Re: Sac State raising $35 million in one day.

1. There's a difference between donations in hand and pledges
2. There is a blurb somewhere about a tribe - sounds like naming rights

In comparison, Cal was recently tabbed to host College GameDay - first time ever for the Bears - as they host #8 Miami. An alum donated a $1 million match pledge - the alum will donate up to $1 million, if the Cal faithful can raise one million.

This is simply awesome. Everyone knows Cal struggles with football attendance but look what happens when the spotlight hits them.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFyXxmA7/

WOW...this is amazing! Who would have thought that all those brainy Cal kids get excited like this for a football game?

Everyone knows that Cal has had lots of financial problems and they've struggled to put fans in the seats of their renovated stadium but just look at the enthusiasm that has been generated with Miami coming to town. It will be interesting to see if the students' excitement is shared by the Berkeley community and the game actually draws a huge crowd.

This reminds me of how the students turned out for those few basketball games some years ago when ESPN came to town. Just having ESPN in the arena excited the students. Can you imagine how excited they would be if we were playing against nationally recognized competition as well? This is what could happen in Davis too if we were playing on a bigger stage nationally. I hope that our AD and our chancellor watch this video.

I am confident that Davis would go bananas with some nationwide 7/8pm Pac-12 after dark. You’re right, BGA, all we have to do is look back to those nationally televised MBB games.

Always the sleeping giant. Always much potential.

It's been all the buzz in the Bay Area. As a Cal fan who lived in the Oakland hills during the height of the Tedford era, Cal has fans and local support in the way Stanford can never hope to have.

Will they sell out, remove the tarps?

BART and students came through... alums questioning ICA lack of marketing push.

Well, there's this post from @Kadeezy from the Sac forum...

"For those that are worried, I have a very, very good source that says Sac State will accept a new conference bid in the next three weeks, and it will be the PAC-12. More strategic releases of drawings, partnerships, etc between now and then will make clear that we are the best fit before an official announcement."

If that is the case, sad end of an era. Sac making big things happen while we've seemingly taken our hat out of the ring for the time being. This move would make a move up in the future difficult for market share reasons and gives Sac a recruiting foothold in the region that would be hard to overcome if we ever were to move up.

again, not a knock on sac (I’d write the same if it was us, Montana, Idaho, etc)……the PACX taking a transitioning FCS school in time for 2026 competition kind of reduces their credibility of the ‘conference of champions’. The 2026 version is on par with the current MWC, although Gonzaga basketball helps.

I think they still will need one more football school.

Asleep at the wheel. What a joke.

We'll see. The Hornets are what - a middle of the pack FCS school? This would entail:

- New football-only stadium - sounds like possibly a tribe naming deal, 25,000 seats. Three, four, five years out? Play games at Hughes in the meantime.

- Alternating between The Well and Sac Kings home (tough for students). Neither ideal.

- New track facility / stands bc of the new stadium - maybe they repurpose some of the current bleachers.

- $35 Million for NIL, separate from getting the stadium built? How much per year is this?

If TV sets are still important, it gets the PAC-X the 20th largest TV market. But then everything is reshuffled down the road.

As we stand now for UC football teams:

Aggies - 5-1, 2-0
Bears - 3-2, 0-2
Bruins - 1-4, 0-3

If Slack moves to the PAC-12, we could be undefeated and win a natty and nobody outside our little community would give a crap.

I mentioned this once before. Last year in a football TV halftime broadcast, Chancellor May said we were working on big things.

So it's either still being worked on, or didn't pencil out. What major components would we need?

- stadium - add 5-10,000 seats
- NIL monies
- new scholarships for FB (20?) and 20-25 for gender equity

In 6-8 years it sounds like all of these TV-centric conferences will reshuffle again. UCLA and Cal may come back west.

with the new proposed FBS limit of 105 (90%), that’s 30-40 football scholarships and like wise on women’s side. New limits for softball and track could cover that addition with a new sport (what’s left?), but 60+ new scholarships is a steep increase especially if Mrak continues to charge football out of state tuition costs for non California recruits.

what’s left? — DrMike

Womens wrestling!

Right...Anything can happen. Things we never thought we'd see keep happening....The Rose Bowl Game is no longer between the Pac-10 / Big 10 (ancient history now)....The Pac 10 became the Pac-12 (ancient history now).....Pac-12 died (already ancient history).....

One thing I've never really seen from UCD is significant outreach / advertising to actually TRY to get people to come to Football/Basketball games. I seem to remember a billboard a few years ago for a couple weeks (?) but that's about it. I don't live in the area, so maybe I'm not seeing it if its happening.....

Before I get started on this rant, I'll just say....between the amount of undergrads on campus and the 67,000 people in sleepy Davis....there is no reason why we can't get 20,000 in Aggie stadium every week.

A lot of people live in the immediate area. If we figure we've lost Sacramento (never even had it)...there are 367,000 people within a 30 minute drive (Davis, Dixon, Woodland, Vacaville, Fairfield). General pop won't likely care about Aggie athletics, but there must be alumni here.

There is a ton UCD alumni in Contra Costa County. There are plenty of Aggies within 50 mins of Davis near me, and they do make the drive. CC County general population won't care about Davis football, but there are plenty of alums here (260,000 people in Martinez, Pleasant Hill, Concord, Walnut Creek)...

