While we’re dreaming, my favored outcome would be if the NCAA gives up the two tier division 1. I think it’s a failed experiment. 85 scholarships are not required to field a football team with enough depth to put a good product on the field. The NCAA recognized this with their attempted rebranding from 1AA to FCS. It would be good for the sport if the scholarship limit was around 70. I think FBS teams are going to have an increasing difficulty holding on to players given that athletes who don’t play can more easily transfer now.

I think the subdivision creates a barrier to marketing, recruiting and fundraising for the lower subdivision, which has incurred 75% of the cost. It taints the rest of the schools athletic programs in the public image.
Personally I’m happy where we are conference wise. Just tired of the FBS FCS distinction.

For what its worth, what are some of the coaches earning in the FBS? This would have to be one of the line items in your FBS budget.
https://247sports.com/ContentGallery/Highest-paid-college-football-coaches-ranked-154935994/#154935994_19

At #22, David Shaw, Stanford, 4.8 million
At #1, Nick Saban, drum roll please, 9.1 million

It’s a gradient, not all 100+ FBS teams pay that. Do you think being in FCS means your coach can’t be lured away? It’s not a FBS FCS distinction.

River, I’m missing your point. Surely FCS coaches can be lured away. So can HS coaches. Coaching salaries are a distinction between FCS and FBS, and something that needs to be considered.

my point is it’s a gradient. What does the median Mountain West coach make?
Has to do with programs money making capacity, not whether it’s FBS.

"3. Part of the money equation is corporate sponsorship."

You mean naming a basketball arena of a mediocre NBA team after a mattress sales chain or a public employees' credit union isn't going to cut it?

I know that Hawkins is in the lower half of the Big Sky coaches.

MWC ranges from $600k to $1.6M. I believe Dan is around $260k.

Don't USC and Ohio State have all 85 scholarships endowed? The big programs will fight a reduction.

I’m sure they would. No downside for them. But their stockpiling players isn’t to the players benefit, it helps to preserve the power 5 supremacy by denying talented players to lower tier conferences.
It’s an equity issue.

Davis has 20+ sports and the BWC/MWC deal for UH is a one-timer, as I understand it. MWC teams receive distributions of $3 to $5m from TV. That's not enough to support the investment required to be competitive at that level, even if a rabid fanbase magically appeared. Fresno and SDSU rely on donors, sponsors and the gate. SJSU limps along with duct tape and institutional support.

Here is the link to MWC salaries. That’s head coaches. Coordinators and assistants make way more than ours.

https://nevadasportsnet.com/news/reporters/heres-how-much-every-mountain-west-football-coach-will-make-in-2021

Ok, gotcha. The article shows the gradient on the top 50. Maybe the more meaningful gradient would be the bottom 50?

I think a lot of the salary for big program coaches comes from a variety of sources. The school pays some, booster groups pay a lot, coaches get a piece of the pie from souvenir sales...If I recall correctly Hayden Fry got part of the proceeds of anything with the redesigned Hawkeye logo. Some coach at Kentucky was reported to get a piece of the sales from basketball uniforms...and oddly enough the uniform changed every season, so the faithful bought a new one each season....

Just to be clear I’m not recommending moving to the MWC.
While we should logically be able to compete with Fresno and San Diego State, they have a history that we don’t. I was a student at San Diego Stats in the seventies and they played in the same stadium as the Chargers. I think SDSU outdrew the Chargers.
The logical progression is we win consistently and build a fan base.

I've been wondering if Davis' attendance issues have more to do with how isolated the city is from denser alumni areas. When I went to our games vs Cal or Stanford most of those folks seemed relatively local. If Davis' neighbors weren't the likes of Dixon there'd probably be more alumni in the area who would visit the campus occasionally for more regular events

It is also very common for SF business firms, law firms, hedge funds etc. to give out Stanford/Cal tickets to employees and to clients. I really don’t see that happening in Sac, much less davis for UC Davis. Having said that, Stanford/Cal attendance very poor still. Am I seeing attendance down at all FBS schools in CA? Sure looks like it.

Oh Bob...

not just California. Attendance nationally in 2019 was the lowest since 1996. Not sure how they measure that with all the addition of teams, stadium expansions, etc

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-football-must-innovate-as-fbs-attendance-dips-for-sixth-straight-year-to-lowest-since-1996/


Pac12 is hurting

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/11/06/attendance-issues

Wow, didn’t realize there was such a significant downtrend in attendance. For now, we’re not ready for an FBS move anyway. Maybe some day. Even if we could somehow make it work for football, not sure we’d prefer the remaining sports out of the Big West. At least travel is more reasonable and we have academic rivalries w UC’s, Cal Poly…

Who knows, maybe some day they will combine FCS & FBS and the smaller programs will be considered mid majors kind of like in basketball. The top of the Big Sky seems to be able to compete, unless you think this year was a fluke. Northern Arizona beat AZ, Montana beat a ranked Washington, Davis over Tulsa (last years AAC champ) and EWash beat UNLV. Not bad.

I think this year is a little bit of a fluke due to COVID. FCS benefits from the extra year of eligibility in terms of depth compared to FBS. We can split scholarships so those 6th year guys can stick around and still get some aid. Not the case with FBS.

