First to announce. Hopefully we can follow suit and we are an FBS package deal

Narrator: we won’t.

Well, if they really do have that kind of cash secured already, it would appear they are way ahead of us, especially if they are going to start renovations at the end of this season. Maybe next year they will have to rent Aggie Stadium for their home games, lol.

Teresa Gould was announced as the next commissioner of the PAC 12 on February 19th.

Given our shared history, and the status of that conference, we should have had an athletics forward planning task force set up on February 20th.

i don't see any mention of how they plan to accomodate a jump from 63 to 103 football scholarships and the corresponding jump in women's scholarships

That and the newly increased entry fee of $5 million. A new stadium is nice but continued elevated funding is the key. TV revenue can only add so much.

Rocko keeps hinting at a second deck in tweets. Maybe something is coming and he's not all smoke and mirrors. It would be pretty disappointing to see Sac move without us. I do wonder if there is enough of a media market to support two FBS teams 20 minutes from each other with Cal and Stanford just a bit further. Hopefully they didn't beat us to the punch.

entry fee is going to easily be paid for by the Conference.

I don't see this as a legitimate argument against moving to FBS. If UCD were to jump up at it's enrollment level it would be a top 30 FBS school by enrollment and Sac State would be a top 40 based on it's enrollment. Clearly 134 schools have figured out how to do this, most of which have smaller student enrollments and smaller alumni networks.

I’m trying to figure out what women’s sports we could possibly add to absorb that increase in scholarships. I think most FBS schools have nowhere near our 26 sports. There’s a reason we have equestrian and field hockey - have to balance title 9. I’m not sure how any FBS school is going to deal with 20 more women’s spots (granted scholarship limit for softball is jumping from 10 to 30). We’d be making a jump of 40 scholarships on each side

Or which mens sports might get cut.

might explain why Boise St and Colorado St have no baseball. Pac12 is pretty sparse in terms of baseball schools

They plan to have a plan but the reality is they have no money. They have done this multiple times over the years with stadium and arena ideas.

Very few programs even in the Power 4 are headed to 105. Davis getting to 85 is possible by increasing to the new caps at softball, w soccer, w hoops, etc.

you might even say a “concept of a plan”? Interesting press release. Says construction will start at the end of the season (so this year?) but no budget or renderings. Having been the project manager for a couple sports venues, this is not usually how it works. Typically as part of feasibility you identify a budget and hire an architect for conceptual design to make sure it’s grounded in reality and get some renderings, then move into schematic design, often with a different architect (where you will realize everything costs more than the bean counters estimated and redesign it). It’s common to start construction like this before schematic design is complete, but it’s October. If they think they will have shovels in the ground by December they should at least have 30% drawings at this point, so to still be “weeks” away from renderings or budget numbers from the conceptual stage doesn’t make sense. This is either not real or oddly managed. That said, Hornet Stadium is a dumpster and needs replacement. A functional steel frame stadium with some decorative cladding can go up much faster and cheaper than Aggie Stadium did.

Like Stanford's new stadium?

Would you have a ballpark estimate on a second tier of seating above the current student section? Say, an addition that's 5,000 seats, and 10,000? That would also likely include a modest concourse, snack bars (2), restrooms, and likely one elevator.

KCRA News covered Sac State's announcement to build a new stadium. The university said they have hired an architect but did not comment on the cost. They also said that the student fees that go toward athletics will increase from $181/year to $256/year and additional funds are expected to come from alums and corporate support.

Do they have a "concept of a plan"?

Kudos to Slack. They assembled financing to get to a certain threshold, then went public with a press conference to spur excitement and donations.

Meanwhile we are over here picking our noses gloating about 14,000 at the football game knowing it will be lucky to break 9,000 come November.

construction costs can be hard to say with so many variables. But here’s how I might suggest a rough order - adjusted for inflation, Aggie Stadium construction cost was about $4100 per seat in today’s dollars. If I pick a stadium built the same year, University of Central Florida built a 45,000 seat stadium for $1800 per seat in today’s dollar. Part of that is different labor market, part of it is construction method - UCF, like many in the southeast, has a steel frame like a Butler building with aluminum planking, and part of it is your cost per seat goes down the bigger you get because the cost of the field and other infrastructure doesn’t really change proportionally. If I split the difference, maybe a 10,000 seat steel frame upper level, if we said $3000 per seat, $30m? Possibly less if there’s existing design and someone is committed to value engineering, maybe a lot more you self impose rules on sustainability, minority contractors, art installations, etc - not saying those are wrong but they aren’t free. To move to the next level though, I think there would have to be an inclusion of skyboxes and a cabana section, which some Big Sky schools even have. Keep in mind it is substantially more expensive to do multistage expansions rather than doing it all at once because of the sunk costs every time you turn on a jobsite. Could be other considerations though, for example does a seat increase require more parking to be developed, or is it the expansion that “tips the scale” on campus needing a utility upgrade or the fire department needing some new piece of equipment. It’s not unusual at all in the outside world for non-revenue entities to try to pack these deals with pork for themselves.

Plough has said it would be 50M to move up. I’m not sure if that is for the stadium or inclusive of all the costs necessary, such as stadium and scholarships?

yeah idk what the basis is but $50m doesn’t sound unreasonable. What I do know is that projects like this are usually 20% more expensive than you think they will be and construction costs have tended to rise faster than overall inflation.

agree that 85 possible. But even the addition of 40+ scholarships (men/women) is about a $5M increase, I’d guess. Maybe TV money covers that?

If the Pac12 is serious about bring a contender in the power conferences it would seem they’d have to push for the 103 to compete with the ‘haves’ of the SEC and Big10. What a mess

Sac could be making a lot of noise. This is the same campus that added an MMA program recently, backed by their president.

In the past, the axiom was that an institution had to raise one-third of needed funds in the 'silent phase' before announcing a major fundraising drive. Maybe Rocko is lining up $15-20 million right now.

6

That viewpoint goes out the window when the chancellor opines publicly that athletics is the front porch to a university.

40,000 students. A $2B endowment. One of the top universities in the country. And nobody knows who we are, right PA?

8

Entitled might be a poor choice of words. This is our university, too. We all paid thousands of dollars to go there, and we continue to support the university, where some won’t give it a second thought.

Nobody attends UC Davis for sports unless you’re participating in one. It will take time, but if we build it, the students will come. The incoming class of 2026 might have 100 students coming to UC Davis solely based on athletics. Then, in 2027, we might get 200; that’s how a fan base is built.

We’re a top-10 public university. We need to start acting like it.

agreed Sac State needs to replace their stadium. What they have for a grandstand is basically rental fleet hardware designed to be in place for a couple years that has been abandoned in place for 30. If they hadn’t had a coaching turnaround that reignited interest, I don’t think their program would have survived the pandemic. Their longtime fans had given up. Personally, I think FCS suits us in many ways except the name recognition of the opponents. While Montana and NDSU are giants in their own mind, they are who-cares teams to the casual passerby in California. The risk I think is if either UCD or CSUS make a move to change the status quo, would the market still support two teams or does the early mover put the other out of business? You are correct that I don’t have the checkbook for the university to meaningfully check with me on their plans but I do know athletics reads this board to some degree to get a read on the community. If I buy a case of beans at Costco, the transaction is done and what Costco does next week is irrelevant to my case of beans. With universities, what they do next week could impact the perceived value of my degree or if I became someone important, I might impact the perceived prestige of the university. So while not enforceable, I think there is some level of social contract toward alumni engagement.

The risk I think is if either UCD or CSUS make a move to change the status quo, would the market still support two teams or does the early mover put the other out of business?

Bingo.

Funding is secured.