I've always seen some geographic similarities between Pullman (32,000) and Davis. Washington State gets people in the stadium and on good years they fill it up all year. But, if Wazzu was in the Big Sky, I bet their attendance would mirror Idaho's.
If Davis moves up, there is potential....but I'm not sure we are going to "make it" as a football program over the next 10 years the way things are changing if we don't do something. Changing who we play, community outreach, stadium upgrades.....something....

Honestly, changing who we play might be the only answer. I don't think we are going to change the level of passion / knowledge for football with students and community in our current situation.

Student 'demographics' have changed substantially the past decades, and 'technology'. No Grad, no Mr. Bs, no Ketmo.

If the $35m is for NIL, then that’s not construction dollars for facilities. And it’s probably pledged dollars with contingencies, not unrestricted cash in hand

A basic 25,000 stadium maybe $50m reusing some infrastructure. But the concept art is easily $100m+. The proposed rail yards soccer stadium is clocking $220m so I think Im giving the benefit of conservative numbers when we throw around words like state of the art. The thing is, 25k seats is still at the low end for FBS, especially PAC. I’m surprised they aren’t selling it as 25k, expandable to 45k, which would make it more of landmark for the Sacramento valley. In the interview, Orr said the current stadium would be torn down after this season and the architects would figure out where they play in the interim if needed before a new stadium is built. To me sounds like the current structure is condemned and they are throwing together a plan. It may come together, but this isn’t how these things are usually done. Wait until the environmental impact report. For a tribe to be interested, they may have an angle beyond the stadium getting mentioned on Good Day Sacramento now and again… maybe a named bowl game or something to do with sports betting.

All this talk of multi-use stadiums. Soccer doesn’t have a set field size but high levels of play want to be significantly wider than a football field. No mention if the track is in or out, though Hornet Stadium is probably one of biggest track venues in Northern California and idk if it was in play for the lead up to LA Olympics.

Sac averages 12,000 a game when they are good. It was like 6,000 when they were bad. Averages are thrown off when the Griz or Aggies pack the place. Not saying we have the gas to do any better but this kind of sounds like striving to be San Jose State.

I’m just thinking off the top of my head here - it’s an unforced error to tweet out the rendering with another level of seating when you can accomplish nearly the same attendance-wise for a fraction of the cost by filling in the berms and extending the current deck on the visiting side, if needed, with seating going “above ground” on structural member frames. :chin: (we need an emoji with glasses for this kind of stuff)

No mention if the track is in or out, though Hornet Stadium is probably one of biggest track venues in Northern California and idk if it was in play for the lead up to LA Olympics. — fugawe09

In the video above, Orr says there will be a separate track and field facilities right next to the new stadium.

The $35M is apparently contingent on a Pac-12 invite:

https://x.com/JackFreeman_13/status/1841919925247737882?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1841919925247737882%7Ctwgr%5E226ec619ddcd402808dab60b961ee5f3bb9ca1c2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbigskyfans.com%2Fthreads%2Fthe-pac-mwc-dominoes-begin-to-fall.29863%2Fpage-17

I have some oceanfront property in Iowa for sale. Seems like this thread has many potential buyers.

The 90% goes away with the new increased scholarship limits. Rosters do come down to 105.

that’s not how I read this from the NCAA:

https://www.ncaa.org/news/2023/6/28/media-center-di-council-proposes-changes-to-membership-requirements-for-fbs-schools.aspx

I read Orr as more seat of the pants, let's paint a picture of moving quickly and decisively. I got no impression the current stadium is condemned, unless they're going to use that as justification for quick removal. Like you noted, their are EIR reports, 'stakeholders', students may want a say, concept drawings, actual financing, state approval (?), etc. That doesn’t happen in 3 months, and Hornet Stadium most likely won't see construction for a year or more.

Side note: Oakland had a quickie fire sale on the Coliseum, sold it to a small group with big dreams, and they already missed their first contract-required down payment.

FTR, Stanford alum and developer John Arrillaga led the new 2006 Stanford Stadium project. They had a local architectural firm, local builder, and ran two shifts six days a week, finishing demolition and rebuilding in under a year. Local meaning within two miles. The $85 Million facility expanded to $105 Million (+20%) to add more concession stands, restrooms, and decorative stucco.

If Sac makes the move and we don’t. This would be a huge failure.

We are already ahead of Sac in our facilities. They play on a gloried high school field so they NEED an upgrade. When built I'm sure it will be slightly better than what have (as it should be because it’s newer). Call it even after a stadium build. So why Sac and not Davis moving up?

If those rumors are true, it would be a huge miss as we should move up together and bring the rivalry that other shared cities have…

My personal opinion is it should be two or none. If Sac goes up alone, we are sleeping at the wheel…

Sac left for D1 in 1991 I believe. It wasn't the end of the world for UCD. UCD caught up (beating them routinely all the while).

It took Davis 12 years to catch up and announce a move to D1....If Sac moves to FBS, it might take Davis a decade or more to catch up again.

Cal and Stanford are only going west if they join the Big 10. The ACC has been a major boon to the Bears.

how does Sac do when they play Poly or is that only an Ags/Mustangs thing?