Marion will stay because Sac State is the top of the ladder. I mean look at the storied history, the rich alums, the stadium.

Rocko Deluca said in his interview about two months ago on the mountain west podcast that they would opt in but not until their existing rosters attrited as they had made commitments to those athletes. I can find nothing later than that, if they signed it they haven’t published it. Perhaps the withdrawn football roster is related to the roster size, anyone notice how many athletes were on the removed roster?

If it wasn’t Grant House it would have been someone else.

A judge shouldn’t be making major impact decisions that “are a net negative for the majority of society”, The judge allowed a class action suit that included in the class athletes who have dramatically different interests in the outcome, a few are major beneficiaries, more will be net losers, like many of the “olympic” sports athletes. And society wasn’t a party in the suit at all.

I’m looking forward to the Mercer game, its going to be a good test. Don’t know if i need to subscribe to ESPN to do so.
Mercer had an outstanding team last year, particularly on defense, where they led the nation in sacks and were very tough to run against. They lost most of the defensive stars to transfer or graduation, but they return a standiut sophomore defensive end. They had a QB who started the last half of the season, who transferred to Oklahoma, after spring practice, but their early season starter was out with injury, threw for over 1000 yards and can run. They have veteran running backs, including a 230# guy. Their head coach played O-line at Ohio State, is the son and grandson of football coaches, and has a staff most of whom have been with him for awhile, and they’ve had great success at D2 before moving to Mercer last year and making the quarter finals. They put in a whole new offense last year, so may be more polished this year.. They emphasize being physical. Davis will have a largely rebuilt defense, with possibly just the Connor twins as returning starters, i expect the Davis defense to be good, with more pass rush, but probably not as stout against the run, but they’ll only have summer camp to integrate key players on defense.

Sure lower division college courses may be a good predictor of college performance with courses that are taught at the pace and material of the courses at UC.
High school courses are taught at about half speed, and are not graded uniformly, so are not a good predictor, of whether someone can keep up.In addition because everyone applying has high grades, the admissions office is picking between students with a 3.8 and a 4.4. That difference doesn’t mean ine knows more than the other. The subjective nature of admissions lead to admission on non academic factors. I saw an interview with a well spoken Asian kid with a 4.3 GPA and 1500 plus SAT, who was turned down at Davis, UCSD, Berkeley UCLA and others.

Yes Mirabella is done, he hasn’t been on either the Spring or 2025 roster, although he might have another year based on Covid. But he ended the season not starting and then came back in the starting lineup when Main got hurt if my memory serves.
Simonson, Rodriguez, Collier, Main, Nava was the best line.
They will have competition this year but a veteran line is a good place to start.

I went back and listened to Zaire Colliers press availability after end of spring practice and he says all five offensive linemen return.

A player sued the NCAA over them limiting his eligibility by counting non NCAA years. He won. The NCAA then, while they figure out what they are going to do going forward, gave another year to all former JC or NAIA athletes who would have had their eligibility expire last year.

Good to listen to the podcast again.
On the podcast, Scott Gordon said four of the five offensive linemen are back, who isn’t? Mirabella, started games, but Simonson, Rodriquez, Collier, Main and Nava started at the end of the season before Main was injured and they’ve all been reported to be returning, Simonson wasn’t on the spring roster but was on the 2025 roster when they had it posted.
Defense has experienced transfers coming in, but I’m curious who did well among the guys who were there.
Two highly regarded new freshmen corners and the All American 2 year college graduate from Tufts were competing with guys already on the team. Most of the transfer DBs played some type of safety at their old school, so the corners there this Spring may win the job,

Hero Sports is previewimg the top teams in the media poll, UC Davis is #11 ranked team in the media poll. and Hero Sports has previewed the top 3 so far, NDSU, Montana State and South Dakota State.
One element of the preview is listing the guys that had all conference recognition, including guys transferring in from other conferences.
NDSU and MSU have five, SDSU has 3 returning all conference players
Davis compares favorably with nine.
This is my list for Davis, any error is mine,

