The ESPN universe can be confusing in the way it extracts cash from your wallet -

• ESPN+ is a strictly streaming service available a la carte for about $6/mo or as part of various Disney+ / Hulu bundles or as a gimmick from some mobile phone providers. It does have an app available for smart TVs and mobile devices. It includes some "original content" (read: obscure games that don't warrant a spot on a cable channel) and some replay games. It does NOT include live content from ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPNU cable channels without having a valid cable subscription as well.
  
• ESPNU is a cable channel. To watch it, you must subscribe to a cable package that includes it. This could be from a legacy cable provider like Spectrum or Comcast or it could be through a streaming cable provider like Hulu+LiveTV or Sling (~$65/mo). If you subscribe to a cable package that includes ESPNU, then you can link that license to your ESPN app to watch it there, if say, you wanted to stream it on a tablet or phone instead of your TV. Note that having a cable subscription that includes ESPN channels does not automatically include access to ESPN+ streaming-only content, you still have to pay the $6/mo for that.

Bottom line is that the games will be paywalled, behind two DIFFERENT pay walls, depending on whether it is an ESPN+ or ESPNU game. Presumably the ESPNU games will have production quality suitable for national cable. Hard to say if the ESPN+ games will have better cameras and graphics but it should be a more stable platform than Pluto - assuming that the constant buffering was Pluto's fault and not the result of a really unstable uplink from the stadium. Don't know what this means for free replays on BigSkyTV, but I would think that if Disney is charging $6 to stream the replay, they wouldn't want it free somewhere else.

This thread took a plot twist. Are Fresno’s finest dancers really a recruitment tool? I guess some people are into meth mouth?

I know little about baseball or which players are relevant, but looking through the rosters it looks like baseball at both schools is kind of a regional recruiter, most of Irvine's players come from LA, San Diego, and Orange Counties. Most of ours come from Sac valley or Bay Area. Is baseball just objectively better or more popular among Southern California high schools? Or is there something different about baseball culture in Northern California that makes the students less attractive to universities? To some degree, success attracts success but is any school in the Big West really a feeder to a pro career? I thought pro ball mostly plucked the guys with legitimate potential right out of high school. Remembering way back to high school for me, both school and club baseball were always in trouble for indiscretions with alcohol, tobacco, or young ladies. I recall on one occasion they locked the coach in a portolet, tipped it over, and left him. Needless to say, not college-bound men. No idea if that culture was unique to my high school or more widespread.

This happened in 2018. In mid-2020 they rolled out their new shark mascot named "Elbie." Athletics is going by Beach Athletics (Dirtbags for baseball). Students and alumni can still refer to themselves as 49ers. Neither teams nor individuals should be referred to as sharks. Elbie is just the mascot... kind of like how Gunrock is our mascot, but we refer to ourselves as the Aggies not the mustangs. That said, the shark costume looks like it came from a Chinese knock-off of a Seaworld park and per the university's official communication, Elbie is speechless, has no family, and identifies as gender non-binary, preferring they/them pronouns.

The statue in question was planned to move to the alumni center opening in 2022, but was removed early last summer and put in storage due to threats of vandalism because some see it as anti-Native American.

Sure! Here is the UC interactive dashboard on admissions. If you go up a level in the infocenter, there are other dashboards on a variety of topics. I took another look and I did misspeak - currently about 28,000 undergrad international (12% of total), of which 18,000 are from PRC. About 15,000 grad international (26%), of which 7,000 are from PRC. Still a mass expansion of international from 2000 (2% and 16%) with the bulk during 2009-2015. Domestic out-of-state also doubled.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/fall-enrollment-glance

I don't think we disagree in premise. But my point is it's maybe not so easy to define what the "top 8%" is if the standardized tests are crooked and grades aren't so standardized from school to school. Indeed I have seen what you describe, students get recruited beyond their preparation and go down in flames. I should say I don't believe intellect is guided by race but preparation is often guided by economics. We would likely be better off as a society if we intervened much earlier in life on the socio-economic things rather than wait for big disparities to develop and then try to apply some even-the-odds overlay to admissions and hiring.

