Congrats on making the playoffs. It might not have gone the way you hoped, but there are about 100 FCS teams that wished they were in the playoffs, Cal Poly included.

Thanks, SloStang. You're absolutely right. I think it's easy for us fans to not really appreciate just how tough it is to be successful at this level of competition. I'm proud of this team and where the program is headed. I think Poly has a lot to look forward too also. I'm already looking forward to next season.

The attendance in Brookings was only 3681. I think we would have haD 10,000+. I'm kind of shocked that SDSU didn't have more support for a home playoff game considering how good they are.

Not about the game but this is very cool. This is what football can do for some young men like Chubba Maae:

Post-game press conference. Apparently we lost a few defensive players throughout the game. About 7 minutes.

https://youtu.be/7tzBTlaD8go

Looks like we have a pretty young team. The roster shows only a few starters are seniors. We should be in good shape next year. We need some bigger guys on both offensive and defensive line. We should be contenders again next year. The Big Sky as a whole has done well, which helps with recruiting. The new Edwards Center should help also. We had a good year even though our hopes were for more.

Painful, but here are the homer highlights from SDSU, pathetic crowd, but such is football during the Thanksgiving holiday.

I don't have the time or energy to check their schedules now but with the WAC resumimg football at the FCS level next fall there may be some teams there looking for games. WAC football teams will be Abilene Christian, Dixie State, Lamar, Sam Houston State, Southern Utah, Stephen F. Austin, and Tarleton State.

Hopefully not the Lincoln Oaklanders.

South Dakota State opens at Iowa next year. Hard to travel to Davis when you can get Big Ten money, and maybe pull a North Dakota State like upset, against those FBS teams.

I'm impressed with Chubba Maae's personal bio: "Proudest personal accomplishment was running a five-minute mile."

What?

That's got to be a misprint.

We lose two starting wide receivers, a starting tackle/guard a starting DT, a starting linebacker, a starting safety, and some sometimes starter reserves. Collectively that’s a lot of playing time.

We saw next to nothing of our class of 21 recruits, which was a small class.
Bryce Rodgers is going to be missed. Nobody similar in roster. Nobody like Harrell either that we’ve seen.

Regarding attendance in Brookings. The Jacks averaged just under 15k/game for the 6 home games. The trouble with a holiday weekend is many fans travel and the students(which could’ve added 3k) are all out of town. I’d have to believe if the Jackrabbits were hosting this weekend it’d be in the 12-13k range.

Brookings as a community is around 23k, about an hour from Sioux Falls(200k). The attendance was a little low but considering the blustery conditions not far off.

But our biggest need is at quarterback. I wonder if HR will even return given the severity of his injury. Maybe TT will develop as a passer. I wonder if we don’t need to go out on the market for a transfer QB? Our other holes will be filled out OK IMHO.

That’s fine but when will we end the decades of being physically overmatched by the top teams? It was appealing back in the no scholarship era to watch undermanned teams compete through misdirection and screen passes. That’s not so entertaining 40 years later. We shouldn’t have to have a rare quarterback to be effective. Put Hastings on SDSUs lineup and he would have dominated. Put their guy on ours and he still loses. Defense same thing, against playoff level teams we get gashed. 10 yards a carry? Not many QBs will fix that. And we were dominated physically early in the game as soon as they started running.
The Eastern Washington head coach, Best, said they learned in the spring playoffs that they had to play bigger, and to play bigger they had to get bigger. That’s doubly true for us because we have never not been pushed around by Eastern Washington.

Was Toki or Suani out the whole game? I saw RFr OL Sami Fonongaloa in town this weekend, he's solid. 6'1", 271.

We potentially have a replacement for Harrell - Lance Babbs. He's still in town, unsure of his status. He was our #3 receiver in 2019, with 46 catches for 563 yards and only started the last 6 games.

Aggie bio: "Enjoyed best outing at Portland State (11/9), posting 10-for-168 receiving with TDs in the first (26 yds), second (5 yds) and fourth (23 yds) quarters... That yardage total was a team season high and the best single-game performance by an Aggie not named Keelan Doss since Chris Carter logged 190 vs. Montana in 2009."

