GoAgs I understand your frustration with the MLB rule changes, but why are BB fans so much more sensitive to them apparently than NFL/College FB fans? My grandfather would not recognize present day college football. He was an ardent Stanford fan in The sixties. Same time I parked cars at Stanford Stadium as a HS student fall job. We were let in for the fourth quarter for free. I cannot tell you how many tie games I witnessed and nobody cared. Back in those days if you tied USC it was a WIN! The goal posts were on the TD line. No offensive players and defensive players. Just a few of many changes. Hey, I remember John Brodie playing free safety and he was actually very good. That change to defensive/offensive players was a total game changer for the game of football. I don’t recall all that much fuss about it. Can you imagine if MLB tried to do the same thing to their sport. Anyway, there are purists in all sports and we need them. But there should be limits. Today’s news that a US woman’s sprinter was banned from the Olympics because she had minimal traces of marijuana (“a performance enhancing drug”??) in her system is just ridiculous imho. Back to the Black Bear: try their tri-tip sandwich. Nothing frozen there. Good price and Great!

Yes! And guess who has more stuffed grizzly bears than anyone else? Trust me, it is not in the Black Bear chain. Berkeley do your great DNA stuff. Reinvent the grizzly! Just add the cost on to your football tickets.

OK, this is hopelessly off the title of this thread, but I shall proceed. It has to do with Bears and Aggies. My wife and I sometimes go to the Black Bear restaurant to eat (highly recommend it) . I once said: “why Black Bear” wife (Berkeley grad) said, “obviously started by a Cal Bear guy.” I never questioned that statement. Today I go by myself to the local Black Bear for a sandwich. They have this funny newspaper type menu, but I read it waiting and learned: founder is not a Cal guy, but an Aggie! The “Black Bear” is not the Cal bear, but named after the bear mascot of the founders high school in Mt. Shasta. I should have known that my Cal wife’s info was bad, because the official state mascot of California (adopted as mascot by UCB back in the day) is the “California Grizzly Bear,” not a black bear. The california grizzly has been extinct for over 100 years now and I am tempted to ask my wife why Cal would still have a revered animal hunted to extinction by humans as a mascot, but I will not (at least Stanford got rid of the Red Indian Mascot before they went virtually extinct). I digress further by saying that I had Professor Tracy Storer as a zoology prof back in the day. What a guy! He wrote the book on the California Grizzly.

I heard that UC got the Merced land donated free and clear and that was the main reason for the choice. Redding was also in the mix as I recall.

To add to Fugs comments on the difference between UC Davis and Sac State academics, a good friend of mine’s wife got her PhD. From Davis in Spanish. As such, she was in high demand (pre PhD) as a TA and later as a lecturer at Davis, Santa Barbara, Berkeley and, yes, Sac State. Later she became an assistant professor at Michigan State. Now she is at Santa Cruz- full professor. Her standard test on her student class quality was this: if in a 25 student class you asked a question of the class, how many raised their hands with the right answer? In all the UC’s it was generally this: 20 raised their hands. Five did not. Sac state: 10 raised. 15 did not. Michigan State: 5 raised. 20 did not. She described the Michigan students as a fairly “forlorn and unenthusiastic group overall.” Sac state students actually much better.

I agree River; but it is seldom that a team can boast of having two AA RBs: Larison and Ulonzo and a QB who can run, really run: Tompkins. So, yes we have great WRs, but how do they get the ball? Does the run actually set up the pass? I refer you to an article in The Signal by Brandon Skerda (2017) which addresses this exact question. The answer is an unqualified YES. Skerda used the Mixpanel JQZ Console to analyze this in an NFL context using an enormous body of official stats from the NFL. He uses the run first down and pass second down model. He starts with the premise that the first down has to be a “good run” defined as 5 yards or better. After a “good run” the likelihood of the next passing play being a caught pass improves exponentially over a pass after a poor run, less than 5 yards. Anyway a good read. Alert: Skerda works for Mixpanel. If 2021 season taught us anything it is that we can do the “good run” thing fairly well.

As far as the players are concerned, there is only one guy they call “Magic Man:” Tompkins. To me that says a lot.

