Excerpts rom Bob Dunning's Substack column:

SEATTLE - Although an Aggie win would have been an upset of historic proportions, that dream vanished quickly as the University of Washington led from start to finish to overwhelm UC Davis, 70-10, before a raucous crowd of 65,421 Saturday night in Husky Stadium.

"We're not a pat on the back kind of team, and we're not happy with this result," said Aggie head coach Tim Plough.

"There are no excuses. I thought we could have played better. We continue to make mental errors that hold us back and we have to clean those things up. When you look at that score, it doesn't feel good, but that's a great Washington team and they're going to do great things this year."

The 60-point loss was the largest in UC Davis history, eclipsing a 52-3 setback to Cal in 2010.

Despite the loss, Plough raved about the venue of the 105-year-old stadium and the experience it provided his players.

"It was cool for our guys to play in that environment, with the crowd and the noise. This is a special place. Husky Stadium is the Camelot of West Coast football."

What does a head coach tell a football team after a loss like this?

"I told them don't let anyone pat you on the back, but all the goals we've set for ourselves are still ahead of us," said Plough.

"Our season starts now. We have nine games left and this game has no bearing on what we want to accomplish. Realistically, a game like this helps to fund our entire athletic program, so we're proud to be a part of it."

"This was a fun game for the University of Washington," said the Husky coach.

"It was awesome to see our crowd get into this game. I'm proud of the way we played tonight. As a team, we couldn't have played much better. It's most important that when you have a talent gap like this that you do the things you're supposed to do, and we did. Davis has a good team and they're going to be good in their conference and in their division."

"We're pretty worn down right now," Plough noted. "It's a perfect time for us to have a bye week."

Whole article here: https://www.thewaryone.com/p/washington-shows-its-muscle-to-rout?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2582284&post_id=173003575&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Fisch watched Oregon put up 69 on Ok State earlier in the day and didn’t want a repeat of the mistakes they made last week. It wasn’t a fair fight back with 85 scholarships vs 63 but $20m rosters versus guys on partial scholarships is a whole different level of imbalance.

Truth...

They mentioned that a couple of star players could already be playing on Sunday but elected to play an extra year of CFB to pad their stats and secure a potentially better contact. Which is exactly what we saw. The talent imbalance between the FBS top 25 and everyone else is insane. Based on what I saw earlier, I don’t think Nevada would have done much better than us.

absolutely. I would have much preferred playing them last week in their opener when they were getting things figured out and we were a fresh fresher physically and mentally .they got on a roll early and we’re able to utilize all their athletes. That QB was really impressive - accurate, smart, athletic snd always under control. It’ll be interesting to see how they go in the Big10.

Important perspective....Big Sky has been stomped across the board by P4/Boise. This is pretty normal stuff, and doesn't mean there is any issue with Davis. This is just a completely different level of competition. The Montana State and Eastern scores are pretty similar to ours.

BYU 69 PSU 0
Oregon 59 Montana State 13
Boise St. 51 Eastern 14
Utah 63 Cal Poly 9
Washington 70 Davis 10
Arizona 48 Weber 3

Big Sky had some closer contests (still loses) against weaker FBS programs, but again different level.

On to SUU home opener!

*revised to add the late game @ Arizona!

The 2010 Cal game was understandable as we featured a rookie QB. The Huskies are better than that Cal team. It appears UW has two dominant offensive weapons.

Mick Dunning's photos show a lot of empty seats in Seattle.

Arizona knocked off Weber State 48-3

The imbalance is getting worse. Big Sky teams don’t have as many five and six year players due to COVID extra year phasing out and most Big Sky teams have been pillaged by FBS. The Big Sky isn’t what it was last few years. Add to that the migration of talent to the biggest P4 programs and you get completely uncompetitive games. Eventually these games won’t draw viewers.
Sac isn’t right often but give them credit for recognizing the uncompetitive situation the courts have put FCS football in.

I saw a lot of fight in our guys and not backing down. I just want them to bring this for the rest of the season. We can compete in the FBS, we are just not an Ohio State right now.

We can beat Stanford right now.

You forgot Northern Colorado.. They almost beat Colorado State, but got robbed on a bogus non-touchdown call..

But yeah, most of the Big Sky looked bad this weekend.

Right, I also excluded New Mexico, who played a close game with Idaho State.

Colorado State and New Mexico are not in the same class as the teams I listed. Davis and Montana State play CSU/UNM team more competitively.

The Big Sky scores I listed just show the huge competitive imbalance between FCS and upper-echelon FBS conferences.....and for Davis (and Poly fans) to not freak out about final scores in these games.

Agreed. Our NG was great! Two 6'4" corners don't help, along w their QB and RB.

The Power 4 or 5 are almost like an actual semi pro league.

Interesting to see true freshman Treynor
Cleeland gets some reps as QB #3. Well built (225), mobile in HS.

We had a chance in the first half to score, but a 'well thrown' ball was intercepted. Was that one of their long corners? That's the kind of ball that could possibly be thrown another 3 - 5 yards farther - our WR had to come back to the ball. And if he can't get it, no INT.

a table skirt and a pop-up backdrop would have fit in one suitcase so this didn’t look like a deposition.

There are quite a few things that cost nothing and that show some degree of planning and prep that Rocko has not mastered.

Hireanother Associate AD to handle that. Or, can't Athletics Comms ask a few basic questions in advance?

Don't we have a sports information director?

Hahahah, I think these cats read this message board and will probably have something next time.

If they read this message board: I would like UC Davis health stadium to offer campus produced food items to eat sourced from the campus farms like the dining halls do!

I think there are at least three FT paid staff, plus a supervising Associate AD, who divvy up the sports, but FB and MBB must have more support. There has been semi recent turnover in staff.

Don't forget, our Marketing Comm staff had trouble giving away 1,000 free tickets to a recent football playoff game.

I see that Washington did not get a single vote in the AP poll this week.

It's really more like a Power Two with the ACC and B12 as tweeners.

Harper looked more comfortable in the pocket than Pinnick but was inaccurate in his throws. I guess I won't keep thinking we should put Harper in the game. I liked the one good throw from Cleeland. Wouldn't mind seeing him a little more in other games when we can work in the #2.

Does Washington deserve to be ranked? Time will tell.
Obviously they looked pretty good, but they haven’t played a tough enough schedule to overcome their initial placement. Pretty depressing if thats not a top 25 team.

I hadn't realized while watching the game that we were resting a good number of starters in the 2nd half (beside Pinnack). Good for the long term health of the team....not so great for the point differential!

We dropped one position to #9 in Stats and Coaches polls, puts us right with Idaho. Sac dropped to #21. SDSU and Montana St are very competitive, went to 2 OT. I don’t know much about Illinois St or Rhode Island but the polls are hot on them. Not sure why Montana went up. D2 Central Washington gave them all they could handle until running out of depth in the trenches in the 3rd quarter.