did Gould’s game plan really require a good QB? Wasn’t it basically hope for a short field, then run/run/pass for less than a first down, and then either try to boom a 3-pointer from midfield or punt?

You know what, you’re right. My initial gripe was how I dislike how the university spends their money and who benefits. But I also dislike how they go about raising it. I remember when I was a grad student scraping by as a TA they used to call me monthly asking for $500-$1000 for the Chancellors fund and when I said I was a grad student, they suggested I donate with a credit card so I could pay it off over time. As if that was good financial advice. It’s interesting, the university I got my grad degree from calls me about once a year, mainly to see what I’m doing professionally because they may have undergrads looking for career contacts. The donation pitch was more like, if you have time take a look at our website. I was actually taken aback that I didn’t have to say no 5 times and hang up on them. Give Day is noted for the “challenge gifts” which it’s great if a company wants to donate $10k. But at the same time shame on them for predicating it on getting 50 other people to donate $5. If you have $10k to give, do it humbly and don’t make it a carnival game.

that’s an unfortunate story about Dobbins. I’m all for diversity/equity/inclusion but I have really had it with the breed of university activists that cannot articulate what justice they seek other than blocking anyone else from having anything nice.

in fact so “not good” you might even call him “befuddled”

All excellent points. It does seem like we cleaned up some of the "dumb" 5-yd penalties (off sides, false start, delay) from last year, but still got nailed with 15 yarders when it really counted. Third down conversion and red zone/score ratio not great, fourth down conversion downright bad. Serious question, do we have a team statistician giving input on critical play calls? This is a thing in the NFL and seems like a very Davis thing to do to go enlist a math nerd.

I tuned into EWU/Idaho in the 3rd quarter. Not sure what was going on with Idaho. A non-QB was playing QB and basically wildcat every play, only a couple passes in the whole game. The amazing part was they had Eastern on the ropes until a critical penalty resuscitated a 4th quarter Eastern drive.

kung fu ménage a trois?This would be enough to throw a gender and ethnic studies professor into an outraged fit, lol.

I don't think it has to be chain link. A printed scrim would be fairly economic at this point and they last about 6 months. I'm not sure why the original designer didn't shift the adjacent planter bed over a bit. The equipment could have been hidden in plain sight with a hedge and some green paint.

IDK if the venue makes a ton of money off renting to concerts, but it is good promotion of the university name in the metro area if a pop star appearance is being constantly advertised on the radio. Right now for an endstage 180 setup the Pavilion is viable for 4-5k. If you're a promoter that wants this capacity, does this make sense considering most of the seats have no back, the electrical and rigging capabilities are below par, no truck bay, a box office committed to Paciolan ticketing instead of Ticketmaster, and you gotta deal with Aggie Hosts and TAPS red tape? Memorial Auditorium is similar capacity with less friction. There is probably a market for 8-10k shows that wouldn't be viable at Golden 1 Center. And if you are serious about selling corporate suites, you need a mix of non-athletic events where that first right of refusal on desirable show tickets adds value. That said, athletics are the main reason for having an arena and the Pavilion is fun when it's full (I think more fun prior to the last renovation). I remember the Davis-Stanford game circa 2006; place was filled to the rafters and rocking.

THAT is an eyesore. If I peeked over the fence in person I might have a better idea, but from aerial photos it looks like maybe a sewer lift station or water booster pump. Pre-2003 aerials are blurry, but it may have pre-dated the ARC when it wouldn't have been so front and center. With enough money you can move infrastructure, but a different landscape design could have mitigated it better at a reasonable cost.

the best analogy to targeting calls is airport security - vague, broad rules with wildly different application day to day and crew to crew, a high incidence of false positives yet paradoxically still missing a lot of instances, appearances of quotas to be met, and serious questions as to whether the point is actually safety or the theatrics of perceived safety. The egregious/malicious instances of targeting should be painfully obvious to the zebras on the field. This one was apparently so marginal that nobody on the field saw it and it took the booth 5 minutes to review. The piece that doesn’t make sense is that it was simultaneously apparently so obvious to the booth that he was compelled to call the penalty - which I wasn’t aware the booth could even do in FCS. If we are saying the booth can call penalties in the name of safety, is every play going to be reviewed post-mortem for potential missed violations? Who exactly is “the booth?” Is it one person or more than one? Are they sequestered or can Big Sky reps or others come breathe over their shoulder? Kind of wonder if this ref consultant had access to pressure the call on this one and if that is ethical. I think any reasonable person would acknowledge that the debate was really not about whether this was substantially the most dangerous contact of the game (I really doubt it was), this was about academically whether the contact inched over the arbitrary red line of this rule. It was akin to the TSA bull rushing an old lady because her knitting needles are a quarter of an inch too long for spec.

