the Patel family. Different sons own properties under different company names but they are all related. The fact that rooms in Davis are more than a comparable room at Disneyland shows a supply imbalance. They stay full during the week with conferences and university business. A well run hotel with proximity to two freeways shouldn’t have any issues with revenue per available room night.

I think here’s the number problem—at every renovation the pavilion capacity goes down due to more handicapped spaces, wider fire escapes etc. Max capacity is down from 8000+ in the 80s to 5900. The graduation configuration seats 3500 spectators. At 6 tickets, that’s 580 graduates, at 4 it’s 875. If there are 7000 grads total, that’s the difference between 12 and 8 ceremonies. Most families are probably fine with the idea of 12 ceremonies spread over a several days, because who wants to listen to more than 500 names in ones sitting anyhow. It spreads the demand for parking, hotels, etc. However, the the chancellor has publicly stated he wants to dramatically cut the number of commencements for two reasons—he doesn’t want to sit through 8 or 12 ceremonies and they could afford a bigger name speaker if they are filling fewer speaker spots. I think the speaker bit is dumb because who remembers or cares who the speaker was… but he seems committed to the idea.

I’m pretty sure the university had already made their mind to go to Golden 1 before this survey. Is it good or bad? I’m not sure. But I will say, I don’t feel bad for the Davis hotels for one hot second. Almost all the hotels in town are owned by one extended family. They have used litigation and city council buddies to prevent anyone else from opening hotels to keep supply tight. $300+ per night w/ 2 night minimum stay for crap rooms during university events? No thanks, sorry I don’t have sympathy.

I’m hiring for janitors. $17/hr health/pension/union. If anybody wants to repost on the sac forum. Good role for a “general studies” major.

I’m assuming the numbers reported are tickets sold, not gate clicks. Curious what the redemption rate of tickets is because on TV we certainly didn’t look to be averaging 9000+. I’ve gone to games in the south. Students leave early there too if the game isn’t interesting. They are just usually in an end zone section so the cameras don’t catch it. Compared to the south (or Montana), Davis has low engagement from townies who are local but not alumni. Places like Baton Rouge, Tallahassee, Gainesville, etc come to a standstill on game day with everyone in town in the stadium (or partying in the parking lot if no ticket), or watching at a bar or house party.

Big Sky should should send Northern Colorado AD as the rep. Very little chance of a conflict of interest.

I hope the Sac grounds team has tightened all the bolts. Last time Hornet stadium had this kind of interest (2000-ish?), part of the upper deck collapsed. I think that might have also been the first time I saw some classy sac state gals backed up to the urinals in the mens room.

I think the refs undies must be too tight or something. Also Tompkins has a pretty good Michael Jackson impersonation.

maybe try the UC Davis box office in case that section was consigned to them.

Glad to have the steam engine back, but the whistle seems a bit sickly at least on tv. Somebody needs to get some coals on the fire and get her steamed up for real.

thanks for pointing out that “the 80’s” was 40 years ago. That hurt almost as much as when one of my employees told me his parents were my age.

Dan Hawkins’ haircut quality seems to be inversely related to his coaching quality. As the barbering has gotten better the scoring has gotten worse. Too much time at the salon maybe?

I did not realize either how much medical autonomy athletes sign away. Perhaps the military is the only other profession that gets away with that. I had wrongly assumed I suppose that team medical care was mostly focused on athletic related injury/prevention. I was surprised by how much coaches seem to be able to be involved in medical decision-making. While I think most UCD coaches have students best interest in mind, I wouldn’t say the same for Jim Harbaugh types. I know with my employees I have to expressly tell them not to talk to me about their medical conditions for liability reasons, that their doctor needs to talk to the company doctor and all I need to know is what accommodations are agreed upon. As far as what conversations and transportation are legal or not, there is so much untested in court from 1930s laws suddenly reawakening. But elite programs often skirt the law and get away with it when accountability would cost too much, for example Florida State and the team hookers hired by the boosters. All that said, the tone of the article and indeed the national conversation focuses on, shall we say, the Sunday morning regret for Saturday night’s indiscretion scenarios. But there are many other scenarios, ectopic pregnancies, partial miscarriage, infection, inducing a stillbirth, etc. that are really not “choice” related which now fall into a legal grey area.

