Before all these players sign, the schools are going to have to put in writing everything that is promised. Since the payouts will be directly from the schools for schools that opt into the House settlement, it follows that what these kids are being offered by public schools
will be public info. That will be interesting.

Full athletic scholarships cover tuition, fees, books, housing, meals and probably etc.
I don’t think it matters if the student gets discounted tuition, because the amount of tuition varies in other ways as well, like in state or out of state. Partial and full scholarships can be augmented with NIL money and revenue sharing, to meet or exceed the cost of attendance.
But the scholarship count issue is becoming moot, as the NCAA now has roster size limits in place of scholarship counts, and I suspect conferences don’t audit scholarships, which as you indicate are complicated and debatable. I think the NCAA got rid of scholarship counts just because what is
a scholarship is undefinable when mixed with other payments.

An FCS conference can set a limit and some do. The Big Sky limit is 63.
Last week the Missouri Valley Football Conference, just decided not to set a cap, joining these listed from google AI:
CAA: The CAA has mandated that all member institutions opt-in to the new NCAA rules, effectively removing the scholarship cap.
NEC: The Northeast Conference has also opted into the new rules, allowing for up to 105 scholarships, mirroring the new NCAA roster limit.
Southland: The Southland Conference will not enforce a football scholarship cap, allowing its members to distribute scholarships as they choose within the 105-player roster limit.
Here is why, also from google AI
NCAA Changes: The NCAA has eliminated the previous scholarship caps for most Division 1 sports, including football, and implemented roster limits instead.
House Settlement: The House vs. NCAA settlement, which includes provisions for revenue sharing and the changes to scholarship limits, is prompting these changes.
Conference Autonomy: While the NCAA has made these changes, individual conferences, like the MVFC, have the ability to set their own rules and scholarship caps.

Now that North Dakota State and other MVFC teams can have 105 scholarships while SEC teams have limited themselves to 83, the FBS / FCS distinction is ridiculous.

Gould’s tenure coincided with the beginning of an impressive string of running backs. If this years running backs live up to the average of the last ten years they’ll be fine,
I noticed Larison saying in one of his interviews that our run game was not as dominant last year as the year before. That might be play calling as much as personnel, teams are better at what they believe in and commit to.

On the subject of coaches familiar with both Biggs, Plough and Gould, Kevin Daft is now the tight end coach at Dartmouth, no longer the offensive coordinator.
Here is how Dartmouth summarizes the Daft/Gould offense in the final year ( 3-8 record)
In his final season, the Aggies averaged over 28 points and nearly 400 total yards — of which 238 came through the air. UC Davis also ranked 14th among FCS schools in fewest interceptions thrown (7) and 10th in fewest turnovers lost (13) under his guidance in 2016.

One opposing coach, struggling to find something positive to say about Davis, settled on they “always line up correctly”.

I recall on the pregame show of that game Gould saying something along the lines of “i don’t know how things were done here before, but now we are going to pay attention to detail”. I took it as disrespectful of Biggs and his coaches. I wonder what players and coaches who worked under both thought of the two.

He transferred from Boise, was nearly a 4 star recruit for Boise (89 rating). He was from Rocklin.
Transferred at start of Gould era. Played in August and September 2013 making some starts, lost job again to Wright.

Sac may be chasing their tail, they may end up FBS, just in time for college football to divide into new tiers with new names, and the certainty is that Sac won’t be top tier, The top conferences want to split off, leaving the lessor conference, likely including the Mountain West and the Pac12, as the new “JVs”.

Wright was not the true freshman Scott Marsh says he was, he red shirted the prior year.
You can’t judge players by that type of mismatch. It will likely look similar when they play Washington,
Gould had all of those QBs his first year, he inherited Wright and Scott from Biggs. Scott was from Fairfield, not much recruiting interest, but Biggs liked him.

A big part of the decline in pro QBs coming from Davis is that in the 70s through first half of the 80s, a lot of college teams were run oriented, running the wishbone, veer and power I offenses, so few teams were developing Pro style QBs. Davis in that period was running elements of the Dallas Cowboys offense. That is the period when Davis had NFL drafted QBs.
Now everyone throws the ball a lot, the pro offenses have changed to be more like the college, and therefor the majority of collleges are developing pro QB skills. Add to that the better scouting of HS players by the major colleges, which don’t just scoop up the NFL prospects at QB, but at all positions, as shown by how few FCS or D2 players get drafted at any position.

Sac has had 4 three star recruits decommit since 6/25 according to 247sports and a 5th without stars but with multiple offers.
https://247sports.com/college/sacramento-state/Season/2026-Football/Decommits/

This conversation going over QBs of the last 50 years, and just scratching the surface, would be impossible at most schools. My time at Davis the QBs were Biggs and Speck. I wish i could see a program from that era. If I recall correctly, on Biggs’ Boardwalk Bowl team, one offensive lineman weighed about 210 or 215 lbs and trained by swimming, rather than weights. When playing teams like Massachusetts and Boise that lack if size largely precluded running the ball but the QB put up big numbers.Speck threw for over 400 yards against Boise, and Davis lost a close one simply because they couldn’t get a pass rush against a line that was near 300lbs. I think the Boise QB went on to play in Canada. Davis vs Goliath games.

Highest ranked Davis recruit ever according to 247sports site, and one of two 2026 recruits in the top four.
I’m not counting Jalen Harris, who never enrolled.

icy baby blue is an in color for 2025.
apparel vendors design accordingly. Tahoe provides the ostensible reason to issue in fashion apparel.

I was surprised last year to find that 247sports only used “composite ranking” of recruits in ranking signing classes. This limitation results in wildly inaccurate rankings of classes, as it ignores the effect of recruiting a large number of players that 247sports own ranking system ranked highly.
Last year our class had 3 players with “composite ranking” (Cofield, Knoos, Parker, bet you didn’t know those were the only recruits that counted)
In 2026 we already have seven. ( Honebein,,Vercher, Fay, Beverly, Brant, Blocker) and just added McGeilberry)
To what do we attribute this change? Could be the ranking entities are ranking more players, or it could be that were getting commitments from players that have higher profiles. Unless this is a global change affecting other teams classes, Davis will have a higher ranking class in 2026, just based on players committed so far.

Not a lawyer and maybe it is an up hill battle. But I think the NCAA needs a better argument against Sac going FBS than that the two conferences in the region haven’t invited them. That looks like restricting competition. Maybe there are other reasons. Sac argues that that requirement was waived for other schools, like Liberty, so argue the rule is unevenly applied.

It is odd that the focus of moving up seems to be on how the football team performs, when I suspect the conferences have expressed other concerns, and rather than addressing those concerns, whatever they are, Sac doubles down on proving the football team is good. Short of winning a national championship can’t prove anything new at the FCS level, with this years weak schedule.

Marion is a coach, given authority to act and goodies to disburse as if he was at Nevada Las Vegas or Texas, so he does. I don’t know that that shows bad character or dishonesty.
Woods is a pitchman, with the ethics of the marketplace, selling a vision unlikely to come to fruition as a sure thing. Buyer beware.

The difficulty in making Marion the scapegoat is that Sac’s football record is not what makes them unattractive to conferences. Sac had impressive recent success in football. They had a nineteen game conference win streak just a few years ago, had a winning record in 2023 including a win at Stanford and conferences weren’t and aren’t after them to join.