indeed I too feel bad for any collateral damage participants. New recruits have clearly done nothing wrong. We don’t know yet how many current participants are implicated, but could be a lot of innocent people there too. As for transferring, one- you’re probably not in great demand coming off a 40 loss season, two- how many schools are going to interested at least before the investigation is complete? When the details come out, it better be something severe that justifies all of those impacts to others. If it turns out to be unsubstantiated nonsense or something involving a couple of people that could have been handled over email, then the uninvolved parties will have a real right to be pissed.

As for what happens to the program, these are the options that were laid out in the band controversy and are probably the ones being considered here-
1. Probation, 2. Remove problem participants but otherwise status quo, 3. Reboot under new leadership, 4. One to four year hiatus to reset participant pool, 5. Cancellation. The university under May is into the “front porch ideology” that things like athletics can be a bridge to communities that wouldn’t otherwise interact with the university. In the case of the band, they opted to reboot instead of cancel because the lifetime positive contribution was too great. Does baseball have a relevant place on the front porch? That’s the real question. With the right leadership and financial investments, a W-L record or problem individuals can be solved. To wave the flag of surrender and say baseball is unfixable would seem kind of cowardly without having other strategic reasons. If it were cancelled or replaced, the current events might be a catalyst but I think the ultimate reason would be based on front porch relevance.

I’m not sure if Title IX cares if men’s sports are underrepresented. Pretty sure it’s a one way street the other way. But if baseball were to be replaced with something else, all the normal considerations would apply about facilities, opponents, etc. But I think they would look for a sport that is popular in the San Joaquin valley since the university in general wants to increase enrollment from that area. Not sure if truck pulls or destruction derby count as collegiate sports.

Things processed under guidance of Title IX can be very broad to encompass anything tangentially related to sex, gender, sexuality in education, not just participation levels. Something as benign as a “that’s what she said” joke told in the living room of your own home could be processed as harassment under title IX if the wrong person heard it.

Presuming that everyone on the team knows what led to this, somebody will leak the gist of it soon. It is also possible that some or most of the team does not know any more than we do. The main categories that have to be hush-hush are Title IX, education matters, or medical matters. Based on notes about safety and counseling, my speculation might be on the first one. Usually when it's ethics-related (like finances, recruiting, sportsmanship), or other bad behavior (like theft, vandalism, alcohol, hazing), the allegations aren't secret.

If the investigation around the band is any precedent, it took about 4 months. My speculation is that somebody was unsatisfied with how a complaint on one of this year's lighting rod topics (could be legitimate or nonsense) was being handled and was getting ready to go public. In this way, the University is managing the narrative to make themselves look proactive, rather than allowing accusations to run wild in the Bee and then react from the back foot. Whether the investigation is completed in-house or with an outside firm, it is important to recognize that evidence, truth, and justice are not really the goal. The real goal will be ordering parties from most to least likely to win damages or spread bad PR and identifying the least risky fall guy if needed. Sometimes this aligns with truth and justice. But not always.

Woof. Hate to see this kind of thing. Hopefully there will be a fair and fact-based investigation of the innocent-until-proven-guilty variety and any legitimate problems can be solved.

I was kind of curious about how bad the budget was this year. I can't find anything specific to athletics, but as a whole, the campus took a hit of about $200M. But it appears they have found ways to plug that, at least in the near term, by moving money around. The saving graces were that, to the surprise of many I think, the state budget and endowments did better than expected. There were several campus units that had to take out loans from reserves to cover their losses - specifically the Bookstore, TAPS, and Student Housing (personally I would have been fine had they laid off all the parking meter maids). For what it's worth, Athletics wasn't on the bailout request list so I wouldn't personally predict any program cuts based on money. But I have no inside knowledge.

It's like if you were you were trying to lose weight but all you did was cut out your daily bowl of ice cream. You might lose a lb. — Goags20172

Ha, I know that struggle. The doctor has been telling me to quit ice cream and soda for years. Neither of which is going to happen, lol.

