I'm wondering if any of the 5 MWC schools that bolted are having some regrets about leaving? One advantage of grabbing someone like Sac, the PacX wouldn't have to help with large fees for leaving a conference. Apparently, Memphis would have to play $25M to leave the AAC; the PacX was willing to help to the tune of $2M. There were also some issues with the fact that the current Pac2 wanted a much bigger slice of the college playoff money, making it harder for a school bailing out to cover those costs.

to quote myself...what a mess.

SAC12 would benefit from a spell check. :lol:

Imagine UC Davis sending something like this out, nah, I can't imagine it either...it encourages fun.

Looks like something that would have come out of The Grad, sigh.

Maybe Sac doesn’t offer bone head english, lol.

Don’t they know that “the” has been copyrighted by The Ohio State University? Poor English is ubiquitous these days … and whoever does the UCD game notes is not a whole lot better.

That was prior to House settlement and is being revisited.

New this morning from Yahoo Sports:

While SEC and Big Ten leaders mull major changes, a new Super League concept looms that could radically alter college sports

https://sports.yahoo.com/while-sec-and-big-ten-leaders-mull-major-changes-a-new-super-league-concept-looms-that-could-radically-alter-college-sports-130031534.html

For reference, summing together the current B1G, SEC, ACC, XII and Notre Dame is a total of 69 schools (I assume some would not be included in this).

In my opinion, if this were to occur (where there’s smoke - and boatloads of money - there’s fire), this would significantly impact both the interest level and financial standing for a fair amount of FCS teams.

I always thought this was the correct approach for football. Let the other sports stay in their traditional, somewhat-geographic, conferences. Just admit the big time college football is only supportable by a select few.

The ruling yesterday about allowing schools to pay players (up to $23M) and for past athletes to seek payment really pushes this concept.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/41665307/settlement-designed-pay-college-athletes-gets-preliminary-approval

The novelty will wear off.

It’s okay, everyone - while Slack’s leadership plots their next move, the Chancellor will be on horseback before the game.

unfortunately, the NCAA has made changes since 2023 to make it much more difficult to move to FBS ($5M transition fee, 103 scholarship limit). But maybe between community funding of facilities and NIL, and a large increase in student fees, they can pull it off.

in 2022, Sac's athletic budget was $35M; the median in the MWC was $50. so, if they want to get to the median, they'd need to raise $15M (remember, this is before the increased scholarship limits). increases in tickets will help, let's say $6M from TV (wild guess), and $9M from increased student fees. that would only require an increase of $300 per student. I'm not sure that kind of increase would be embraced on the Davis campus.

Good point. I've cooled on my heated opinions from a few weeks ago. There was even talk of the DI fee repeal a year or two ago, so it would not be well received in Davis.

Idk, I would be down for a little extra tuition fee for athletics.

a $200 would be a tiny increase in overall fees (2%?) but it would lead to a very heated discussion.

It could really backfire.

How does this benefit our students really? It's all glory for the alums. I've watched the past few games and I see a lot of empty seats in that "sold out" stadium. I go to basketball games that are student ghost-towns.

Do we want to get into the NIL rat-hole? All the utter garbage that so many of us saw as the demon when we moved up to Div I. But it'll get the alums all happy.

UC Davis is an educational institution not a sports business. The whole business of sports and betting is forcing us into a non-sensical world. Move up so we get more money so we spend more money and look at what it does for sport on campus. That no one goes to except the athletes. What percent of the student body attend any games at all or even know the team records?

Who are you doing this for? The players. The fans. We've forgotten who we are and what we are supposed to be about. Not professional sports.

We had The Davis Way or such, the 8 principles when we moved to DI.

I've heard that Hawkins broke a few of those, one supposedly being not teaching classes. Teaching PE1 shouldn't be that difficult.

I agree some things seem topsy turvy. The Pavilion seems to be rarely used by students, and more by Campus Rec or such to generate business? Rec Hall is supposed to be for students!

We also seem to have a pretty flush ICA administration. I'm all for doing things well, but all of these assistant director of facilities (tickets), associate director of facilities (tickets), etc.

Move out of state y’all and see how nobody has heard of Davis, and then look at all the crap academic schools everyone is knowledgeable of because of athletics. Your diploma would instantly become more valuable.