We have size on our lines, unsure why our Oline may have regressed. We have two of the youngest coordinators in college football and a soft schedule. SDSU made comments which imply our defense is vanilla, and our DB said they did a good jon pinching / sealing the edge? Did we load the box?

Suani played. Toki I only noticed on special teams, he is in the field goal unit.
Neither of those guys will quite give us what Rodgers does because they’re short.
I assume Babb quit and won’t be back wish it weren’t so.

I'm hoping Babbs comes back, just like Duncan.

Regarding size in our lines, we had big nose guards/ defensive tackles but small or at least light defensive ends. The only defensive end with notable statistics is Ambagtsheer with four sacks and 22 tackles. If we consider the Rush position a defensive end, we got only half a sack all season from Eaton. Our linebackers are smallish for college football. Now that they’ve made targeting so commonly called, there aren’t many ways for our linebackers to legally stop a strong running back from getting yards after contact.
Our offensive line seems to want to be light and physically fit. Most actually lost a few pounds for this season, and weigh about what they did when recruited That’s great until we meet the bigger playoff teams and then we can’t handle them.

Eaton had been a significant impact player then seemed to go quiet. Was his position changed?

Regarding our trenches, when Hawkins came onboard and presented at his first El Macero recruitment party, he emphasized the need for big strong linemen. He also said it wouldn’t happen overnight. I guess it’s a work in progress. My hunch is that our current linemen are bigger than what we had under the previous administration.
Somewhere i read that SDSU had 20 more football scholarships than we do. Is that true?
And a graduation rate of 54%, ouch. https://sportsrecruits.com/athletic-scholarships/mens-football/south-dakota/south_dakota_state_university

he was moved to the “Rush” position which is basically a standup defensive lineman . I think he was a strong side linebacker when he had his impact year. Now he’s more frequently blocked by a offensive tackle rather than a tight end or back.

They have more scholarships because scholarship limits waived due to Covid extra year. We didn’t utilize that hence our small recruiting class

54% is brutal. That's just unacceptable.

We definitely did have some bigger interior defensive linemen this year. Elsewhere not apparent progress.

River, was there a reason given for the scholarship decision? Did any BS team do the same?

Also for FCS teams, you get a better return by playing P5 or G5 teams in your own or adjacent region. That's why you see the Ags playing Cal, Washington, Nevada and SJSU etc. Granted we did just play Tulsa but that is more of a rarity. The travel costs are less and there is a likelihood of having local alums connect with the school.

Cal and UC Davis love playing each other because it keeps the money in their system and provides an attendance boost for Cal (and for Davis it allows them to get Bay Area fans excited for the team and see them in person). A school like Stanford also appreciates playing us because they will get a boost by playing us. SJSU/Fresno/Nevada can keep the payouts lower since they are relatively close to Davis but still get a home game.

A school like Sac or Davis probably will not spend the money to travel to Florida or Georgia to play a gimme against an ACC or SEC school. One because there are a lot more G5 and FCS teams back east and for the reasons I previously gave. Secondly, the payout is higher but the school may not have the alumni networks that they will in CA or the west coast and some of that is offset by the travel aspect. Third, since there are fewer western teams, the demand for gimme games is still somewhat high. Notice that Cal or Stanford often play their FCS game against Big Sky teams (exception being Stan will play Colgate next year).

I don’t know the details of the scholarship limit. First I heard of it was Hawkins press conference last week. He mentioned it after the game also.

A quick review of SDSU roster shows DEs at 225 - 265, DT 270 - 290, and about 7 OL at 300 - 315. Four more at about 295.

We have DL / DE at 225 - 245, then about 5 guys at 310 or 350. Size not an issue there. Our OLine is significantly smaller, a lot in the 265 - 285 range.

Hawkins was gracious, but also referred to all of their out of state recruits. South Dakota is small state. They signed about 10 from Minnesota, others from Illinois, Iowa (about 12, mainly LBs and linemen). These are nearby, small states.

Add Rice, a second Texas game.