What Will It Take to Keep Pace with the Success of Sac State Now? I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement, but I don’t think we should let the outcome of Causeway or selection Sunday create such dramatic concerns. Has Sac State grown as a program? Of course. Haven’t we also? Absolutely. At the end of the day, I would take Hawkins over Taylor in a heartbeat purely for the intangibles that honestly have nothing to do with football. The fact that he understands Aggie Pride, his philosophy on coaching, hearing him gush with pride a couple years ago over the fact that the entire OL was engineering or science majors, etc. It’s the little things you notice: I forget who it was, but one of the players during a Monday presser this season said he had FBS offers but UCD was the only school that allowed him to pursue an engineering major. I do think Taylor is a better on-the-field coach but I wouldn’t trade that for what Hawkins brings to the program and university.
And on the subject of Sac State’s progress vs. ours, here’s some counterpoints to hopefully make us feel better when we play the comparison game:
Causeway as a metric: Both teams were in this game. There’s nothing about losing by 6 points in the last second of the game that screams “Sac State is clearly on the better trajectory.”
Playoff selection as a metric: We can’t let a handful of lazy ADs sitting on the selection committee define the season (let alone our trajectory as a program) for us. It of course sucks we didn’t get in but everyone on this board (and many on AGS) understand the nuances between our 6-5 and Sac State’s 11-0. Swap schedules and both teams likely would have gotten in. Admittedly the difference between their season and ours is they found a way to win their close games and we didn’t (although we didn’t have the benefit of a cheap targeting hit taking out the opponent’s QB or Weber State’s long snapper handing the game away) — I think that says more about coaching (and the Hawkinses can still improve here) than it does about our overall trajectory.
Season win/loss records as a metric: I alluded to this above, but it’s a little unfair to compare the two programs’ trajectory based on (and draw conclusions from) their wildly different 2022 campaigns. Not only was our schedule much more challenging in terms of the teams we played, but I also think it would have made a world of difference if the scheduling gods gave us even one of those games (MSU/WSU/SDSU) later in the season. It would have given us more time for our offense to click before these games. Our FG kicking, which was the difference in SDSU and WSU, dramatically improved later in the season. Playing the tough teams later in the season would have also helped the rankings situation even if we still lost those games. Starting 1-4 is too big of a hole to climb out of in terms of national recognition in the polls. If you rearrange our schedule and we start 5-1 only to go 1-4 in the last 5 games, we would have been a top 10 team losing to 4 teams in the top 10 and likely still staying in the top 15/20 by selection Sunday (basically Montana’s season). Who knows if that would have made a difference to the playoff committee but at the very least we wouldn’t have felt as much like an underdog in Causeway. Sac State’s 2022 season is the inverse of this experience… they played Montana when UM was still highly ranked, they got WSU later in the season when the wildcats were on their decline and their offense was clicking, and of course they just had fewer quality opponents to play.
Attendance as a metric: Yes, Hornet Stadium drew 23k people on Saturday. But that's because both teams have been successful, and it was the highest stakes Causeway in the history of the series. That says just as much UCD as a program as it does about Sac State given how close the two schools are and how many fans in blue attended on Saturday. If we throw game day experience into this metric, I would say UCD Health Stadium is way ahead of Hornet Stadium... parking was a nightmare and I missed the first half because of the massive line to get in.
Playoff performance as a metric: In an alternate universe, the line judge stopped the clock to move the chains and we threw a TD in the last second of the game to win (not too far fetched). We actually make it into the playoff field. This Sac/UCD comparison doesn’t happen until after both teams finish their playoff runs and probably has a much different tone. In our actual universe however, even when we do this analysis now, UCD is arguably leading in this metric for actually winning one of its games and almost making it to the semifinals. So there's that.
Bottom line: I know we finished 6-5 and they finished 11-0, and I'm sure this has many implications including national/regional recognition, recruiting, retention, etc. But I don't think things are as dire as the different outcomes suggest, once you dive a little deeper into what happened this season or even what's happening to the programs overall. In my opinion, Hawkins is the right coach for the kind of program most of us want this program to be, and remembering that helps me come to terms with an otherwise disappointing end to the season.