I think the bye itself is the trap game because you are in essence playing yourself. It is as much a chance to get healthy and catch up on classes as it is to lose focus and intensity. On that free Saturday night are the guys going to hit the books, hit the gym, or hit the Tri-Delta house? Going back to the Biggs era teams sometimes come out of the bye flat.

ha i couldn’t put a number on it. It was before we had smartphones to tell us such things! But I’ve lived in Florida long enough that I need a sweatshirt below 70 now so my perspective may be warped.

I was at Cheney one of the first times we played Eastern, 2007-ish? Was a total fog-out. Couldn’t see the opposing sideline. A cutting wet cold.

Glad the curse is broken. Up by 3 scores with 5 minutes left and still biting my nails about a close game because in the past the Eagles found a way to just win in the 4th quarter. Vesperas is slippery for sure but not the way EB3 was. Thought it was interesting that Vesperas was bundled up ski wear while plenty on the sideline didn’t even have sweatshirts on. It was low 60s? If he’s cold now he ain’t gonna like late November in Cheney.

sounds to me like they need to schedule library downtime for the floors to be buffed and waxed during home games or something.

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.