I would say only if in the case of lame hiring people. Certainly in engineering, agricultural sciences, and faculty hiring at universities, there is no problem in name recognition.

I’m in the engineering field. Have to explain time and time again that Davis is in the same university system as Cal. Barf.

I guess the one good thing is that if Sac leaves, we will still have our second rival, Cal Poly unless they drop football. Could you imagine having our fixed rival being Portland State?

ive interviewed many Davis grads over my career; still waiting on a Kennesaw State grad to walk through the door!

Yes, but you’ve heard of Kennesaw State because of….?

The city of Sacramento spent hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent the worst team in the NBA from divorcing them. What’s another 50m to create one of the most irrelevant franchises in FBS to keep things interesting with #110 San Diego State. And probably still lose to Davis sometimes if they aren’t too chicken to play.

cuz San Jose kicked their butts and they are hailed as the prime example why the NCAA is making it harder to make the FBS jump. I don’t think job recruiters are tracking them and their valuable diplomas.

It’s true schools like Boise and Gonzaga got big boosts in applications and enrollment with their emphasis/success in athletes. I don’t think we need any help in either area.

As someone who works in an east coast city, the value does not only come in name recognition but networking opportunities. Every weekend FBS schools are hosting watch parties and univesities affiliated happy hours where alumni and interns network and yes land valuable jobs, some of which never even get posted. And to further that networking conferences, like the PAC12, Big 10, etc host conference wide happy hours that only further the networking and collaborations.

While we may not NEED boosts in applications, it certainly wouldn't hurt. Oh and Davis has one of the lowest enrollement rates in the UC system among accepted students. Improving the schools image and noterity could lend itself to a student choosing UCD over a UCSD or UCSB. It would really cement the school as the college town that it is trying to portray.

I say all this while recognizing, based on communications from Rocko, that this is unlikely. But at this point I'd say we are as likely to lose football entirely if this is not being further explored. If the school shared a vision and actually asked for money maybe they would get it. I have yet to receive an email asking me for a dime for athletics. If our alumni are so prestigious then we should have some business leaders with deep pockets, like Sac has been able to leverage by sharing a vision.

Perhaps there is a bit of chicken and egg in that before the alumni and community are going to support greater investment, the university needs to cultivate a relationship. I also live on the east coast, name recognition is not great but I do occasionally run into Aggie t-shirts. The overwhelming response is oh, I (or my kid) went there, loved living in Davis, but haven’t been involved since, got the shirt as a Christmas present. My dad went to Davis, I was Davis guy all the way growing up, and then the relationship went sour. I went on to grad school and they relentlessly called me for cash donations, when I explained that grad students don’t have a lot of income, the phone reps kind of callously suggested I put a $500 donation on a credit card and pay it off over time… I finally told them so wasn’t an ATM and to stop calling, and they did. Fast forward 15 years and now I am a subject matter expert in what I do at my company, have a good relationship with executives and I influence intern and FTE hiring. Still not an ATM, but would I meet with a high school senior considering Davis? Sure. Would I talk to a current student about career paths in my business or look over a resume? Sure. Would I consult with the university for free on my areas of expertise? Sure. Would I let a wayward Aggie have thanksgiving at my table? Of course. Having a sports team that garners a screen at the local sports bar helps provide a venue, but is not required for the university to help facilitate these relationships. But until the university gets over this idea that I’m exclusively a cash resource and they know best what to do with it, I’m afraid the bank is closed. My family funded a scholarship for while, thought it was weird we hadn’t gotten a thank you note in a while (not that that’s why funded it), came to find out the university had forgotten to even award it for a few years and was just taking our money. I know to some degree at least someone in Athletics half reads this board. If they were smart they would building profiles on the posters here as high propensity fans, to try to figure out why we follow athletics and others don’t. You’d think they would lean into it and someone from athletics or Buehler would private message people to engage them - even Comcast tries to PM you if you say something on their social media, positive or negative.

Growing up it was almost a meme before meme existed that UC Santa Cruz would always call us asking for my dad or his fellow alumni friends to give them money.

Thankfully UC Davis just spams my work email every few days which I never gave them permission to do.