Yup.

I wonder who we will play.

pretty sure it will be a FBS team. Sounds like we’ve reached out to a bunch of FCS teams out of the area with no bites. I’d be fine with UNLV

It looks like we just made an easy $725,000:

According to The Athletic, USC will have to pay $725,000 to UC Davis to cancel the game. If the Trojans were able to cancel before January 1, 2020, the buyout would have been $500,000.

I hope we can get another game to fill the cancellation and we don't end up with another bye on the schedule.

If we want a game, I'm sure we can get one. We could make an outright profit by paying much less for an FCS team to come play a one-off, and even more if it was a random DII team. Seems like it's really just a question of how much of the $725k the department wants to keep.

Lights for WSB MBB!

Another option: Book another FBS and double the take.

This is an absolute win for the Aggies. Huge pay check and chance to schedule a more winnable game. No complaints from me.

IF UNLV isn’t the undisclosed team that USC is trying to pick up for that date.

yeah, there is that! They might go after a FBS who has a FCS team scheduled, and help them pay that off. We’ll figure something out

LA Times is reporting that USC might be trying to schedule San Jose State. Spartans were supposed to travel to Georgia, but Georgia and Clemson have agreed to a neutral site game that weekend, resulting in Georgia canceling their game with SJSU.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/story/2020-02-19/usc-cancels-2021-matchup-in-football-with-uc-davis


And the Clemson v Georgia game also freed up Wyoming which had been scheduled to play Clemson. The Cowboys schedule now shows a game against Montana State for that date.

Sign game with UNLV > USC buys us out to play UNLV > sign SJSU

Triple dip yeah??? One can dream

A Labor Day weekend trip next year to Vegas? Yes please.

Heck yes!! :cool:

UNLV about equal - on paper - to UNR & the Spartans.

It's official, or as official as these things can be, SC has added SJSU to its 2021 schedule.
https://usctrojans.com/news/2020/2/20/usc-trojans-football-future-schedules-san-jose-state-sdsu-spartans-uc-davis-aggies-2021.aspx

"The Spartans will receive a $1.8 million cancellation fee from Georgia plus their new guarantee from USC, which will likely be similar."

Wow...what a paycheck for the Spartans!

A couple of million dollars and a relatively good season last year should quiet rumors of the San Jose State football program's impending death.

I was in downtown SJ yesterday, and saw the Spartans run the stadium stairs 2x.

So removing us from the schedule cost $C about $2.6 Million? Maybe we should up our FBS cancellation fee.

Per this article USC is paying them $1.1M to play. And as already reported Georgia is paying them $1.8 not to play. $2.9M total for the weekend for the Spartans.

https://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/02/22/san-jose-state-taking-home-nearly-3-million-for-swapping-usc-with-georgia-in-2021/

"So removing us from the schedule cost $C about $2.6 Million?"

Or, as they call it at USC, "petty cash."

And the 2.6 million didn’t even improve their opponent. Good chance we’re a better team than San Jose in 2021
The recruits they get are not notably different than ours over the last two years, and they were no where near prepared to play us last time the teams played in 2018

From the Bob Dunning article in the Enterprise:

But here’s the really goofy part to this story, one that even USC's AD Bohn will have a hard time explaining to Trojan Nation.

Remember his words about “viable games” and wishing to ensure that USC fans will have a “great experience” watching the Trojans play?

So which viable opponent that would give the fans a great experience did Bohn go out and schedule before the UCD contract had even hit the shredder?

Was it Ohio State or Michigan or Clemson or Oklahoma? Maybe Penn State or LSU?

Well, actually, it was San Jose State, the sputtering Spartans who in the 2018 season opener on their home turf were drubbed into submission by those same UC Davis Aggies that USC followers regard so disparagingly.

San Jose State is a program on life support. Calling the Spartans a viable opponent that will ensure a great experience for USC fans would be considered perjury if spoken under oath.