Defense five
Derrell Porter. DL Dartmouth. honorable mention
Jacob Psyk DL Harvard. 1st team
Khalani Riddick DB SEMO 1st team
Porter Connors LB. Davis. 2nd team
Rex Connors S. Davis. 1st team

Offense three
Winston Williams. TE. Davis 1st team
Eli Simonson OT Davis. 2nd team
Ernesto Nava OT Davis. honorable mention

Specialist one
Hunter Ridley. K. Davis. 2nd team

Here is a placekicker whose commitment was reposted by Trey Shimabakuro..

https://x.com/isaacmancera_/status/1928995922249195560

SAT scores are objective measure of ability combined with exposure to reading and math. They also unsurprisingly reflect ability to take a test, a key component students will continue to encounter. They give a chance to bright kids who have been bored in high school, but who did a lot of reading on their own so are verbal and who at least remained conscious in math class. They supplement the grades, which are distorted in favor of pupils who are striving for grades by untalented effort, by catching the ones who have learned the subject but haven’t been striving for the grade.
The old system of standardized tests combined with grades was the method most likely to identify the ones who would make the effort and have the ability for the work.

In the olden days, say 1970, a 3.0 put you in the top 20-25% at a typical high school. And you needed a good SAT score to get in. UC was tasked with admitting the top 12% of students.
Now through grade inflation about half the high schoolers have a 3.0. and no SAT. UC is a selective system because it is very hard to get into the top campuses but the selection includes relatively easy academic standards, which is what the athletes have to meet.

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The discussion was concerning transfers, and whether they lose progress toward graduating, which would be the same issue at Cal or UCLA, or most Universities that have traditional curricula. Probably can’t transfer with the same ease from a school offering less traditional or job focused majors, or if they offer credit for courses that are remedial.

The freshman admission standards are a different issue, but Cal or UCLA using more admission by exception may be due to more of their athletes coming from out of state, where freshmen need a higher GPA. Or are you saying Davis athletes that meet the minimum UC admission criteria, which is now close to the median HS graduate, face some additional filter?

So that is why Paul Shelton posted the bulldozer clip.
Robert posted his SAT score on X; good for him.

The Deion approach is an option (I’m not recommending it.)
UCD credits are the same as UCLA credits and they have 30 transfers.
Historically UCD has had conference opponents that are vocationally oriented, so UCD seems like an island of academic rigor, Deion’s school, Colorado, is closer to Davis in academics than most Big Sky schools.

There is a press release on the ucdavisaggies site that Davis will have three games broadcast on “linear” networks, in other words non streaming. Mercer game on ESPN, Washington on the Big10 network and Montana State, undetermined. Last year I was pleasantly surprised that the Montana game, was available on both ESPN2 and ESPN+, something that wasn’t the case in prior instances of games on ESPN2.

My limited experience with private boxes was in SF at the then AT&T Park in the AT&T suite which AT&T used to entertain corporate clients. The value of that type of suite depends on how much the average client of the suite purchaser values a ticket, so to get the level of rent they get in Montana means that a large portion of the community, who aren’t alums, want to see a Davis game,

If their application for a waiver allowing them to join FBS without a conference goes through there will be no “all” for Sac to win, they’ll be ineligible because they are transitioning, Thats why they aren’t listed in preseason FCS polls.
No one outside of the Sacramento area will notice how they do.
i think that is a poor strategy, they should have gone FBS next year. Maybe they’ll be rejected, hope for that, if you’re a Sac fan.
Having a good regular season record against a fairly weak schedule and no post season glory doesn’t prove anything. They had a good run in the Big Sky a few years ago, no one cares without the post season. Their schedule doesn’t equate to an FBS schedule.

A former player for Montana, Samuel Akem, has a podcast where he listed the teams in the big sky by strength of schedule using won-loss records of opponents, Davis was 9th, Montana 10th. So that sounds comparable.
However. Davis plays a team from a power 4 conference, Montana doesn’t have any FBS opponent. Davis plays 4 FCS playoff teams, Montana 2, Davis has 5 home games, Montana 7. Montana has a D2 opponent Davis doesn’t.

Next they can call the blue-grey uniform Bodega blue.