I think you're both right. It is about money, but money is deeply correlated with zip code, school quality, family living situation, immigration status, and yes, race. You can't put your finger on the scale to adjust for one without causing impacts to the others, whether that is incidental or an intentional agenda. The challenge that admissions officers face is discerning who has potential and how much... in essence has the kid from a well resourced school already peaked with less remaining potential than someone with a less exemplary pedigree. The premise of a UC education is teaching people how to ask the questions for which an answer does not yet exist rather than memorizing what is already known. It isn't easy to objectively measure the former, so they rely on predictors like the latter. The crime of course is that late bloomers are overlooked because this is all decided sophomore and junior year, while some other students with all the positive predictors in place flame out after discovering liquor and the opposite sex in the dorms.

Movie is spot on about international students - between 2000 and 2020 the number system wide climbed from 3000 to 29,000. Over 25,000 of them are from mainland China. We have indeed auctioned off seats to Beijing, who is willing to pay MSRP, to balance the budget and subsidize domestic underrepresented groups.

I'm not sad to see the tests go because they didn't really measure aptitude, they measured test prep skills. The main proprietor of tests, The College Board, is technically a non-profit, but doesn't act like one as they pay their executives millions. The circular scam is that they also sell test-prep materials and the tests are designed to favor people who bought their materials. It also turns out, they were selling students personal info, and had gotten in bed with the Confucius Institute, which it appeared was a mechanism for the Workers Party to spy on American students. There were claims that the tests were racist--I'm not so sure that the questions themselves were (although there were activists who wanted it to offer an African American Vernacular English version), but based on the price point and accessibility of prep materials, it did favor students and schools with more resources. I believe UC is talking about building their own test. If they do, time will tell if it has any validity or reliability, though the skeptic in me worries that UC would get into the prep material publishing business as a profit venture and just repeat the cycle.

The article mentions some reasons for desistence in young children might be because at a young age they don't have the language skills to accurately define their feelings or that over the course of a longitudinal study, the definitions had changed. So basically misdiagnosing any gender non-conformance as trans might mean the adults are more confused than the kids. Indeed I do think there are cases of parents of children with abnormal behavior being quick to seek diagnoses so that they can join a community that normalizes that behavior and thus reassures them that they aren't bad parents. I think though in the context of the original discussion, a 16 year old would be less confused or influenced by adult projections than a 4 year old. Notwithstanding the adult gyms we go to, my understanding is that high schools have found ways to mitigate the locker room and restroom concerns and the debate is now centered on the reality that someone with XY chromosomes but doesn't identify that way likely still has physiological advantages in a group where everyone else has XX chromosomes. In these rare cases, the ultimate question is do we favor the mental health and development of the individual or the objective fairness of the competition class? If the stakes were low like a city rec league, I think this is a non-issue. But as long as we are going to base what university you go to and how much it's going to cost on your performance in an 11th grade squash or fencing tournament, I think we are going to find people unwilling to budge.

Jenner is a joke candidate for governor. I don't think even reasonable conservatives want the Kardashian organization running the state. While true that Jenner helped make trans issues mainstream, the LGBT community is not monolithically a fan of her takes, so we shouldn't give her the power of spokesperson, just like Jesse Jackson shouldn't be taken to speak for all Black people. I find Gen Z as annoying as anyone else, and I think you touch on this cultural phenomenon where it has become cool to overstate one's "harm and trauma" because of the narrative where you're either oppressed or an oppressor and nobody wants to be seen as the latter. That said, I don't think it's a thing that people are faking being trans or gay to be cool. In fact I had a coworker once respond to that line of questioning with "Wait, do you think I chose to ruin my life?"

You're thinking of Dr. Rachel Levine and an exchange with Rand Paul at confirmation hearings. Paul went down this line of questioning, Levine declined to engage, and Newsmax filled in the silence. I don't know Dr. Levine's personal opinion, but today's general medical advice in younger children is to not necessarily "correct" gendered behaviors, that is if a girl wants to play with trucks or a boy with dolls, whatever. In fact many children outgrow this at puberty. But some don't, so for adolescents, the medical advice can include fully reversible puberty blockers to buy time to figure things out or partially reversible hormone therapy. Typically, surgery would only be available to 18+ who have lived as that gender for at least a year under a doctor's care. An open debate not limited to LGBT issues is how much autonomy and privacy teens should have over the own healthcare. As with anything, there are wackadoo parents on both ends of the spectrum that take things to unhealthy extremes.

