Good point, before they expanded the FCS playoffs a decade or so ago, a 7-4 season where they beat the two biggest rivals, including Sac after losing 3 straight games (and win first in Davis since Obama was president).

That's a great reminder. The NCAAF video games used to have goals in Dynasty mode. Certainly beating both rivals or at least Sac State would have been one.
Overall, a successful season.

The FCS playoff expansion has made the playoffs even more critical. It is even more so at the FBS level with those playoffs mattering more than anything else, even a big bowl game. That drives teams to Power 2 or 3 conferences to make money at the expense of rivalry games and tradition. As little as fifteen or twenty years ago, an 8 to 10 win season with a bowl win was a major success at all but the most blue blood schools.

Next year will be a rebuilding year because they lose 5 linebackers who played including all the starters who are all rare talents. Lose majority of offensive line, Parks, Povey, Ford. Will likely have a new QB. Many of the juniors are really four year players that may get on with their lives.

We beat Weber

Might be just hopeful thinking but could it be that these juniors come back to finally finish with a playoff spot or record season. I doubt LL or TT will portal. Plus we have some real talent coming next season. Am I whistling in the wind? Or thru the grave yard? Overall a good season for the Aggies.

All I know is, the Coaching Staff has to prepare every off-season for possible outcomes -- losing top talent and seniors will happen any year. They need to reload, if it's with recruited talent great, but no doubt they'll need to pick up the phone (and answer the phone), should Mikey Football wants to leave UCLA as the No. 6 LB and be a star in Davis playing a very high quality of football in the ultra-competitive Big Sky Conference.

Good point, Finn. In one of his pressers this year, Hawk said we don't use the portal much because so many of the players in the portal don't meet the transfer requirements necessary to get them into Davis.

It is not that they don’t meet the requirements. It is that their coursework doesn’t map to UC classes. Athletes have to make specified progress toward a degree, and if they took classes that don’t map to Davis classes they don’t get credit and don’t meet the progress requirement. A lot of schools offer vocational type classes that UC doesn’t.
However lower classmen don’t have as much of a problem with that. We had two sophomore transfers who started games, Shamburger who was a freshman standout at D3 Benedictine and Simonson who was at Nebraska but didn’t play.

I would like to share a perspective I’ve long had about being a fan. It seems to me that having placed team sports in the context of national championships has spoiled the original value of the core entity: the individual game. This UCD 2023 season illustrates the point. We were all enjoying the victory over arch-rival Sac State, but only for one day when that joy was ruined by not getting into the FCS playoffs. Maybe it goes too far to suggest that not getting into the playoffs spoiled the win, but I remember the days in the FWC when a simple victory in one game was enough to bring us joy, an upset over a major opponent would make the whole season and a conference title got the whole campus celebrating. Now it is not enough to win a game (and this is for every team sport at the pro and college levels) but your team has to get into the playoffs. For some teams, just getting into the playoffs is not enough, they have to win a national championship (which is why I’m glad I’m not an Alabama fan). On the other hand, for low level amateur athletes such as I was, just being able to play in one game was thrill enough and to win was the best natural high. Placing our sports into the context of national titles has ruined enjoyment of the sport for every fan except the ones who root for the final winner.

Great picture and great win. Need to savor the victory over our long-time rival slack state.

Great post, Toke. There's a lot of wisdom and truth in your post about competitive athletics at a lot of levels. Unfortunately, it's the American way where "bigger is always better and to the victor go the spoils."

We've all heard Hawkins talk about his philosophy that we all want to win and play for championships but, if winning is the only thing we're playing for and nothing else matters, then we're not playing sports for the right reasons and the valuable life lessons and skills that competitive sports can teach get lost. I totally get it and that's why I support him win or lose. His players are lucky to have as their coach too.

@Toke69 I agree. I think we've all lost perspective to some extent. This may be fun to others but I get the sense that we have a lot of perfectionists in our midst who love to analyze the crap out of what went wrong when we don't get the sports results we want. It can't just be for fun. Aside from fun what is even the point of non-participants watching and commenting on it ? Call it a result of being a science and research-driven school, but people are losing their **** over each play that doesn't go UCD's way.
Why ? Every mistake seemingly diminishes the perfection we expect from the student-athletes. As a reflection of ourselves perhaps ?

I've been guilty of the same over-analysis with baseball, even though playoffs are a pipe dream right now. No more. My post about the 2024 schedule is probably the last baseball post I'll do for the season barring an exciting development. Time to enjoy just being there and being outside while still hating the visiting fans who don't know their place.

Davis cracks the top-25 @ #25 in the STATS Poll, but is left out of the Coaches Poll. Weird activities by the coaches/committee.....

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/football/fcs/stats-perform-fcs-top-25

Sagarin FCS top 25. These rankings by the end of the season are just based on comparative scores, so there is no bias in them by the later half of the season.
Davis # 17.
Davis beat #13 Sac, #19 Weber and #22 Southern Utah, lost to #4 Montana.

https://www.college-sports-journal.com/college-sports-journal-sagarin-fcs-top-25-nov-18-3/

Sucks not getting the playoff chance, but it was a very competitive season across the Nation - and Davis was inconsistent of course early in the season, and had a hiccup losing #3 in the middle of the season, which eventually cost the Aggies two big games against EWU and NAU...but, I for one am stoked that Davis beat Sac - not only beat them, but beat them soundly. Conspiracy theorists may say Sac sat this QB or that QB, and didn't play starters as much and it wasn't a full effort - baloney, unless Sac is operating under very specific inside information that they were in as long as they didn't get blown out, I think Sac came to play and just got beat. You know, you take away that win at Stanford, Sac's resume is not that good...some competitive games @ Idaho and vs. Montana State, both losses, barely beating Northern Colorado, getting crushed by Montana, letting Cal Poly hang - then getting whooped by Davis, it makes you wonder what the committee saw that was so impressive with the Hornets - especially in losing a head-to-head with the Aggies.

