If the issue was that assistant coaches didn’t want to teach a couple PE classes anymore, I would question whether their commitment is to teaching their craft or personal prestige, in the same way I take issue with professors who feel teaching undergraduate classes is below them. Exercise walking would be a silly class for someone who’s already works out but I can tell you places like the ARC can be intimidating and unapproachable for someone new to fitness. There’s also value in being well rounded, taking unusual classes unrelated to your major, that I think the bean counters lose sight of.

Interestingly, the “declining enrollment” period coincided with major construction at the ARC, pools, and bowling alley. I bet sections were cancelled due to facility availability rather than lack of real demand.

I agree. Some of this is defensible, like the campus architect charging hours to the project to review plans. But the 6-10% that Mrak Hall skims off every donation and spends on who-knows-what is frustrating.

You are correct it is hard to know what the scope at Bob Foster is from the brief description. Not sure what the Sac construction climate is; nationally labor is better but materials are scarcer than a year ago. AECOM as the general contractor seems like a reasonable choice, much more so than Brown was for the stadium. I think UC functions as their own building inspector, for better or worse. Some cost is self inflicted with the quest for LEED certifications, which are kind of a farce for optics. Based on the little I know, I still think the costs probably include some nice-to-haves, but I’m not upset by this since it is substantially funded by donors. Regardless, it was an impressive fundraising haul in a short period of time.

Finishes can make a huge difference. Looking at comps adjusted for inflation, similar facilities at Montana $280/sf, Sac State $450/sf, UCLA $950/sf, UCD $1150/sf - but it’s not exactly apples to apples because the others didn’t include a practice field. Not out of line if it’s PAC12 level finishes. If it’s more modest finishes, there might have been a hidden driver, like utilities or drainage or something.

Yes, cost includes 45,000 square foot building, natural turf practice field, and renovation of existing locker rooms in Aggie Stadium. Being in the business, this does seem a little high unless there is some unusual mitigation on the site.

I’m sure mileage varies. In my time, PE classes were no pickup spot. The eye candy was at the ARC and PE classes were more nearly the awkward kids who didn’t know which end of the racket to hold. Several of my friends took squash with Bob Biggs and said it was the most profound class they took. But I’m sure some instructors phoned it in and I’m not really trying to make the case for PE so much as criticize the decision process. A transparent policy process exists to cut programs and the admin disregarded it (and said this cut was planned before the pandemic). My issue is they expect students, faculty, alumni, and visitors to respect every policy to a tee, but then they ignore it themselves when convenient and even try to obscure who in particular is making said decisions. And since UCD charges by quarter, not per unit, a 0.5 unit PE class is basically included as a free offering, where it will now be an up-charge through Campus Rec. One more step in the long walk of lowering value for each tuition dollar paid. In my view, a public university is owned by the taxpayers and tuition payers, and the admin are simply the hired help to serve at our pleasure. Somehow they have gotten the mistaken idea that the university is a corporation for their private benefit and that the collective public is something between a customer and indentured servant obliged to offer them tribute for whatever services they see fit. If the Coffee House has to hold public comment sessions when deciding to switch from fresh to packaged guacamole (yes, a real thing), certainly more important issues deserve transparency of process in broad daylight without the decision makers hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. While I agree that the legislature shouldn’t be concerned about one squash class, I think they should be concerned about the broader narrative of the admin sitting on back room decisions and then moving to implement without warning so as to avoid organized opposition.

Unfortunate for UCD, but not unexpected that he moves on. I would have guessed a P5 school his destination, but I can also see how a good job in Canada must look pretty good to Canadians right now. And there may well be some serious troubled waters ahead for UCD athletics. I hope he does well in this endeavor. What will be interesting is to see how May responds. Announced so far is asst director will be interim director and a search committee being formed to fill the position in early 21. If this was a known departure, there may already be a successor on deck for a quick strike. If it’s a real search, will be interesting to see if the committee focuses on qualifications or tries to shoehorn a diversity hire.

My understanding is that PCR looks for virus DNA while the rapid antigen test looks for a particular protein on the surface of the virus that interacts with our immune system. The criticisms I've heard are that the PCR test is sensitive, perhaps too sensitive at picking up non-infectious virus fragments (false positive) while the rapid test is maybe not sensitive enough for pre/mild symptomatic people that have marginal levels of this protein (false negative). I'm not a biologist, so if I am not understanding this correctly, please help me learn.

@movielover From what I gather, both tests are reasonably accurate for people with significant viral load but the stats are much worse for cases at the margins depending on the test, the problem being that some people at the margins are contagious and don't know it. So you're right that 50% accuracy is not very helpful in some scenarios, especially when someone uses one potentially false negative as free license to get up close and personal with others.

