The new twist included a heavy set, possibly transgendered Sac State student, holding a sign: "UC Davis Sucks but I SWALLOW."

A couple of fools - two different groups - were arguing at the beer tent, agitating for a fight. The end zone was packed from the time I entered, until after halftime.

The food truck lines were ridiculous, many probably took upwards of two quarters to get food. Same for getting into the venue - took me almost 30 minutes to get inside. Two young ladies checking people in at one major entryway.

Took one look at that from the stands - had no desire whatsoever to venture down there. It was obvious Sac State was unprepared to handle the number of people who showed for the game - venue was crowded, which should've been expected based on ticket sales leading up the game, not enough space, not enough food trucks and/or other places to eat for the number of people there, and luckily, I went to the restroom early and got to watch the game without having to go back, wonder what the lines were like to use the facilities.

So the Sac athletic department AD, Associate ADs, facilities management failed. I was in that throng. The only empty spot in the stands I saw was when our band went down to perform. There were a few seats here and there available.

I have no idea where that mass went after halftime. Back tailgating? The whole 2nd quarter and halftime felt unsafe, where was the Fire Marshall?

There appeared to be enough parking and porta potties. Also smartly cut off beer sales at the end of halftime. Doubling staff for admission should have been a no brainer, and adding food trucks somewhere. There were a group of 6 guys on edge, another guy provoked by a drunk. One fight would have been ugly.

They knew this was coming 2 weeks in advance.

It all sounds very typical for a game over there. We ate at JJ’s and had no desire to get anywhere near the food truck area or their tailgate area. Parking was a total nightmare. We left 75 minutes before game time from JJ’s, 4 miles away, and missed half of the first quarter. They needed traffic cops at the intersections keeping the flow going. It’ll be 2 years before we have to deal with that again.

I can't wait to for the game next year in our house.

We’ll sweep them tomorrow, wink.

My wife and I will be there. It would be great to sweep both the women's and the men's game.

my wife and are going too. Sweep!!

Well, then there will be at least 3 couples going, wink.

I always think it's tough for the players to get dialed in on their shots in such a big arena and such a small crowd. Just something about the vastness of the place when the seats a mostly empty that changes the depth perception of the shooters. Maybe driving to the basket is the best way to deal with it!

I'll add a third/fourth - Continue to recruit well & dont get crushed by the transfer portal. Last year was good, one big loss. There are 230 in the FCS portal already in 24 hours. Insane.

Of note:

-Bison losing guys NOW who are contributing - ie not going to play in the playoffs b/c in portal. Huge names? No but guys who were getting on the field. 3 of them.
-VMI, Wagner, Bucknell, and Penn are like 40 of the kids in - those programs getting pillaged.
-Couple of impactful QB - Seth Morgan at VMI and Carson Camp at USD. Camp lost his job late in year but ive watched a lot of him. In the right spot he'll excel. Talented kid.
-Closer to home, Texas AM Commerce, an Aggie opponent next year, had their best player (WR) enter this morning - he's already got offers from NC St, Ville, Wash St, Utah, La Tech among others.

They've obviously been better than us the last three full season but we literally almost beat them this year. It's not like Taylor came in and they're all of a sudden beating us by 30 every year. We were up 17-3 in the second quarter and 17-13 entering the 4th quarter in 2019 too. It's hilarious to say we'll never beat them under Taylor. I mean, it could obviously happen. The dude could leave the program in the next month in which case we wouldn't get a chance to beat him.

My thoughts exactly B&G. I too have many other interests, but I still want the Aggies to win - I would think Hawk would say excellence in whatever you do - academics or athletics. I love college football (don’t even follow pro sports anymore) due to the overall experience. Of course the Montanas and Montana States will always have a more fervent following - only teams in state, plus California is much more reserved in terms of following college football. Stanford is sort of like a mausoleum.

Re: Sac. I don’t think Taylor will take the Cal OC position - he is head coaching material. Only thing left to prove at Sac is either a NC or a deep playoff run, then I think he’s out of there at first good opportunity. Catch is that FBS fires their coaches early so he almost has to jump ship at mid season for timing. I am pretty sure Sac will cool off after he is gone.

We have some promising young players who took huge strides this year, encouraged by guys like Budgett, Larison, Rex Connors (a RFr.), Hastings, Venable, Kraft, Tompkins, Hutton, Buchanan, Poerio, Eaton, Sarale, Ford, Toki, Davis, Thorpe, Castles, Kennedy and Perez coming back.

Biggest holes to fill are Left Tackle, Center, Place Kicker and Cornerback... my opinion. Center, less so, because when Pettek went down I don't think Davis lost much of a beat offensively, the backup did well.

The punting this year was not good. I know it’s hard to fill whelan’s shoes, but the punters were switched back and forth trying to find someone with consistency. I don’t think it resulted in dire consequences, but for example, the last punt against Sac State that only went to the 50 wasn’t good and most punts turned out better simply because they were too short to field and rolled.

