The stadium, not the AST member.

I thought this topic might really get away from me if I brought it up in the thread about evaluating the athletic program.

I don't really share Bob Dunning's view on lights having a big impact on attendance at baseball games.
The students aren't in classes on the weekend and they still don't attend because it doesn't interest them. They would rather study or do internet things. Not a judgment, just a statement of fact. How do you get them interested ? If I knew that I'd be the commissioner of MLB, not some rando on a message board.

As for townies I think the location of the stadium is prohibitive. It's in a great location for students in Segundo/Primero/Tercero to walk on over, and I'm sure that was a factor in choosing the location. They see it when they ride past the Pavilion on the way to classes. However, it doesn't have visibility from the main road running by the campus and it's not near any major campus entrance. In other words UCD misses out on the spectators who would drive by and say, "Oh, a baseball field. I love baseball, I'll have to come back and see a game sometime " because it's tucked away underneath the Pavilion's shadow. You can't discount the visibilty factor. A lot of randos in Davis wouldn't even know UCD has a baseball team were it not for the hazing scandal, much less where the field is, if they didn't attend basketball games already.

Then there's the matter of the empty seats. The stadium seats 3,500, which well exceeds the reasonable expectation for how many people attend college baseball at most Northern CA colleges. I've even gone to a Stanford game and they weren't close to that. This isn't Texas. You're talking below 500 for most on avearage. Yes, there will be lots of empty seats. They had lofty expectations when they built the place, but the community interest is minimal so a crowd of even 1,000 is unreasonable except on maybe Picnic Day with free admission.

I also don't believe a lack of lights really hurts the recruiting so much as a lack of winning. The location of the university is another factor. You really have to love small community life to want to live in Davis year-round. Davis is not a destination city. Stuff closes early. Currently neither are the major cities it's near. Sacramento is just a nothing city that happens to be the state capitol and San Francisco is covered in needles and excrement at present.

So Davis is a great city, but if you're provided a similarly excellent opportunity somewhere more intersesting, say San Diego, where to go ?

So why are basketball and football able to recruit so well ? 1. They're not baseball. 2. There are fewer competing programs at D-I for football than baseball. 3. Basketball requires a smaller roster than either so the talent pool is pretty deep. 4. Football and basketball have actually established track records of being succesful.

And quite honestly Sac State doesn't have better athletic facilities than Davis for anything. Their baseball field has lights and a new video scoreboard. And I don't care for the scoreboard- the score is the hardest thing to see on the screen, like an afterthought. The seating structure is very basic and two local junior colleges have more visually appealing parks (like CRC with its brickwork). And then there are the restrooms, don't even get me started..