNU has women’s basketball, and ESPN2 has women’s volleyball regional. So we are on ESPN+, unless something gets bumped or time changed.

    The production quality was so much better than what we have seen before. Even if we can’t afford to rent cameras of that quality on the regular, hopefully we saved the number for some of those operators.
  • Attendance
    Ok, if anyone from athletics marketing reads this, going to need push harder potentially for Illinois State since most students will be home—
    • have the chancellor extend the winter break dorm closure date to Sunday.
    • review admission data to see which students came to the most games, then cross reference with their zip codes. If there are clusters within 90 minutes, organize charters and then call them.
    • setup a group code for Amtrak. Maybe even pick a train to designate as the Aggie Pride Train. They used to do this for Pajamarino.
    • going to need a townie turnout. 2pm is a perfect time, organize a community bike parade from the Farmers Market and promote this week in the elementary schools.
    • make nice with the Alumni Band and have them rally the Farmers Market all morning and help out at the game if the kiddie band is thin.
    • get the “football this Saturday” message into all the Unitrans electronic signs. They used to do this like 20 years ago.
  • 2025 FCS Playoffs

    We have approximately 1 in 62 chance of hosting Illinois State two weekends from now.

    There is still a chance. :smile:

    This one aged into a fine wine. Cheers, sir.
  • Coaching Carousel
    I think Orr is just Wood’s elf (Hornet?) on a shelf. Doesn’t do much other than get moved from shelf to shelf with a plastic smile and a note pinned to his shirt.

    Maybe Ron Gould would work? And then opponents would only need to learn to defend 50 yard field goal attempts.
  • Coaching Carousel
    quite frankly, both Wood brothers are a bad deal for all taxpayers, whether you care about Sac State athletics or not.

    The challenge with Dr. Wood is that he has not been hired or retained based on academic merit or administrative performance. He was hired for other reasons, and those other reasons become very litigious when it comes time to plunge the toilet that has overfloweth with crap.
  • Coaching Carousel
    I’d assume that people have been cracking Barnum and Bailey jokes his whole life such that he might avoid clown shows, which this most certainly is.