I looked at the roster just announced. It appears we have very good potential for a great team. Solid OL. Very good DL. Good to great DBs. LBs, I do not know. But what I do know is that Hawk has an abundance of talent at RB and QB. At RB we have Ulo, we have Larison, we have Dixon and others. The question is at QB IMHO. HR is very good, but how can you keep a guy like Tompkins off the field every play. He is a beast! I understand the team calls him the “Magic Man” apparently because he can do things others cannot do. Hard to see that we are not an offensively oriented running team next season. Look forward to your thoughts, as I am not an expert in this stuff.

Has to be a money thing.

DR M. Can you elaborate? How can a team captain lose his starting position? I guess hard to do, unless the “underclassman” was very good. But, it is still a story that this type of thread would be very interested in knowing more about.

Blue. Will do.

DE article has a paywall. Couldn’t read it. So who plays point for us? Hard to see Campbell back so soon.

Fug, I know you have great interest in this subject; but you have to be able to see that times have changed. Really changed! I suspect that you were a Banda member from your post, so I feel your pain. We loved you guys! We loved the Tractor blowing steam and smoke everywhere! We some times asked: when will it blow? Never, because it was removed (university insurance would not cover it). As to the Banda, we loved them until one Homecoming we brought as a guest a former female Banda member (Flautist) attractive young attorney and your leader came up the steps in the home section at Toomey; pointing out FEMALE members only as: “SHE WAS EASY; SHE WAS GOOD AT IT! COULDN’T BLOW A TUNE IF SHE HAD TO.” My wife (who was her best friend) was appalled; and, yes a Berkeley grad; flautist said “no big deal.” That was in the early ‘90s. Fug, times have changed. No current “flautist” would ever now say “no big deal” about being singled out publicly as your leader did back in the day. Also, I checked. Berkeley still has so-called PE. Maximum 4 semester units towards graduation. Also, has significant student fees close to UCD fees. Does the current UCD proposal differ that much? Again, I feel your pain. I want the tractor back! Just buy more insurance.

Go, I think you nailed it. We won in DII and are not winning in DI. So no fans. No excitement. Irvine and SB seem to have to have the magic that we are missing. Watch out. I think UCSD will soon be up there with them. I do not like to think we are the bottom of the UC’s in any sport, but we are. Rocko, are you listening?

Roy’s Hoskins getting a lot of great press and TV coverage during the Phillies series with the Giants. Of course, he is a Sac State grad and was called the “California Kid” by the Peacock guys. Hometown Sac kid who got one schollie offer and it was from Sac State. He is a great kid and Sac will use him very well in their recruiting efforts. Do we have anyone in the majors now? How did we miss on Hoskins?

I recall when Willie Mac hit one out of Candlestick back in the day. We were in the right filed bleachers and the ball was still rising as went over us. It would have to have been a 550+ home run. Right fielder never even took a step. Just looked up at it. I think they put a star or something to commemorate that incredible hit at the right field fence later. Willie Mac: one of a kind! Loved the guy more than Mays.

Yes, I think some changes would help. Bu there are many BB fans who would hate any changes because of what that “might” do to the purity of the sport. They love the lore of the sports uniqueness. I think any sport with no time limits to it is destined for failure in the long run. Kids will only watch something for so long, then they snooze out. My kids hated it when the Aggie announcer would state: “now we go into extra innings.” “Dad cant we go now!” I don’t think my kids have ever been to a MLBB game in their lives.

Thanks GoAgs. I think BB is a slowly dying sport like Cricket- but will never go away! Who cares? A brunch of old guys playing incredible slow games. I guess UK, India, Fiji, and Pakistan really love cricket. Aussie-SA who knows or who cares? Slow and slower, and then shall we have tea?

I was in davis yesterday and de Veres looked open to me. Grad weekend special maybe. Anyway, on to BB. An interesting story in the NYT today about MLBB and the dominance of pitchers this season. Record low batting averages this year, 6 no hitters so-far, record strikeouts (8.98) per game. The cause: “sticky substances.” MLBB is about to make some big changes to try and avert a fan crisis in the game. Very boring games! Prepare for suspensions for pitchers throwing with illegal stuff. And, yes, even moving the pitching mound back a foot or more. Like lowering the mound in 1968. Good read.

Rocko: donors + strippers= lights! Go down to Fresno and learn something! Oh, I forgot. We need local strippers. . . .well, work on it. Maybe we need a Hooters in Davis? Could be our new Grad. Great for recruiting!