I went to grad school in the south, where administrators kind of check their academic ethics at the door for P5 football. In some of my grad classes, we had a football player who had too many credits to be an undergrad. It was an open secret that the department had not "accepted" him, but it was some deal between the AD and provost, and the professors were obligated to give him a negotiated B- for work clearly done by his eye-candy personal tutor. He disappeared after football season (which amounted to a losing record unable to clinch even an obscure bowl game). A waste of state money for sure. But he also presumably filled a seat that someone qualified and interested may have been turned down for.

I'm not sure why Elon Musk doing the antigen test. It is not definitive, especially among asymptomatic people, compared to the more expensive and slower PCR test. Antigen tests have a place, like where you are testing a whole team every day and need to basically run a continuous sieve to determine who should get more scrutiny from the limited PCR resources, but Musk could buy his own whole PCR lab if he wanted so he wouldn't have to wait on results for 3 days like the rest of us.

Will be interesting to see if teams are their usual selves or if the change in season has thrown anyone off their game. Not an easy schedule, but at least the home/away dynamic is more or less in our favor temperature wise. While below average for sure, last year it was a high of 6 F on the mercury on Feb 27 in Bozeman.

, @NewGuy Interesting points on grad school but perhaps two key assumptions would be that a particular player would be accepted to a grad program (some have precious few competitive seats) and that the student would still have time for football on the side. I don't know how a football time commitment looks compared to being a TA, but I don't remember feeling like I had a lot of spare time my first year of grad school.

If the years were having a poker match, 2020 would be the player who had too much to drink and was driving up the bet with 1929, 1941, and 1968 while only holding a pair of 2s.

As a long distance Aggie fan, I miss how Scott Marsh marches forward with calling the play after DK makes one of his signature oddball remarks.

I like the classic look the best but I'm ok with names on the back. Hopefully will help identify players better when new guys take the field with some of the number sharing that happens. I think the alternate uniform craze is dumb, but has become part of the recruiting arms race with the side benefit of selling fan t-shirts for "theme" games (though I doubt you will see "blackout" and "whiteout" used as themes anymore because of how they sound). I think the alternate uniform thing is an unfortunate offspring of the Oregon / Nike lovefest.

I don't know much about baseball, but I will say that if you are thinking of a trip to the southeast, Oct-Dec is a beautiful time of year. I usually take a couple cross country flights a year on Southwest and I suppose I'm getting old because I look for Denver layovers. I appreciate a real bathroom halfway through!

Davis receives about 70k applicants a year. If one digs deep enough, there is probably some level of funny business around at least one, especially if the audit goes back to the Katehi years, so I wouldn't be surprised to make the news eventually. It's wrong and deserves to be rooted out everywhere. Probably exists at some level at every university in the country.

Yeah, Pablo Reguerin taking over SA - https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/uc-davis-chancellor-gary-s-may-selects-dr-pablo-reguerin-vice-chancellor-student-affairs . I guess he was announced in May and just took over recently. Comes from UC Santa Cruz and recently earned an EdD at UC Davis. Don't know much about him.

And I'm not saying SA should wink and nod to 50 kegs and some explosives being hauled up to Bixby 5, but calling the police over a 6 pack of Bud Light and a couple special brownies is an overreaction.

I really don't know why the divergence in some rankings lately. 15 years ago Davis, UCI, UCSB, UCSD were all neck and neck. I would think money is comparable among the four, so maybe it is because we are less selective due to fewer applicants than the others.

IMO, Student Affairs has a long history of disrespect, treating students as though they are there to serve the staff's needs rather than the staff existing to serve the students' needs. The Band bit was personal for me, but I don't think it's right that they profit off textbook sales, pick and choose who's free speech they censor, and threaten expulsion for sneaking a beer into the dorm. Interesting that Athletics started operating more smoothly when it was pulled from SA to report directly to the chancellor. VC Galindo was especially incompetent, but looks like she is retiring and a new Vice Chancellor started last week. I will try to give him a chance, but he needs to clean house at the director level.

I think we are high enough in the rankings that a big name would have to be unseated for us to move up and I think the methodologies pretty well ensure no major upsets because they rely so heavily on past reputation and money. I don't really think these rankings should mean all that much because so many of the things that make Davis great - unique college town, quirky coffee house, bicycle culture, etc. are not measured. But there are also ways in which Davis fails that are not measured. Setting aside administrative mismanagement of things like the student affairs office, all the money and prestige don't necessarily mean better undergraduate instruction. For example, I have it on good authority that if you are actually trying to learn the Chem 2 material, Sac City College instructors do a much better job. At Davis, you might get a renowned professor on paper, but he's too good to come to a lower division class and has his TAs teach, most of whom speak almost no English.

WSJ Methodology

• Resources/funding - 30%
• Engagement/student survey - 20%
• Outcomes (graduation rate, salary, debt) - 30%
• Academic reputation - 10%
• Diversity - 10%

US News Methodology

• Resources/funding - 30%
• Outcomes (graduation rate, social mobility, debt) - 40%
• Academic Reputation - 20%
• Selectivity - 7%
• Alumni giving - 3%