Bohn may have had contact with the folks at Stanford before cancelling the UC Davis game and been reminded of that stunning 20-17 Aggie victory over the Cardinal back in 2005.

For as onerous as it was for USC to schedule UC Davis in the first place, there could be only one thing worse.

https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/dunning/bob-dunning-now-we-know-how-much-usc-values-its-word/?utm_source=DE&utm_campaign=5958fc7925-Daily_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_be64fee185-5958fc7925-171004309

This is all about labels. SJSU is D-1, FBS. UCD is D-1, FCS. USC faithful simply cannot bear the thought that they might have played an FCS school and the only two FBS schools that had never scheduled down are UCLA and Notre Dame.

Back in the Pete Carroll era I had family reasons to follow USC football. At one point there was a big chat-room banter that followed the USC vs LSU poll ratings. LSU and SEC fans pooh-poohed Pac 12 football and boasted that the only conference that really played football was the SEC. SC fans countered that SEC schools peppered their non-conference schedules with FCS/D1AA schools, and quite frankly, weak ones at that. They weren't scheduling the North Dakota States, James Madisons, etc. I think there were about five FBS schools at the time that had never scheduled FCS/1AA schools. Now it's down to three. This is a game of chicken and the first one to flinch loses. That's even tougher with the rivalries inherent in USC, UCLA, and Notre Dame.

Dunning's remarks about Ohio State, Michigan, Clemson, Oklahoma are good as far as they go, but if I recall when the UCD at USC game was announced USC claimed there were no FBS schools with an open date on Sept. 4, 2021. SJSU only became available when Clemson and Georgia scheduled a neutral site game and bought off their previously scheduled opponents. USC pounced on SJSU's availability. One wonders if someone at SJSU saw USC's need for an FBS opponent as leverage and squeezed some more money out of the deal.

Part of this, and something the new AD at SC mentioned earlier this year, was that USC had been adamant about playing home games. With the new PAC-12 scheduling, combined with an intersectional rivalry with UND, they are guaranteed 5 home games a year. WIth ten given games every season they now have two games to play with. They were unwilling to schedule teams home-and-away and insisted on home games with no reciprocal away game. A lot of teams balked at that. That "policy" will probably be changed.

Purely my $.02. I have no leads into the USC thought process.

Our 2020 San Jose game gets a big bump in importance. If Davis beats San Jose, it will make SC look foolish for the expense of switching them in for us. It would be so sweet to beat them.
Both San Jose and us have to replace productive quarterbacks, but San Jose has a graduate transfer who’s played quite a bit fro Arkansas and Texas AM

SJSU is an up and down team from year to year. Big road wins over Arkansas and Army last year were high points for the program, and they were competitive in their conference games. An Aggie win over the Spartans would be a real nice touch in any year, but it would be nice to beat them this coming year and then send a thank you note to the folks in Troy. And wouldn't the folks in Westwood and South Bend throw a couple of jabs at SC?

Go Ags!

And the replacement is...

we'll.....good news is that's a much more winnable game. bad news.....don't think i'll be able to convince my wife to make the trip!

From the Enterprise:

UCD announced last week that USC would forfeit the $725,000 game guarantee because of the late drop-out date by Trojan officials. Now the Aggies will pick up just over $400,000 for traveling to Oklahoma.

https://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/uc-davis-football-opens-2021-at-tulsa/?utm_source=DE&utm_campaign=7c1e19b71b-Daily_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_be64fee185-7c1e19b71b-171004309

Not mentioned in the notable alumni for Tulsa is Bob St. Clair. After USF dropped their football program, St. Clair finished his last year of college ball at Tulsa before moving on to have a great career with the 49ers.

Lo and behold, this years look at San Jose’s schedule does not have Davis in the “guaranteed” win category, occupied by New Mexico and Connecticut.
https://mwwire.com/2020/02/27/san-jose-state-football-first-look-at-the-2020-schedule/

My grandaddy was an Oklahoma boy before the trek to California. I think I am going. Will work on 6th man making a trip. Got 18 months to make it happen