As a baseball fan was disappointed with this article in that I thought Dunning could have given more supporting details that a person casually following the team wouldn't know. Investigative reporting, you know ?

For example the tryouts he mentioned. That's interesting, tell us more. Who are some of the unsung heroes who made the team out of these tryouts ? That's human interest stuff and it's good reading. For example, Nathan Lemos made the team this year after not playing since his freshman year, what's he been up to ? Playing club ball ? Concentrating only on studies ? Raul Sandoval is graduating after 1 year playing for UCD following 3 playing at the JC. People generally don't graduate 1 year after transferring from a JC so was he at UCD as a student in 2021 and just answered the call to arms (call to baseball gloves ?) as a 5th year senior ? This is the kind of stuff that can inspire people.

And the other part about predicting a .500 or better finish next year, I'd like to know more about his reasons for saying that. I'm not looking to refute them. I would just like to know more about his reasons for optimism so I can feel more optimistic. Without exciting new information I see the 2023 team just doubling or tripling their win total, which would be in line with some of the recent seasons under Vaughn. This team hasn't hasn't had a full-season with a .500 or better record since 2015, and those were teams with full rosters and crops of recruits. So what's he basing that on ? Freshman standouts like Wolbert, Green, Leehey, and Seeman ? Specific exciting new recruits ? That he thinks Nicholson & Co will do a better job ? Kind of left us hanging there, Bob.

I respect that you see it that way. I disagree, however, on the basis that being a student-athlete is a choice and time management skills are required. It is not mandatory that they play sports to go to college.
If money is a concern without an athletic scholarship they can do what everyone else does-apply for financial, academic scholarships and/or get a job. Everyone probably knows about the necessity of time management skills going in. Whether they develop those skills or not is up to them.

Yes, it's difficult to manage all of it but these things come with the territory. I believe the university is under no obligation to assist student-athletes with future employment prospects any more than they are the rest of the student body. That doesn't mean there can't be resources available to help students, just that these resources should be open to all students to at apply for what's available. If the majority of those accepted to such programs based on academic merit wind up being student-athletes so be it.

The idea that athletes are at a disadvantage is likely heavily-based on the thinking that non-athletes have more time available due to no training and competition. The training and competition in themselves are just the athlete's equivalent of having jobs to pay for school, which is a very real requirement for many non-athletes.

For the record I completely support there being programs exclusively for members of the military. and essential public servants. I do not elevate a student-athlete to the same essential status as say, a firefighter. Sports competition is not essential. I can live without them, and so can everyone else. So I reject the implication (not that you made it directly, just saying) that a university owes an ordinary student-athlete anything for competing beyond whatever scholarships were promised and any financial obligations determined by a court of law for damages suffered. I made the "ordinary" distinction because extraordinary athletes whose NIL are used to bring in money are entitled to be paid.

What we have here is a disagreement over a university's responsibilities to its student-athletes, and that's fine. When I made the original post I didn't expect to find myself with popular opinions. I'm not trying to change anyone's, and I'm not changing mine, just voice the ones I have to people who would understand what I'm talking about. Mission accomplished.

I recall (and mind you, it's been a long time so my memory could be incorrect) athletic department releases in the 90's in which it was stated wrestling was the only Division I sport. I did wonder why they didn't talk about water polo, gymnastics, lacrosse, etc, teams that mostly played Division I opponents. Gymnastics won a championship, but it wasn't designated to my knowledge as D1 or D2. Was it specifically a conference championship then ? Not clear on that. Lacrosse almost exclusively played D-I programs due to lack of opponents.

The reason they said this was probably because the WWPA is one of those hybrid sport-specific conferences that crosses NCAA Divisions to have enough membership. If the Aggies (or the Tritons, who were a Division III institution at the time) won the conference they would certainly go to NCAA playoffs but to my knowledge those playoffs weren't separated by Division. So it's probably an official distinction made without there being a real difference.

But that doesn't answer the question of why UCD was Division I in wrestling if the PAC-10 for that sport also crossed division lines (SF State was in it too, weren't they ?) Only explanation I can think of is that the competition was sponsored by an established Division I conference as opposed to a non-divison sport-specific entity ? But then what about women's water polo ? No clue.

So what I have deduced from this discussion so far is that whoever sent out those publications back in the 90's either wasn't speaking accurately or they were excluding the sport-specific conferences from the conversation.

If I'm not mistaken UC Davis was an affiliate member of the PAC-10 for wrestling.previously . It was the only official D-I program at the school when UCD was still D-II I believe, although water polo mostly played D-I programs.

Like with wrestling I think this is just the PAC-12 looking to fill out schedules since not all full members participate.

I think for the PAC-12 to add UCD as a full member it would require a major improvement in the football program and the stadium. If UCD could pull it off they would be happy to drop Colorado State or Utah.

Perhaps Tommy Nicholson's wife (if he has one) will become UCD's nterim AD at some point. Then he and Ron Gould will truly be on opposite paths.

They need to do something about that WAC tournament. That a team with such a poor record would get into the tournament is ridiculous. Maybe they should reduce the field to four teams (the best 2 from each division) or six (with the top in each division getting a bye). The WAC is already a weak conference in baseball, evidenced by the fact that teams transitioning from D-Ii (Grand Canyon and Cal Baptist have done this) just walk right in and wipe the floor with the existing teams. Utah Valley needs to go back to the D-II or JC level.

