WBB 12:30 pm Thursday: Aggies (9-2) vs Yale (7-4) Davis has always been behind the times when it comes to the athletics website design. We didn't even have an all- sports website until about 1999 or 2000 if memory serves. We did have some sort of rogue sites for individual sports that I miss.
The men's bball website was maintained by former assistant coach Duane Kouba, also a math professor (which explains why the URL began with math.ucdavis.edu..) The design was kind of primitive, looked like something I might've made with a free Geocities account, but it was the best source of news about Davismen's bball + it had links to every box score from the D2 national championship season. It was also the only place online to learn about new recruits. I believe Kouba maintained that website until Gary Stewart was hired, and he stopped coaching for Davis.
The baseball site was a bigger loss. It had a lot of neat black + white photos of game action + links to old game recaps + box scores. It was interesting to see how the players I was familiar with from my freshman year did when I was still in HS. I had no idea Justin Reid was the team's best pitcher. I thought it was Ryan Conners- Copeland because he seemed to pitch every game I attended. I sure would like to have access to those again. I know they still have them. Otherwise they couldn't come up with the historical facts and figures they do for articles. I sent an email to a baseball information person about 5 years ago asking if they could send some to me, that I'd make a donation to the program in exchange. Never got a response. As Stephanie on "Full House" (and now "Fuller House") would say, "How rude !"
I think the newest incarnation of the Aggie website is too busy. The articles take too long to load when I first access the site. Some simpler menus would be nice, and less junk to click on by accident.. I'm sitting there looking at a picture of some athlete doing something having no clue what the article's about because I have to wait on the scrolling menu to load..
Personally I don't care for the random tweets section, but then again I'm not on Twitter and don't care about stuff not pertaining to the games. I think Twitter is stupid, it enables people to too easily share stupid random comments and pictures with other bored people. Honestly I'm not that interested in the student- athlete's personal lives and random comments about things, which is the way I think it should be. Let the kids have their privacy. As an alumnus with no kids in school there I think my role is simple:
1. Show up for some, but not all games (because that would be creepy or sad)
2. Spend money on apparel
3. Support the team during the game
4. Donate money
5. Go home and leave us alone
6. Repeat.
I'm not about to make any suggestions about the website to the developers though. Clearly it was built for a younger audience, not a relic like me from a bygone era.
Speaking of old stuff, anyone else remember calling the Aggie Sports Hotline for scores each evening ? That was the only way to get them before 1999 unless you waited for the Aggie to come out.