first time I saw it too. I guess name plates are out but stickers are in? FSU helmets have more stickers than the back of a VW microbus.

dropping football might be a little extreme unless the Big Sky and any remaining FCS fell apart without the resources for FBS.

@DrMike no doubt the phone calls work on someone or they wouldn’t make them. My point is that many recent grads aren’t in a position to be donors yet while they are doing grad school, buying a house, starting a family. But if there was an effort to engage people and ask for contributions of time or skill, there may be a whole untapped market of monetary donors who start to have that capacity as they get established in their careers. Idk what their donor acquisition cost is, but it’s almost always cheaper to keep a customer than find a new one.

I used to fly back for Picnic Day and homecoming most years. But the last conversation I had with a UCD employee was on Picnic Day a few years ago getting hustled out the MU by some jackwagon in a blue polo saying the public restrooms are not for Picnic Day and I will need to use the overflowing portolet outside. So basically, give us money but you’re not worth 1.2 gallons of water and a couple feet of toilet paper, now take your dump outside like an animal. Kind of insulting. Now certainly you can buy respect, with the right donation, you’ll be invited to the club room, the coach will pretend to recognize you, and you’ll be served Sodexo’s finest selection of industrial cheese paired with an $8 bottle of wine disguised by a cloth napkin. Meh, I think I’ll just watch on ESPN and buy my own cheese. My point being that while the P5 schools invest heavily in the high rollers, they do actually try harder to show respect to fans of all levels. Never know who the next high roller might be. If you’re not an insider, the career staff at UCD, not specific to athletics necessarily, are often hostile to the public.

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.

I always want to beat Poly and Suc but didn’t a wise coach once say they have to win once in a while for it to remain a rivalry? Saving money on team photography for sure.

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.

Stanford stadium was a more complex project for sure but it also had a detailed plan and work sequence to get done. I can guarantee it wasn’t a just concept at two months out. Hornet Stadium should go quick, you could probably bump it with pickup truck and it will collapse. State projects have a lot of self-imposed red tape, and some amount of this is good to make sure someone is being fiduciary for the taxpayers. Sometimes it is necessary to slow walk projects as well because bond disbursements may be quarter by quarter.

As I understand from someone who used to work there, the bookstore doesn’t really “design” apparel, there are various purveyors with catalogs of stock designs that sub whatever university. MV Sport is a big one they use. Same basic sweatshirt branded to dozens of universities, so they may not have great incentive to invent new styles. At one time, not sure if they still do, they could do some shirt printing in house but only for “event” type shirts like Picnic Day that didn’t interfere with license deals. Many universities have contracted operation of their bookstores out to BN or Follett (as Poly has). Some of the styles are online-only, so I wonder if Follett’s national economy of scale gets them more variety from the purveyors. UCD mostly operates the bookstore themselves, though I think Follett is involved in the textbook business. I think historically different campus entities made some of their own interesting shirts but in the 2010s everything related to cash handling was consolidated under the “UCD Stores” umbrella, it’s even where you pay for ARC memberships and replacement ID cards now. While the new bookstore is beautiful, my opinion is the merchandise became kind of bland.

If the $35m is for NIL, then that’s not construction dollars for facilities. And it’s probably pledged dollars with contingencies, not unrestricted cash in hand

A basic 25,000 stadium maybe $50m reusing some infrastructure. But the concept art is easily $100m+. The proposed rail yards soccer stadium is clocking $220m so I think Im giving the benefit of conservative numbers when we throw around words like state of the art. The thing is, 25k seats is still at the low end for FBS, especially PAC. I’m surprised they aren’t selling it as 25k, expandable to 45k, which would make it more of landmark for the Sacramento valley. In the interview, Orr said the current stadium would be torn down after this season and the architects would figure out where they play in the interim if needed before a new stadium is built. To me sounds like the current structure is condemned and they are throwing together a plan. It may come together, but this isn’t how these things are usually done. Wait until the environmental impact report. For a tribe to be interested, they may have an angle beyond the stadium getting mentioned on Good Day Sacramento now and again… maybe a named bowl game or something to do with sports betting.

