Thats because Schott, the former co-owner of the A's is a graduate of Santa Clara University :).

Have you ever noticed the Aggies don't often play non-conference weekend series against opponents within a few hours' drive, excluding tournaments ? (Sac State, CAL, San Francisco, St. Mary's, Santa Clara, San Jose State, Fresno State, Stanford, and Nevada- Reno...Pacific being the exception). SAC State will somewhat regularly do home- and home series with St. Mary's, San Francisco, sometimes SJSU.

My guess is that the explanation lies in a few things..

1) 6 of those teams fancy themselves playoff contenders most years + don't want to mess up their chances by losing a series to Davis. They have bigger fish to fry. Having said that Fresno State did just that in 2015. Stanford was swept in a two- game weekend series in 2006. Memorable because that Aggie team only won about 13 games.

2) Sac State doesn't play as many mid- week games. I believe they have to leave room for the ones they might play in the WAC tournament. I have it on good authority that UCD finalizes its mid- week games last, so they try to save those close road games for those dates.

3) They probably think it's a waste of money to stay overnight in the Bay Area. I can sympathize there. Try to get a hotel in San Francisco under $200 a night and see if your room has its own bathroom...or air conditioning..or a refrigerator. It's a real crapshoot. Santa Clara's more reasonable, but San Jose thinks that a $150 room at America's Best Value Inn isn't a contradiction for some reason.

Atleast those local teams will play us for midweek, but I think you are pretty spot on.

Most teams don't play non-conference weekend series with teams that are within a couple of hours because that's what midweek games are for in order to fill out the schedule. The exception usually ends up being the bye week in a conference schedule.

Here's a look at the other side of the coin in the conference, the teams down here and their weekend series against local opponents.

Fullerton - Long Beach (they play a non-conf series each year for tradition and attendance reasons), San Diego State (bye week)

Long Beach - Fullerton (see above)

Northridge - P'dine, USC (bye week)

Irvine - None

Riverside - None

UCSB - None

Cal Poly doesn't really fall into this category due to their location and the only "local" teams for them being Bakersfield (two midweek games) and Fresno (none this year). Their closest opponents for weekend series are Pacific (3 1/2 hour drive) and UCLA (3 hour drive, bye week). They H/A midweek games every year with Santa Clara (don't know what the connection is), P'dine (Larry Lee played there) and sometimes San Jose.