I don’t have a WaPo subscription, but idk how much this will affect recruitment. FWIW, I think this concerns both men and women. My gut tells me 18yo recruits are likely still most motivated by the allure of playing time, success, campus amenities, and more recently NIL opportunities. Do some people choose states based on other things like restrictions around guns, alcohol, voting, cannabis, etc? Probably some, but probably not most. Probably Northern Colorado would be better and Weber would be worse if that were a big factor. I would venture that at the elite programs, there are boosters who will quietly provide transportation, whether it be a female athlete or male athlete’s girlfriend. Perhaps more complicated will be the inevitable schedule gymnastics of “can’t use university funds to travel to X state” declarations and pressure from both sides on where championships may be held that we saw with the bathroom bill saga.

I won’t debate EB3’s athleticism, but the NDSU matchup was probably the most NFL-like defense he ever faced. He was sacked 5 times and only led scoring drives in the first quarter. Scott Marsh loved to call him multifaceted, but IMO he was really a one trick pony, that trick being exploiting time dancing around in the backfield. His long ball isn’t that accurate especially when under pressure and when you have a corn fed defense that won’t let you take forever to develop a play, he’s out of tricks. In the NFL you can’t run backwards 30 yards and expect to have a positive yard play very often.

The real question is not how he ended up at Idaho State, but how he didn’t end up at EWU, given Aaron Best’s desire to have some thug life in his locker room.

In my era my favorite was always the script “Aggies” ripple bow at the end of Roll. Love the hand drawn shows. We also had some rudimentary software written by a bandsman in the 90s to help plot shows and print poop sheets. After the drum major created everything it could run a simulation for collisions and either declare the show as “sane” or “insane”

absolutely somebody needs to fired. Don’t know who, but total incompetence.

In reading more, the decision to move to the stadium was actually made well before the pandemic. The reasons stated by the university were fewer, larger ceremonies would allow them to procure bigger name speakers, the Pavilion was struggling to schedule everything with a growing number of ceremonies from the professional schools, and a larger venue would allow more tickets per student. The unstated reason was the chancellor having to give 9 addresses over 3 days.

While I appreciate the chancellor apologizing and accepting responsibility—the first time I’ve seen a UCD admin even partially own a mistake, it was ultimately inadequate and of questionable sincerity. Students are saying the communication about the Saturday (2nd) ceremony was conflicting and changing right up to the start of the ceremony, with mumblings from volunteers that the chaos campaign was intentional to dissuade people from coming so they could speed up the ceremony. Other students noted they were only allowed 4 tickets, instead of the 6+ typical at the pavilion. And others questioned how it was ever realistic to have a 2 hour ceremony with 2500 names when the Pavilion ceremonies lasted 2+ hours with only 700 names.

this is at least the 3rd if not 4th turf to go down is Aggie Stadium. It seems artificial turf actually has kind of a short lifetime (maybe the intense heat contributes?). If you factored all of the inputs, I’m kind of curious on the overall environmental impact of artificial turf vs well-managed Bermuda.

I didn’t realize it had been happening for 34 years. I guess it has been kind of a niche event not widely publicized. From what I gather there were a half dozen or so minority groups that held such events this year. I will say that I don’t really understand the purpose of these events, but unto each their own.

This sounds like a grade A fudge up, and one that was predictable for anyone who lived through the opening of Aggie Stadium. I can appreciate the challenges of the Pavilion, namely it has become too small for commencement unless you do at least 6 ceremonies (maybe a tough sell for the admins who have to go to all of them), plus add in makeups for 2020 and 2021 boosting numbers. I can also appreciate that some people, maybe grandparents especially, being apprehensive about being in a sold out indoor venue. If this was going to outdoors in June, it should have been under the lights. Or they should have rented Golden 1 Center for the capacity. Historically Davis has read names, but maybe it is time to consider other ways. For example, Stanford does a stadium ceremony with a kind of informal walk in, the speeches, and then they dismiss everyone to small stages setup all over campus on lawns and lecture halls where each department has a more intimate ceremony to read names. Also, maybe time to abandon commencement speakers. We may remember how long they talk but rarely what they say. As far as banning water, I’ve been to several UCD commencements and never remember smuggled booze being a problem. Sounds like a solution searching for a problem.