All this talk of multi-use stadiums. Soccer doesn’t have a set field size but high levels of play want to be significantly wider than a football field. No mention if the track is in or out, though Hornet Stadium is probably one of biggest track venues in Northern California and idk if it was in play for the lead up to LA Olympics.

Sac averages 12,000 a game when they are good. It was like 6,000 when they were bad. Averages are thrown off when the Griz or Aggies pack the place. Not saying we have the gas to do any better but this kind of sounds like striving to be San Jose State.

Idaho state 41 over CP 38 on a field goal in the final second.

@CA Forever Portland State, something about a watertight crate.

I think the main argument for artificial turf comes down to it looks nicer and short term holds up better in extreme weather. It’s not the environmental wonder the manufacturers claim. It is not water or maintenance free, still has to be rinsed and repaired. It is mostly made of dinosaur juice and has a finite number of uses before it must be thrown away and replaced. In my area in the southeast, high schools use artificial but most universities use Tifway 419, Celebration, or Latitude Bermuda. When I was managing multi use fields, we used natural turf because we could adjust the “speed” of the grass based on height/method of mowing, application timing of water, etc. At elite levels, soccer, field hockey, and lacrosse have different requirements. For example the German national soccer team has requirements to the millimeter, and I had the equipment and the guys who could do it. But it requires downtime for grass to grow between use cases. Artificial is a one-size-fits-all when you lack that kind of expertise or grow time. Football is the least prissy of the sports about grass.

the elephant in the room - football isn’t broadly popular with Asian American females. Football, and the game day alumni experience, historically appeal to what are shrinking demographics at UCD.

well at least 20 years ago the adjacent park was sketchy at night. But the parking lot at Hornet Stadium wasn’t great at night either.

Been to Hughes a few times for Causeway games. Such a nice neighborhood for a night game.

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.

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.

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.

Tube sock madness
Burrito madness
Steve’s Place Pizza madness
Aggie Pack “characters”
Integration between Aggie Pack, Band, Cheer team, Dance team and the video operator.

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.

planned or not I find the current uniforms ugly and of inappropriate quality for a D1 school. But that’s just my opinion.

True, before 2019 the band’s student run status had already been substantially eroded because it didn’t fit Campus Rec’s business model. Their expertise was in intramural sports and playing guitars around campfires. It was never a good administrative fit after SPAC was consolidated.

Promise I’m not a blow hard but I enjoy research. If you ever need a good bathroom read the full report on the matter describes just what I say. If you need a longer bathroom read, check out the full document regarding the Ohio State Band… here’s what you will find— the law firm UCD hired more or less plagiarized the OSU document, with the exception the conclusion. OSU found their Student Affairs executives liable for failed leadership, fired them, and doubled down on engaging their alumni. That wouldn’t work for Davis, because the law firm they hired was personal friends of the vice chancellor for student affairs. Or shall I say “interim” VC. See, if you research her, Emily Galindo didn’t actually have the required qualifications to be named full VC, but she was an interim DEI promotion at an appropriate political moment. Her lifetime state pension is based on her highest 3 years and VC pay was like double her previous role. The band nonsense popped when she was about 2 years into VC pay. She desperately wanted to sweep it under the rug until she retired but when the Bee wouldn’t let it go, she realized she needed any scapegoat she could find to avoid a forced early retirement that would cost her potentially millions in lifetime pension benefits. She retired a few days after her 3 year mark with maximum benefits.

@LeFan
But setting aside anything band specific, it is an overall tenor at UCD to always deflect fault, obscure incompetence, and only wishing to engage the community in a curated way. I’ve been involved with other universities and companies that when there is a screw up, there is an apology, engagement, transparency, and then there is an executive held accountable. For all the talk of character and principles of community, the university lacked the moral fiber to even ever fully own the Katehi saga. Marketing research notes that people most loyal to a brand often mention the word “love” and that it’s easier to feel love toward brands that seem personal and human. And I think that reflects in the lack of energy at games… I would venture that most of the people who would use the word love will say they love the nostalgia of what UCD was 20-50 years ago. But I think the modern university is comparatively cold and mechanical… and that’s much harder to get people to fall in love with.