I would add Gale as a potential impact player. I wonder if the coaches have considered moving him to wide receiver. We did not have a big wide out to throw to. He is fast (outruns DBs) and with the bigger Castles and Thorpe at TE, why not move him to wide out? Kraft has been around a while, but injured a lot. He was listed this year as a junior - so not “young”. I thought he looked good in Bozeman. Poerio is also a junior this year.

I had the same thought in terms of Gale. Move him to wideout and get him the ball. He's slim for a TE and he can footrace DBs.

Our sophomore class (mostly Junior because of COVID) is loaded

Chris, do you have the link for the portal?

Gale is great, but the roster has a number of 6’2 to 6’4” receivers. Granfors (6’4”)was injured a lot but impactful when he played, same for Chaz Davis (6’3”). Cody Hawkins said before the season that the tight ends learn each receiver position, so they’ll have him running wide receiver routes sometimes even if still a tight end.
Kraft had a similar year as a Freshman in 2018 believe it or not! Poerio is also a class of 2018 recruit, as is Lance Babb. Any of those class of 18 guys might decide five years is enough unless they go to graduate school.

OL Parks and Amoah graduate?

WR transfers Kraut and Crump never saw the field? Hawk was high on both, so does that mean he was saving eligibility as maybe Kraft and Poerio move on?

this is a good Twitter account to follow: @farrellportal

This is from one of their recent tweets:

FCS schools that have had the most scholarship players enter the portal since 8/1

VMI: 12
Wagner: 11
Lamar: 10
Norfolk St: 9
Northern Colorado: 7

I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement, but I don’t think we should let the outcome of Causeway or selection Sunday create such dramatic concerns. Has Sac State grown as a program? Of course. Haven’t we also? Absolutely. At the end of the day, I would take Hawkins over Taylor in a heartbeat purely for the intangibles that honestly have nothing to do with football. The fact that he understands Aggie Pride, his philosophy on coaching, hearing him gush with pride a couple years ago over the fact that the entire OL was engineering or science majors, etc. It’s the little things you notice: I forget who it was, but one of the players during a Monday presser this season said he had FBS offers but UCD was the only school that allowed him to pursue an engineering major. I do think Taylor is a better on-the-field coach but I wouldn’t trade that for what Hawkins brings to the program and university.

And on the subject of Sac State’s progress vs. ours, here’s some counterpoints to hopefully make us feel better when we play the comparison game:

Causeway as a metric: Both teams were in this game. There’s nothing about losing by 6 points in the last second of the game that screams “Sac State is clearly on the better trajectory.”

Playoff selection as a metric: We can’t let a handful of lazy ADs sitting on the selection committee define the season (let alone our trajectory as a program) for us. It of course sucks we didn’t get in but everyone on this board (and many on AGS) understand the nuances between our 6-5 and Sac State’s 11-0. Swap schedules and both teams likely would have gotten in. Admittedly the difference between their season and ours is they found a way to win their close games and we didn’t (although we didn’t have the benefit of a cheap targeting hit taking out the opponent’s QB or Weber State’s long snapper handing the game away) — I think that says more about coaching (and the Hawkinses can still improve here) than it does about our overall trajectory.

Season win/loss records as a metric: I alluded to this above, but it’s a little unfair to compare the two programs’ trajectory based on (and draw conclusions from) their wildly different 2022 campaigns. Not only was our schedule much more challenging in terms of the teams we played, but I also think it would have made a world of difference if the scheduling gods gave us even one of those games (MSU/WSU/SDSU) later in the season. It would have given us more time for our offense to click before these games. Our FG kicking, which was the difference in SDSU and WSU, dramatically improved later in the season. Playing the tough teams later in the season would have also helped the rankings situation even if we still lost those games. Starting 1-4 is too big of a hole to climb out of in terms of national recognition in the polls. If you rearrange our schedule and we start 5-1 only to go 1-4 in the last 5 games, we would have been a top 10 team losing to 4 teams in the top 10 and likely still staying in the top 15/20 by selection Sunday (basically Montana’s season). Who knows if that would have made a difference to the playoff committee but at the very least we wouldn’t have felt as much like an underdog in Causeway. Sac State’s 2022 season is the inverse of this experience… they played Montana when UM was still highly ranked, they got WSU later in the season when the wildcats were on their decline and their offense was clicking, and of course they just had fewer quality opponents to play.

Attendance as a metric: Yes, Hornet Stadium drew 23k people on Saturday. But that's because both teams have been successful, and it was the highest stakes Causeway in the history of the series. That says just as much UCD as a program as it does about Sac State given how close the two schools are and how many fans in blue attended on Saturday. If we throw game day experience into this metric, I would say UCD Health Stadium is way ahead of Hornet Stadium... parking was a nightmare and I missed the first half because of the massive line to get in.

Playoff performance as a metric: In an alternate universe, the line judge stopped the clock to move the chains and we threw a TD in the last second of the game to win (not too far fetched). We actually make it into the playoff field. This Sac/UCD comparison doesn’t happen until after both teams finish their playoff runs and probably has a much different tone. In our actual universe however, even when we do this analysis now, UCD is arguably leading in this metric for actually winning one of its games and almost making it to the semifinals. So there's that.