An interesting thing I've learned from trans acquaintances - the community is kind of split. Many, maybe even most, trans people want to simply pass a regular man or woman and go about their lives without, you know, being murdered. Most of these are quiet about it and don't want to be noticed so probably wouldn't dance their bait and tackle around a gym shower. On the flip, there are people who never want to be known as a woman, they want to be known as a trans-woman, loud and proud, which I suppose is their right. Just know that these groups often resent each other and when an activist makes a huge unprovoked scene, there is a big part of the community silently cringing and hoping you don't hold it against them, so maybe it's worth offering them that respect.

As for the sociopaths and psychopaths, they don't need to fake being trans to get into a bathroom or locker room. Predators, voyeurs, and exhibitionists have yet to be stopped by signage and social norms.

I don't think you meant it as such, but "trans sexual" has come to be considered pejorative term by many and I wouldn't want you to unknowingly step on that land mine. "Transgender" broadly applies to anyone who's gender identity does not match what the doctor put on their birth certificate regardless of surgical status. You might also hear related terms "nonbinary" (someone who identifies as something other than male or female) or "gender fluid" (someone who's identity isn't consistent - some days they identify as male, others as female).

I get what your friends are saying - locker rooms are kind of a vulnerable environment and we all want perhaps a little more dignity and privacy than they sometimes afford. Design guidelines for high schools call for the traditional group showers to be changed to stalls and and dressing cubicles to be added for anyone who prefers to use one. From what I understand, this is a bigger deal to today's parents than it is for today's teenagers. Bad behavior can come from anyone... a couple years ago I was in a gym brushing my teeth and all the sudden there's a naked dude at the next sink with one leg on the counter, manscaping his crack, staring me in the mirror with his browneye. Those weren't whiskers left in the sink. Ten trans people in that locker room would have made me less uncomfortable than this guy.

I'm referring to the stated opinion of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which I think is the industry group most practicing pediatricians align their treatments with. They categorized treatments as corrective, wait-and-see, or affirmative and moved their recommendations to the latter based on research that it was the better of the three options to reduce self-harm. I'm not qualified to say if this is good or bad medicine, my point is I think a lot of providers started moving that direction around that time. As with any developing science, the view is not universal. The American College of Pediatricians holds an opposing opinion, though they have been labelled as a hate group by some and have far fewer member physicians.

When did this 'gender' issue take off 3, 5 years ago?

Basic timeline—

2011- NCAA issues guidelines. Around this time places like UCD start installing “all gender” signage on single restrooms. Doesn’t get much controversy at the time.
2014- Pediatric medical advice evolves from wait-and-see to affirmative. A talking point on mommy blogs and Glenn Beck, but not much else.
2016- NC bathroom bill followed by retaliatory guidance from Dept of Ed making it a title IX issue. Explodes in a tinderbox election year.
2018- bathroom bill unwinds and focus shifts to women’s sports under title IX. Probably a confluence of kids under 2014 medical guidance hitting varsity sports, the involvement of NCAA in overturning the law, and an interesting alliance between proponents and certain radical feminist groups.
2020- state legislatures start proposing bills. Explodes in another tinderbox election year.

There are probably some policies that should be flushed out around this but I think the sudden rush of politicians on both sides of aisle to entrench without thoughtful research and discussion is a disservice to everyone. By and large this seems to me the political talking heads have solutions in search of a problem. The number of transgender high schoolers is tiny, and an even smaller number are athletes, let alone serious contenders. Are there anecdotal examples? Sure, but some of the states and schools that have taken action haven't had a single one. And it seems extremely unlikely that huge hulking dudes are going to "pretend" to be trans to improve their stats or scam their way into ogling the girls locker room. It's a different issue when you get to determining fairness of the Olympic 100m dash and nearly all of the female contenders have atypical genetic and hormonal situations going on.

Physiological gender differences are real and deserve to be considered by a consistent policy. If for a moment, we consider gender dysphoria a disability (and yes, I know both trans and disability activists will object, but stick with me for a second), those students would be entitled to the least restrictive reasonable accommodation that affords them access. Put another way, suppose there was an autistic student with memory skills far beyond what most others are capable of. Should he be disqualified from the state spelling bee or made to participate in a different category on the basis that his disability provides an unfair advantage? Most people would probably say let him compete, because it's not his fault nobody really cares about spelling bees. By definition school sports should also be relatively low stakes because their stated goals are physical fitness, personal development, and fun. And in that paradigm, most people would probably err on the side of compassion because the results won't matter much in 20 years. Capri Sun pouches and orange slices for everybody. I think the problem has become that school sports either do (or are perceived) to have implications for access to elite colleges, big money scholarships, and maybe even future careers. All the sudden compassion goes out the window when the stakes are real money. What an ugly beast we've created.

