No farewell BBQ or send off? No bleachers on either side? No Woody Wilson Relays?

Did they tell the 82 team it was coming down?

A few days notice. Ridiculous.

...

Bob Dunning wrote a wonderful nostalgic piece today about The Toom.

Excerpt:

"The old scoreboard, which seemed always to favor the home team, is still standing, and if it survives the tear-down, wouldn’t it be great if it was lit up brightly every night to read “Aggies 37, Nevada 21” to commemorate that tremendous victory 40 years ago played before 12,800 punch-drunk fans who couldn’t believe the rout they were witnessing.

The town and the campus were both much smaller then, but that remains the largest attendance ever for an Aggie home game, either at Toomey Field or at the current venue, Aggie Stadium.

I remember on Nevada’s first play from scrimmage, UC Davis defensive end Casey Merrill broke through the Wolf Pack front line and sacked Nevada’s talented quarterback for a significant loss. They may as well have called the game then.

I remember the closing game of the 1963 season when Will Lotter’s final team, led by quarterback Dick Carriere, beat Sac State, 17-8, to claim the Far Western Conference championship.

As Lotter and Carriere and several other players boarded the horse-drawn carriage that went to the game winner, a hoarse Lotter gave an impassioned and impromptu speech where he noted that when the team’s seniors arrived on campus as freshmen in 1960, they didn’t win a single game.

I remember the tremendous Columbus Day storm of 1962 when Toomey Field became Toomey Lake and fullback Bob Foster was called on to regularly carry the ball through the mud and muck because no one dared to throw a pass.

The Aggies won that one, 8-6, establishing the margin of victory by going for a two-point conversion, since kicking a PAT on the sloppy field was out of the question.

I especially remember the Fog Bowl game against Lehigh in the 1977 Division II semifinals when TV color commentator Ara Parseghian famously welcomed the viewing audience to the beautiful San Joaquin Valley.

In respect to the potential East Coast audience, the game had a 10 a.m. start and a dense December fog emerged from the soggy turf to add to the intrigue.

And who can forget the mighty steam engine with the loud whistle that went off after every Aggie score, a decibel-busting eruption that clearly would violate any noise ordinance we have in place today.

Jim Sochor’s first game as a coach on Toomey Field — as opposed to the times he appeared there as a standout quarterback for FWC power San Francisco State — produced a 24-14 win over University of San Francisco. There’s nothing about that game, besides the win itself, that gave even a hint to Aggie fans of the magical 19-year run that led Sochor into the College Football Hall of Fame.

The memories and rich and will never fade. Win, lose or draw, Toomey Field was the place to be on a Saturday night in the fall.

I suppose some of us are guilty of living in the past. But what a glorious past it was."

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/bob-dunning-toomey-field-the-memories-will-never-fade/