Are you looking at Biggs' FCS record only? I think his lifetime was closer to 0.62, but heavily influenced by the run in the 90s. But here's another one for the list - Coach Gary Stewart (just the mention turns stomachs on the Hamilton Court thread) - 0.373. If there is any pattern, it seems the threshold of acceptability to past ADs has been a 0.4 minimum, with a sustained record below that resulting in staff changes. 2020-21 was a weird year, so I don't know if coaches will get a pass, but it wasn't good. To your point though, in the lifetime of current recruits, only 2 winning seasons, and neither recent. Chicken and egg problem where it's hard to recruit winners when you aren't a winning team and even harder to sell the "you can be part of the turnaround" pitch when everything in the program is static. I didn't realize how long Vaughn had been around... played 89-92 and became an assistant coach at UCD in 1993. That's actually kind of unusual by today's standards I think to not have had any interludes with other programs. If we believe the coach is the issue, is it the coach's skill (a la Gould), or the coach's culture (CGS) that is the problem? Perhaps the hard question is whether it's really the coach or some other x-factor that would hamper any coach.

@Goags20172 There was an opinion article in the Washington Post today about baseball rules. Basic assertion was that MLB games are getting longer with more time between plays, more strikeouts, and scoring becoming reliant on home runs due to back office stat coaching and pitches getting faster. The author suggests a correlation with dropping MLB attendance and that moving the mound, defining where infielders can stand, or a play clock between pitches might make the game more exciting to casual fans by bolstering offense activity. I'm curious your thoughts on those type of changes. And not that all pro rules filter down to collegiate and youth levels, but if something like a play clock did, how would that affect the game? I know there is a lot of attention at the youth levels of injuries to pitcher's shoulders. Would a play clock make those injuries worse or cause a seismic shift to some (safer?) winning strategy other than throwing at the speed of sound?

well then I suppose there are no easy answers. Organized crime is also involved the ice cream bar, tide pod, and diaper businesses, so I guess we can’t have anything nice. At any rate, if they’re going to have a cannabis major, hopefully they got a food science department too. Could make for a fun bake sale.

I’ve heard the same. I’m not an expert on the business but I’d assume the illegitimate operations will pop up as fast they are swatted until sanctioned commercial growers become efficient enough to beat them on price, quality, and consistency.

heh, the "Finn" in AggieFinn makes sense then. Here I had been assuming (for no reason in particular) that you might be into fishing.

I doubt that a proposed cannabis major would promote irresponsible use of weed any more than the beer and wine professors at Davis would suggest you get hammered on Natural Ice and Franzia every Thursday thru Sunday. Since weed demand isn’t going away, it seems reasonable to invest in at least shrinking its environmental impact.

I've never been to the SJ Giants facility so can't say much about it. Went to one game many years ago at (then) Raley Field. I remember it being pleasant for an evening game - a fun family atmosphere, good sightlines, and a decent BBQ on the berm. But I recall the "redcoats" they had running security and operations were obnoxious. They were also a problem for a few years at Toomey Field when Greg W hired them to replace students as ushers. I do think the placement of the stadium is odd. I guess it frames Tower Bridge from the press box, but it really kind of wastes the fact that it is waterfront property. A riverfront plaza would have made sense and maybe even a lagoon so the yacht crowd could sail to games. It followed an old trope that building a stadium in an impoverished or industrial area would revitalize the area and magically change the fortunes of nearby residents without displacing them. 20 years in and still waiting on those results. Build stadiums that host night games in neighborhoods where you would want to walk around at night. It appears Sutter Health recently bought the naming rights for an undisclosed sum probably in the $15-20M range as part of a national trend of hospitals and health systems getting involved in the sports business. Being a "non-profit" health system, I might have felt better about those millions going to lower medical bills or enhance patient care in a more direct way.

I guess I haven't been in 10 years, but I remember their breakfasts being on par with diner food while their dinners were above average. Hard to beat the price-to-portion ratio when you're a weary traveler looking for simple, but I'll agree it's not the best place for a steak. I share your opinion that too many restaurants are too frozen. I don't even go to places like Chilis anymore (unless Mrs. Fugawe pushes the issue for the chips and margaritas) because they literally hawk their frozen dinners in the grocery store and it's the same thing. It's kind of a sad state of affairs that it turns out food quality is not a great predictor of success for a restaurant, while location, parking, speed of service, and consistency are. Arguably the Super Bird sandwich at Denny's is not great, but it has been extremely consistent across thousands of restaurants over multiple decades and people like that. And when my boss declares optional (read: mandatory) happy hour, they pick a place based on ample parking and willingness to do split checks, not food quality. I have a Texas Roadhouse I could walk to from my house. Never been, I'll have to try it at some point.