I will say the Aggies did much better on 2019 against the Bison who were much better last year than EWU did this year (had more offensive yards and contained bison much of the game) - they would have matched up better this year too. — NCagalum

It's funny how the transitive property does not exist in football. Over the years we have played tough or beaten teams that beat Eastern but we just haven't been able to knock them off. Perhaps the Big Sky wasn't great this year, though I still think the also-rans in MVFC tend to get overrated with their screeches about strength of schedule. Maybe one struggle in the Big Sky has been the lack of truly dominant leaders due to conference-wide inconsistent streaks and overall lackluster road performance. Seems to end up a fair amount of apparent parity, with the only givens being that Montana will cheat and Northern Colorado will be bad.

I suppose I should clarify that I believe athletics donations are held in a different pocket than other parts of the university and I have not experienced the athletics development department using car lot tactics nor am I aware of any financial scams involving team donations. But give day is not limited to athletics and other parts of the university (specifically chancellors fund) have a history of being aggressive fundraisers. I have a personal experience with an endowment fund that was established for a particular purpose with a written agreement that if said purpose was discontinued, the university had to consult with the donor group regarding the disposition. At some point after donations were made, the university red lined that and rewrote the contract to state they could do whatever they wanted. Well circumstances came to pass that the university rolled the endowment over to support a new cause without consulting the donors as originally agreed. And they didn’t just roll it to a general purpose fund, they rolled it to a cause in direct conflict with the original purpose. I now have money tied up not just in a fund I didn’t intend to support but specifically one with which I fundamentally disagree and find personally insulting and offensive. Perhaps isolated, but for me very personal and I think reasonable that I’m dissatisfied and distrusting.

That was a great game in 2005 - and it almost didn't happen. The team's charter plane was cancelled without much notice and they couldn't get another one. The Band-uh had commercial tickets, so in a last minute deal, the band manager and Coach Biggs changed the names on the tickets to the team. The band manager then rented cars at Enterprise, put a note on the band table in the coffee house, and hit the road - all without telling any higher ups in Student Affairs. The Student Affairs folks were big mad about being circumvented and outsmarted by a student-led group and desperately wanted to punish the Band-uh, but were forced to grin and bear it because the whole ordeal got such such good PR at the time.

it’s interesting that Raley Field doesn’t enforce seating because some years ago Aggie football hired the Raley Field redcoats to run Toomey Field and they were 4-alarm jerkoffs who tried to run the joint like the DMZ.

One thing that strikes me about MLB players is many seek to play as little as possible and don’t value the fans. I get that pitchers shoulders have a finite lifetime, but my experience with the Grapefruit League is that the players that everyone came to see are dressed for the golf course and headed to the parking lot by the second inning and dodge any fan interaction. My experience with NBA and NFL players is more of a “put me in, coach” mentality and in exhibition games most of the a-listers do stick around to do a little showboating fan service and then head to the children’s hospital before the links.

did Gould’s game plan really require a good QB? Wasn’t it basically hope for a short field, then run/run/pass for less than a first down, and then either try to boom a 3-pointer from midfield or punt?

You know what, you’re right. My initial gripe was how I dislike how the university spends their money and who benefits. But I also dislike how they go about raising it. I remember when I was a grad student scraping by as a TA they used to call me monthly asking for $500-$1000 for the Chancellors fund and when I said I was a grad student, they suggested I donate with a credit card so I could pay it off over time. As if that was good financial advice. It’s interesting, the university I got my grad degree from calls me about once a year, mainly to see what I’m doing professionally because they may have undergrads looking for career contacts. The donation pitch was more like, if you have time take a look at our website. I was actually taken aback that I didn’t have to say no 5 times and hang up on them. Give Day is noted for the “challenge gifts” which it’s great if a company wants to donate $10k. But at the same time shame on them for predicating it on getting 50 other people to donate $5. If you have $10k to give, do it humbly and don’t make it a carnival game.

that’s an unfortunate story about Dobbins. I’m all for diversity/equity/inclusion but I have really had it with the breed of university activists that cannot articulate what justice they seek other than blocking anyone else from having anything nice.