A very descriptive account. Shocking !

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.news10.com/sports/uc-davis-says-baseball-team-hazed-students-with-alcohol/amp/

Wow...the hazing was much worse than I could have ever imagined and it reportedly has been going since as far back as 2009/10. Truly shocking!

If we're being optimistic we can hope that ending the hazing rituals and installing a new coach will end the terrible baseball- after a reasonable adjustment period of course.

We would be naive to think the destructive behaviors began and ended with the initiation rituals each year. How many games over the years do you think involved players who were hung over or under the influence ? There have been games where it looked like the whole team was drunk.

It will be interesting to see who they get as a new coach. It's probably against the rules to tamper with another team's coaching staff under contract, but volunteer assistants should be fair game.

Since the "national" search for a new AD yielded someone already employed by UC Davis I guess they will ask one of the interim coaches (Or all ? Tag-team it and give one the head coach because they have to ?) to take over for this season only. After the season I bet they ask SF State permission to interview Tony Schifano, and they hire him.

Is reducing the non-conference schedule a flat out punishment? Or is it as much a fact of life in mid-November when most schools have already filled their non-conference schedule?

Are there new or transitioning teams looking for a game who will schedule anyone until they find a place to land? Maybe the Lincoln University Oaklanders have a baseball team, too.

I would think that it has more to do with other schools having already established their non-conference schedules than anything else.

The reported hazing is so lurid and disturbing that it's getting a lot of media attention and it's really a black eye for the program. It's going to take a long time for the program to recover. Hopefully, the program will come back better and more competitive.

Sad news. It took 4 months to produce this report?

I think the game reduction is also a punishment, despite the joke I made earlier. Reduced opportunities to play and travel. If they weren't hosting Hawaii in 2022 I would say part of a good punishment would be that they stay home and forfeit that series.

I did a Google search for "baseball schedule uc davis 2022". It only turned up one non-conference opponent (San Francisco) with the Aggies scheduled so far.

Blimey! We made the British papers!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10204111/UC-Davis-baseball-teams-annual-hazing-rituals-revealed-scathing-report-coach-resigns.html

Hey, the Brits love this stuff! We’re right up there with Harry and Megan. Am somewhat surprised this hasn’t hit the National media yet (that I am aware of). Really bad stuff indeed. May need s to come out with a public statement about the future here and settle the ICA dept down a bit. Part of me still feels last AD left in part due to this report. Never will know.

Report is far more detailed and transparent than previous performed by the outside law firm, which I applaud. But I think it’s important to recognize that the university is committed to “preponderance of evidence standard”, which is not well defined but generally acknowledged to mean you’re at least 51% sure a statement is true. This is nowhere near “beyond reasonable doubt” that some readers will assume. I’m guessing Vaughn took the fall because Blue was already gone, since Vaughn informed Blue he gave everyone a stern talking to in 2018 and Blue told him the matter was closed, but now the university thinks it shouldn’t have been closed. It’s also important to judge actions in 2018 or any other year by norms in that time, not by 2021 standards, which are rapidly changing. While I don’t support eating goldfish or drinking with the intent to vomit, I also feel that voluntary drinking games or strippers on personal time and private property need not be the university’s business. I do not support the existence of anything resembling a “hazing task force” because these typically turn into make-work departments that have to self justify and the training programs they produce typically amount to rehashes of the proven-to-fail “just say no” campaigns.

Dr. Blue said it was closed?

Yup, they released the actual emails between Vaughn, Flushman, and Blue in the full report.

I read most of the report.

It was interesting to see some of the behind the scenes looks at incidents involving the players you wouldn't normally hear about, like the player who quit on opening day 2021. He was in the lineup. They redacted the players'names, but you could guess from context who some of them were..or at least a team parent could.

Anyone have a guess who the new coach will be ? At this point they're not going to have a lot of the choices. Who's going to want to enter a lame duck situation this year ? Since the assistants were more or less cleared of wrongdoing my guess is Brett Lindgren on an interim basis. He already has a rapport with the returning players and probably recruited some of the new ones. He'll need a pitching coach. Maybe interview Vaughn for that position ? That would be too funny.

Probably the saddest thing coming out of all this is what will happen to the players and Vaughn? The players just leave MBB off their resumes, but what does Vaughn do? Who will give the guy a decent job? I guess you have to say he brought it on himself, but wow, still so sad. I always heard he was a straight up good guy. Still surprised there wasn’t more media coverage on this whole episode. We probably lucked out on that.

Dr. Blue and Mr. Flushman apparently thought it was addressed and handled.

Who brought it back. Rocko DeLuca or special assistant to the AD and attorney Chanel Glasper?

Seems like it was neither. To me the report reads more like an indictment of Vaughn than the players who participated in hazing the new players.

The 2018 incident seems less like the focal point and more a supporting argument to Vaughn not doing enough to prevent hazing from continuing and allowing it to happen in the first place. Wasn't really a closed issue because the hazing supposedly continued into 2020. Blue apparently considered the matter closed when it wasn't.

The report highlighted exit interviews and yearly surveys conducted by the players about the program and their coaches. The whistleblower was likely a player (or maybe more than one) who gave the program and Vaughn poor marks and chose to emphasize the hazing as the reason. Eventually the evalauations were kicked around in incompetence until someone acted on them. The whistleblower was probably even around in 2018 (perhaps the student involved in the incident ?), making them possibly a graduating senior who feared no retribution.

And what of the players transferring out ? We might assume they left because of the hazing allegations that were brought to light, but perhaps they had already planned to leave because the team sucked, and the allegations gave them the perfect opportunity to do so. So we know of at least 3 key players who left-Campagna, Carrel, and Smith. Two players who were second year students in 2021 ane one third year. Whether they actually were 'rookies" who were hazed or not, they knew about it. The only 2021 players who may not have known were the true freshmen. So clearly most of the players conspired to keep it quiet and they have been lying the whole time they were claiming to know nothing. Despicable.

By the way, they frequently used the term "rookies" where you would think they would say "freshmen", so perhaps some transfer students were hazed as well ?