Jurassic Park was far fetched in the 90s, though I think biotech is getting us closer, for better or worse. Just remember, nature always finds a way! I just looked at Black Bears website and it has become a big chain! I remember when it was just a handful of units mostly north of Sacramento. My only complaint about the Davis location is how busy it always is, for good reason. Tough to get a table on any sort of parents weekend. One of the few food spots in Davis that isn’t a pizza joint where I feel confident pronouncing all of the menu items.

Indeed land is a finite resource and the societal best use isn't always the most profitable use. While the campus probably isn't where I would have put it, it is what it is and I hope it can develop into something notable. I'm just not sure what its specialty is either academically or culturally. It's kind of just there. Maybe traditions and reputations were just easier to organically establish 100 years ago.

The land was owned by the Virginia Smith Trust, a charity providing college scholarships. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation donated $11M to UC to buy out the trust's land. The trust had operated a golf course on the part of the property where the University now sits. The original plan had been for 30,000 students and a neighboring village to be developed by the trust, but an endangered species was discovered on the property so development may be somewhat limited to the area previously disturbed by the golf course.

Yeah, I get wanting to increase accessibility to valley students (which, let's be real is academic-speak for wanting to increase Hispanic enrollment). I think Fresno or Bakersfield area would have made more sense, even if you put it in a suburb like Clovis in order to not share a name. But even choosing Merced, they bought property where there isn't really the opportunity for a "college town" to spring up adjacent to campus, nor is there good access to 99. I had a friend who went there when it first opened and it was a pretty lonely outpost when I visited. The locals welcomed the idea of a university, but weren't as keen on a bunch of traffic headed down quiet rural roads.

Not sure I understand the part about EDM festivals. I would put a decline in concerts and live events on college campuses into three main drivers - 1. University facilities haven't kept up with what promoters are looking for to make a show profitable in terms of venue size and equipment, 2. Universities have become difficult to deal with because of red tape and to some degree the thought police wanting to moderate the show's content, and 3. The average age of show-goers is now mid-30s instead of college students. Hard to say if this is due to changing tastes or just that show tickets have gotten too expensive for students. Either way, universities have become more squeamish about encouraging non-affiliates to visit campus because they can really only police behavior that is illegal, whereas on students they can enforce made-up things like principles of community codes in their internal kangaroo courts.

Merced just finished a new competition aquatic complex so I’d imagine swimming and water polo might be the next adds. I’d love more football in California because at that rate we leak players to other states there is clearly supply. But I don’t think the dollars will line up for that at Merced unless a billionaire type took it on as a vanity project - and so far they have cultivated the Gallo wine family as a major benefactor, so you never know. Not sure what the NAIA or D3 scene is but with zilch on the D2 stage the path to FCS is nonexistent not mention the title IX imbalance created for a small ICA program. You’d know better than me the baseball/softball scene. Not sure if demographics influence potential sports interest, but they differ from the other campuses in that it is substantially more Hispanic and has less than 1% out of state or international. They draw students roughly 25% from each of LA area, Bay Area, San Joaquin valley, and “other” parts of CA

UC Merced is an interesting study. Their gym is a joke for the size of the campus - again not necessarily because their athletics team commands a facility of size but because any campus designed for 10,000 students should have the ability to host an event (not necessarily athletic) with more than a couple hundred attendees. UC Merced is approaching parity with Eastern Washington and Montana in size, though is unlikely to ever have that kind of sports following. My two cents is that it was the wrong location because there is not much to make it a destination, nor is it really that close to the valley population centers. The perception is that it is the repository for people not accepted to the other campuses, a distinction I'm sure Riverside was pleased to shed.

A huge problem with really all state property is that it gets built with one-time bond money but then has insufficient funding for maintenance and operations so the facilities degrade until really expensive renovations are needed. Turns out that paint, carpet cleaning, and toilet paper aren't sexy sells in Sacramento. Case and point is that the Rec Pool at Davis had to be completely bulldozed and replaced because ordinary routine maintenance was deferred so long that it became unrepairable. An odd take from a university so concerned about the environment they don't allow candy in the stadium (due to plastic waste), when in real terms the construction and demolition of structures typically has a greater carbon footprint than the lifetime operation. UC Merced is trying a new concept where the campus facilities are a public-private partnership and they have contracted a private firm to build, operate, and maintain the facilities for the next 35 years. I guess we will have to wait and see the results, but I am by default skeptical of schemes that promise more for less while also delivering profits for investors.