Ron Gould, per Wikipedia is an assistant at Stanford. Looks like he and Tommy Nicholson are on opposite career paths.

I noticed she chose not to get married until 45 and to not have children. Not that choosing not to have children makes someone unfeeling, but I think she would have more compassion toward her student-athletes if she had a family of her own. This is someone who is one-minded, overly-driven, and her behavior was never really checked because she produced the results, so it got further out of hand.

I think a shake-up of WAC baseball membership is not too far off. More and more Texas schools joining. How long before they want to be their own conference ? There is a precedent of a group of Texas schools joining together and then splitting.

They were right about Reggie Christiansen though. He is a visionary. Before the 2021 season he proposed breaking up the conferences and going with geographic alignments. I don't know if Stanford and Cal would like being in a conference with UCD (probably not), but I agree with the principle.

At the very least the Big West + West Coast Conferences should be broken up, the CA reams should leave the WAC and MWC, Utah should be booted from the PAC-12 and Hawaii from the Big West.

For example these teams should be in the same conference to be sure:

UCD
Sac State
UOP

UCR
Cal Baptist

UCSD
SDSU
USD

There are certainly enough teams to let the PAC-12 remain mostly intact while forming northern and southern conferences. I imagine the biggest obstacle is money.

I think they are over-selling the Sac State ballpark a bit. The new scoreboard is very nice, but I get the odd feeling when I see the ballpark like they're going to dismantle it and pack it into trucks at the end of the county fair like a carnival ride. One thing that really isn't fan friendly-with no press box their equipment is under a tarp up on poles. Anyone sitting behind home plate has to be high up to be able to see anything.

Sac State men's basketball is fast becoming the land of misfit toys. One of the keys to the team's success will be if the new coach manages to work with all the transfers maintain or improve Katz' system of making sure the players succeed in the classroom. They don't need to backslide into the pre-Katz era problems of academic problems.

It could, but thse days a recruit could get most of the information they need about a school they're considering online.

Ideally you would want student-athletes to pick schools that match up with their academic goals, but even UCD gets a few who don't feel that way exactly. I believe the best a student-athlete can reasonably hope for is they wind up at a college they like, that will help them reach their academic goals, that will have a highly competitive team of which they can be an integral part. If the most important of those things is the competitiveness that's a misplaced priority in my opinion.

Nice to see the silly measure failure. Just goes to show that student initiatives usually mean squat.

Yeah, I don't know that they were saying what they really meant. Sac State's baseball team was pretty bad in the Big West, so the affiliate talk may have been a misdirection.

Sac State was in the Big West for baseball only as recently as 2002. They were asked to leave because the Big West didn't want affiliate members.

Sac State would have to drop their Big Sky affiliations except for football.

Financial concerns may make this a reality though in the future. I don't see UCD ever moving to a full Big Sky or WAC membership for the same concerns raised in the article. Baseball will not dictate what they do.

Fastball velocity, as you know, can be improved as a pitcher adds strength and matures physically so 88 out of HS is a pretty good start.

So it's Judge BARNES and Daniel NOBLE No way !

One thing I know everybody already knows but I am emphasising is that regardless of what the students do UC Davis would still be the Aggies. All they are potentially changing is the mascot that shows up at the games that they mostly don't attend and that gets printed on merchandise the university sells. And even then doesn't the university have the final say ? It's the university's money.

An Aggie is a farmer, right ? Despite the strong link between horses and agriculture some people want an even more obvious one.

What if the mascot were a farmer ? There are lots of stupid-looking matador and gaucho mascots across the country, why not a farmer ?

And to make it a more inclusive choice it could be a FEMALE farmer. Not a non-binary farmer, not a transgender farmer, a female farmer. You could sell it as paying tribute to the contributions of women in agriculture.

Here's the thing that gets lost in the PC garbage-world we live in today. It isn't a crime to identify as a man or a woman. No one is protesting that people have gender. If I may be so blunt at the end of the day the babies get made somehow and there has to be some identification of who has what human reproductive parts at least. They are protesting that people who don't or who do not identify with their birth-assigned gender face discrimination from others and through government institutions intended to serve everyone.

A mascot is a piddly little thing. However, the ridiculous idealists out there have decided that rhetorically defending others by insisting on inclusion in every little thing. Removing gender references is also discrimination in a sense. And really, who are these people who insist an animal mascot can't be male or female ? Can they be removed from society so that know what real discrimination feels like ? Ridiculous.

In San Francisco State's case the mascot was just born out of a pun and what likely was an homage to a famous city landmark. Pretty clever.

Golden Gate(rs)-Golden Gators.

It's not great, but if an incoming freshman is already throwing 88 there's good potential. Control is really more important than velocity. A pitcher with a mid-80's fastball can do OK in Division 1 if he can spot it consistently in places where hitters will make weak contact or miss entirely. If the Aggies get a pitcher out of HS who already throws in the 90's consistently he probably has control issues or else he'd wind up at Irvine, for example.

Of the current Aggies I've seen play in person this year, only games attended, it seemed like Carson Seeman was the best at inducing weak contact. Bryan Green very much looks the part of a future staff ace and professional prospect if he can cut down on the walks.