Bottom line: I know we finished 6-5 and they finished 11-0, and I'm sure this has many implications including national/regional recognition, recruiting, retention, etc. But I don't think things are as dire as the different outcomes suggest, once you dive a little deeper into what happened this season or even what's happening to the programs overall. In my opinion, Hawkins is the right coach for the kind of program most of us want this program to be, and remembering that helps me come to terms with an otherwise disappointing end to the season.

Good “stuff”, thanks for the perspective.

both were Sr's but Parks can med. redshirt if he wants to come back

Great, thoughtful post, Kerberos. Thanks for taking the time write it up and share it with us here on AST. Also, Nick Amoah was the Aggie player in the presser who said the Davis was the only D1 school he got an offer from that would allow him to be an engineering major and play football as well.

I agree with you that Hawkins is a great fit for the Aggies. He bleeds Aggie Pride and the "Aggie Way" of combining athletics and academics. He also continues our amazing history having produced so many great collegiate and pro coaches over the years.

The thing that jumps out to me every time I look at it, however, is the stunning, overall success of Troy Taylor in just 3 years at Sac State. What he has done over there in that short period of time is practically unimaginable. He took over one of the weakest programs in the Big Sky and promptly won or shared 3 straight Big Sky titles while going 29-7 overall and 23-1 in league play to date and has Sac State in a position to play for a possible undefeated, national championship. He has accomplished what we have been chasing ever since we moved to D1 and he's done it in just 3 years.

What I would like to know more about is how Taylor managed to accomplish this in such a short period of time? I ask this not as criticism of our program or Hawkins but out of a curiosity as to how he has been so successful so fast .

I know we have higher academic requirements which limits the pool size of the athletes that we can recruit but is that that big of an advantage for him? Many other schools nation wide and schools in the Big Sky have similar or perhaps even less stringent academics requirements and haven't had that kind of success so fast. Is he just a gifted coach with a superior offensive mind? Are there other possible factors that anyone can identify that has attributed to the meteoric success he has had with the Sac State program?

Tranfers have been a key. O’Hara was a huge factor for them, Davis has some impactful transfers but not at that level.

Good point. I just took a look at their roster:

13 transfers from other 4 year programs including 4 from power conferences.
16 JC transfers

Taylor really went heavy into transfers! Wow!

https://hornetsports.com/sports/football/roster?path=football

I will just chime in here I as await dinner. I am no football guru, but I have followed Aggies football for probably 40 years. Went to all of Sochors home games. Met him a few times and he was always very humble and cordial. He was probably one of the best college football coaches in all time and a lot of that was due to his connection with his players. I have never heard a negative comment about Sochor as a coach. But I do remember a comment he made at a golf course in napa the year Gould was hired. I asked “how do you think he will do” he answered “he will do great if he’s lucky”. I then asked if He was lucky. He said “you bet I was”. And how I asked and he said do you remember a guy named O’Brian? I did. He was a transfer from of all places sacramento state! I know all of you older guys know this. But Sochor was a lucky man and he knew it. Didn’t napoleon ask of his new officers “is he lucky”?
Never forget luck. Taylor is a very good coach. I very much hesitant to gripe about him getting transfers over what we did. But he was also lucky. He got Skattabo. How did we miss this guy in our own backyard? Answer: bad luck. We already had a full contingent of gifted RBs and the best one in the conference in UG. So Taylor got him. I think he was the catalyst for their success this year. And yes, I think he will take the OC at cal if offered. It will be a 1M offer with incentives. This is kitchen table time with the wife! She will decide. . . Luck can run out as we all know

A lot of factors created JS' success. Getting Foster and Biggs wasn't luck, maybe Coach Arp was. How much active recruiting did Sochor and Foster do? At Coach Sochor's memorial, O'Brien said Sochor had to recruit him 3x. (He was always loaded - Moroski, Speck, Peterson.) Soch apparently dropped the ball the first time. It seems nobody pushed to improve Toomey or the "weight room" for decades, not Soch or Singleton. The FB / AD at Reno pushed big time for their advancements.

And now we have the Edwards Athletic Center. What will it do for recruiting? A lot of folks out there believe it will be a great success. I have no idea. Did it influence Larison? Tompkins? If it had any effect it was on their mothers I think. As Dads, we want our kids to win and win and win! Moms want their kids to be happy and live long and productive lives. Yes,and win too, but with a lot less emphasis on that. So my sense is that to really recruit well you have to sit down with the players parents and, yes, consider the value of the mother’s interest as well as the dads. Hawk and TT both seem like they are very good at this. From what little I know about them, Hawk might be a bit better that TT with the moms because he goes off topic so often. He is not totally focused on the athletic issues. Like Sochor he’s a bit of the renaissance man! Both guys very cool and at a party I would love them both.

It was not open when Larison and Tompkins signed on, they only saw the plans