Something like 8 MWC schools averaged < 25000, 4 < 20000. No wonder they want our 40000 attendance!

FBS also had more depth due to the COVID year but they didn’t need it as much. So it relatively helped the FCS teams more. Tulsa had some 7 year(s) guy if I recall correctly. Three Graduate transfers as well.

Golden 1 Center was a $120M naming deal. Our deal with the much smaller University Credit Union is much smaller I'm sure. Separate discussion as to whether sports deals are an appropriate use of money for a non-profit credit union or public health system. UCD graduates a lot of people that make the world a better place on a daily basis, but relatively few that are titans of industry. The campus does work with beer and wine conglomerates, but their interests seem to be elsewhere from athletics. We also have a lot of involvement with the likes of Chevron, Dow, Monsanto, and Bayer - probably none of which want to advertise their affiliation too loudly and get activists riled up. And at this point I doubt unaffiliated companies like Southwest Airlines and Comcast would be lining up to buy wine-and-dine suites in Davis.

As has been noted moving to a different conference is not just about football. As of this moment our fall sports are not exactly tearing up the Big West.

Men’s soccer is 6-7-1, 2-2-1 in the Big West and in 6th place of 10 teams.

Women’s soccer is 8-7, 3-4 and 6th of 11 teams.

Women’s volleyball is 5-13, 1-6 and 10th of 11 teams.

Men’s water polo competes in the Western Water Polo Ass’n where we do very well, but the WWPA is arguably the third best conference with teams from California. The team is 9-5, 3-0 in the WWPA and tied for first of 9 teams. (One of our non-conference victories is a tournament win over WWPA member UCSD.) The other Big West schools (UCI, UCSB, Long Beach) compete in the Golden Coast Conference along with West Coast Conference (UOP, Pepperdine) and Mountain West (San Jose State) schools. We are 3-2 against GCC teams with two of those victories over San Jose State. We are 0-2 against UCSB and LBSU. The big four water polo teams (Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC) compete in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. We are 0-3 against MPSF teams with a game at Stanford this coming Sunday. I wouldn’t bet the farm (HAR!) on being 1-3 after that game.

as a alum of a school that made the LEAP from FCS to FBS, I am here to say: you will raise the entire Profile of YOUR number 4 ranked Public University. It is full of negatives and hard challenges. More than every - particularly since 1998 - you are not going to compete with a Alabama. But you can schedule big games (far more than a Coastal Carolina or Georgia Southern); gain big money from those games + TV + assorted ancillary streams from boosters/attendance/marketing. As you are today ... you are just not even in the conversation of where UC Davis should be.

YOU won't be seen as San Jose State. YOU are a Public University of stature growing up. Today's Football World is exploding with opportunities; and FCS is a loser (slight) guaranteed. MWC would be an ideal landing spot. As for your Olympic Sports: no change honestly. However, a baseball or soccer might grow to a national program. Who knows YOU could have the dominant Women's Hoop in the west with the right coach. My view of the landscape is twofold: one GREATER regionalization. OK ... you have the P5. In the eastern states, that is going to continue to slide to a handful of relevant programs: from 65 to 12 or so. Just no business thinking the others are anything but cannon fodder. The Elite (with OU and UT moving) will cheat for even more money; it is Econ 101. And they will try to toss the Northwesterns, Vandy, others. In the coming years, UC Davis should jump and promote a major World U.

Would be nice to know the school that made “the leap”

Question For any basketball and other sportsfans out there ( I don’t follow].
Assuming we couldn’t get a deal like Hawaii and join as a football only member.
Is the Mountain West much better than the Big West? Would changing the football classification have any effect on other sports that are already D1 ? Do you think more or better athletes would join a Mountain West team in sports other than football. Aside from the negative of the increased travel are there any positives?

I'll give my 2 cents for basketball. With the men, MW is currently a step up from the Big West. The BW is usually ranked somewhere around 17th to 20th strongest conference in the nation and is considered a one bid conference (meaning only the winner of the BW tourney goes to the NCAA tourney). Mountain West is around the 14th strongest conference and last year was a 2 bid conference (SDst won their tourney and Utah St. received an at-large bid at #11 seed). Will more people come out to watch us play Colorado St. and New Mexico then SLO and UCR? The average student might not care, but yeah, I think it would certainly draw more interest overall and certainly get our name out there beyond just Ca. As for the women, Coach Gross has built a very strong program and we'd probably be favored to finish at or near the top in most years. I do think the MW has a bit better competition top to bottom than the BW. Probably a step up on the women's side, but not as big as it would be on the men's side.

I think that's a good summary regarding the BW vs MWC for MB and WBB. In addition to what you have stated if we joined the MWC, our out-of-conference scheduling would be easier since we would have the BW teams to choose from along with the WCC teams. Scheduling some of those teams for OOC games plus the regular MWC games would make for a sizable step up in our overall competition which would probably increase interest and attendance.

Negatives - travel costs and we aren't paired w other UCs?

Travel costs, of course, would certainly be increased. But I have no idea if those increased costs would be made up for by increased revenue. Higher profile programs would, logically, mean more $$$ generated. That's only for MBB and maybe WBB a bit. Can't see any of the Olympic sports generating substantially higher revenue in the MW vs BW, so the basketball and football programs, of course, would have to make up for the increased costs.