I'm in total agreement with your take on the game. The simple fact is that the selection committee has literally screwed us two years in a row and it sucks big time! The only way we are going to get into the playoffs is to have a season record that is so good that it can't possibly be overlooked by the committee. I feel really sorry for the seniors who have played their last game. They deserved better...they earned it and were denied twice...

It's a numbers game, Southern, Midwest and Eastern coaches are over-represented

** MUST READ **

They must be getting some blowback.

406MTSPORTS: Big Sky Notebook: FCS playoff committee chair Kent Haslam sheds light on playoff selections

"The committee’s decision to select Sac State over UC Davis [their bold] came after “one of the deeper debates” the committee had during a selection process that lasted until about 1 a.m. Sunday, Haslam said. Sac State’s inclusion in the playoffs didn’t come entirely at the expense of Davis, he added. They were two of several 7-4 teams — along with some 8-3 teams — vying for the final at-large bids."

"But the comparisons are impossible to avoid because Davis beat Sac State 31-21 in Saturday’s Causeway Classic, giving both teams seven Division I wins.

“ 'It really came down to the path to seven wins,” Haslam said. “The committee felt like the path to seven wins for Sacramento was far more difficult than the path to seven wins for UC Davis.' "

"Sac State got rewarded for its first two wins of the season: at Nicholls (which earned the Southland Conference’s auto-bid into the FCS playoffs) and at Stanford (a Power 5 FBS team). The Hornets’ first three losses all came against seeded teams (Idaho, UM and MSU)."

"Davis, meanwhile, didn’t beat a ranked team until Saturday at home against Sac State. The Aggies lost to Oregon State (which plays in the Pac-12 like Stanford), UM and a pair of unranked teams: Northern Arizona and Eastern Washington. Davis didn’t face MSU or Idaho...."

" 'Had that Sac loss to Davis happened earlier in the year, I don’t know how that would’ve swayed whatever way it went.' "

Haslam here directly contradicts himself as he details three 'quality losses' for MSU! Two times he invokes Montana State.

" 'I've said before that you can’t have a resume full of quality losses. You’ve got to have some quality wins,” Haslam said. “Montana State’s win at Sacramento State, that’s a good win. And then you have three losses to teams that are seeded in the top four. Not a lot of schools can say that.' ..."

" 'Those things are discussed. They become real separation points,” Haslam said. “Each member of the committee represents a conference, and the responsibility of that committee member is to point out, ‘Hey, quarterback was missing,’ for example, or, ‘Running back got hurt.’ … You’re reminding people, ‘Look, Montana State’s inches away from beating South Dakota State and a field goal away from sending it into overtime against Idaho.’' "

Humm, the Aggies have both of those... league MVP out, leading to two heartbreaking losses.

https://406mtsports.com/college/big-sky-conference/montana-state-university/big-sky-football-fcs-playoffs-haslam/article_fc021a4c-87e6-11ee-a83f-b390ada94c5f.html

Weber was ranked #22 when Davis beat them (right?). So there was a ranked win.

They just don't like Davis for whatever reason....

Is the committee member comparing the current state of Stanford football (very low) to the current state of Oregon State football (peaking)?

The coaches poll is one of the criteria. If a team disappoints early, then its hard to get into or advance in the list because the teams in the polls are usually losing to each other and those losses don’t have much effect on the rankings, because the loss is discounted because its to a highly ranked team. I don’t think it is anti Davis bias, it is hard to climb back into the rankings beating unranked teams, by not eye popping margins. Even the Sac score wasn’t something that would cause a major reassessment, Sac being #15. If the second half of the Sac game had duplicated the first maybe.34-0 would have done it.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

First round games Saturday, November 25:

Sac State @ North Dakota - 10 am
North Carolina Central @ Richmond - 11 am
Lafayette @ Delaware - 11 am
Chattanooga @ Austin Peay - 12 noon
Nicholls State @ Southern Illinois - 12 noon
Gardner-Webb @ Mercer - 12 noon
Drake @ North Dakota State - 12:30 pm
Duquesne @ Youngstown State - 2 pm

From the Montana State board - a lighter note

https://bobcatnation.com/bobcatbb/viewtopic.php?t=53298#p846006

Are we hoping Sac gets crushed so we get a helping of schadenfreude?

Well, I have mixed feelings. I like to see the Big Sky do well and, if Sac beats ND, then it makes the Aggies win over the Hornets look even better and makes the committee look even more wrong for leaving the Ags out for the second straight year.

…or justifies selecting Sac if they win … or makes it look like they should have selected Davis over Sac if Sac loses. Endless mental possibilities. I have mixed feelings too, but would not turn down a heaping serving of schadenfreude.

Holding my nose to root for our Big Sky rivals. Want to see the MVFC taken down a notch

Six playoff births?