I don't know for sure, but I've gotten the sense that Campus Rec may "own" the Pavilion with ICA as a "tenant". But I could be wrong. The subdividing net would be in the way of a cube unless one or the other was off-centered. The net made sense when the building had wall-to-wall maple, but with the modern portable floor setup, you have to pull the floor to deploy the net. Not a 5-minute changeover, so I'm not sure how much value it provides. Curtains to mask the upper level from lower would seem more useful. It could make economic sense to replace some of the mezzanine chairs with cushy seats and develop a club room somewhere in the building as sort of a "caulk and paint make it what it ain't" faux luxury. But a wholesale reworking of the upper level probably wouldn't have a good cost/benefit equation vs purpose building something new. Regardless, new or old, the biggest ongoing problem I see with facilities across campus is a totally inadequate operations and maintenance budget where basic cleaning, repairs, and routine replacement schedules are ignored until they become substantial failures. I hate seeing new and refurbished spaces that I know won't be kept painted and polished.

Agreed basketball is unlikely to crest 6000 on any regular basis, but commencement and Doxie Derby do. It's not ideal for show promoters because 6000 is too big for an intimate show and too small for mid-range tours. But the lack of luxury may eventually become a problem if we grow our highroller base. I've been to the corporate box suite a couple times -- it's real nice and I can see how the regulars in that world don't want to sit on bleachers with the rest of us (mainly because they're busy to drinking and doing business rather than watching the game). Pipe dream perhaps, but naming rights are a step in that direction and if Rocko sticks around, based on his background I bet there's more to come.

In the meantime, we are all eligible to join a new credit union now. Rates and fees seem decent and they offer a partial rebate on closing costs if anyone is in the market for such things.

While I have no involvement with UCD, I do design arenas and stadiums for a living so I can posit some (longwinded) hypothesis here-- when the last renovation was done ~10 years ago, the seats were changed to push against the back wall. The also raised the front row so you can see over people walking (standing) on the concourse. The gaps in the seats are for the fire exits that were always there, but they likely got nailed on a change in the fire code. In the 1970s, it was calculated simply as inches of exit space to number of occupants. More recently, you have to consider path of travel, path distance and intermediary pinch points. Likely the concourse wasn't wide enough and the corner exits were too far away from the center seating sections. To make up for the loss of seats, they absolutely should have considered seats for the fourth side. But at the time, the MU was being gutted and there was a temporary textbook store setup there, not to mention average attendance for basketball probably doesn't fill out the demand quotient.

As to the new video board, not ideal for a court sport and sort of precludes viable bleachers on that fourth side. My guess is twofold as to why no center cube. Floor to low steel at center court is listed as 51'. This would be marginal to fit a cube because the accepted minimum safe clearance is 35' to floor. Anything lower becomes dangerous for gymnasts and cheerleaders, not to mention sightline issues from the other end bleachers when configured for an endstage concert or graduation. Modern arenas design their cubes so they can be hoisted into the space between the low and high steel of the roof truss when not in use, but not sure that clear void exists here. The other issue may be that according to the promoter guide there are no permanent hang points (engineered eyelets welded to structural steel) and the load capacity is only 2000lbs per beam section. This is really low by modern standards. A wide screen can distribute the load across multiple beam sections, but a cube may have been too concentrated of a load. Those kind of video screens are fundamentally just a collection of ~12"x12" modules that can be reassembled in any shape and I have done jobs where the venue can reassemble a video wall as a cube, it just takes time and is likely not practical for the level of inhouse technical expertise (or not) that the ARC has. Why on earth they continue to go with Daktronics for video boards is beyond me. They used to be the market leader for quality and service, but they just aren't anymore. The Asian manufacturers have a better product for less than half the cost. Daktronics also purposely changes the size of their modules about every 5 years, fundamentally making repair impossible after that designed obsolescence date unless you hoard spare parts.

I hope new lighting is in scope. Metal halide and fluorescent are pretty antiquated these days. If you are listening, Rocko, PM me if you want advice - Musco has a great product and superior planning services. But Ephesus has some cool features like color correction and DMX universe integration that could really improve the fan experience.

Rec Hall/Pavilion was a really forward thinking design for the 1970s. As life has progressed, sharing a facility between spectator events, career fairs, and recreation uses has become less of a great idea as all of those uses now demand more specialization. At a certain point it is just cheaper to build an arena and an expo hall rather than try to make a transformer building that does both to the satisfaction of the fire marshal. If, over the 10 years of this naming agreement ICA can generate demand for more seats and luxury boxes, I wouldn't be surprised to see a drive for a newer facility. The current one will be over 50 years old by then.

@agalum: Question- on TV, the UCD Marching Band sounded god awful. Was it that bad in real life? They haven’t been close to good since the real Band-uh was murdered, but what I heard on TV was a new low if it was at all representative.

Second that. After the crocodile tear show last time, I’d love to see doughnut boy cry for real. Such a poor sport with a clouded moral compass on and off the field.

Absolutely correct that production value and fan comfort lead to better crowds. I was involved in a MLB spring training stadium. The brutal midweek noon games would be a quarter house at best, mostly retirees, some day-drinkers there for the season beer mug promo, and the skeezy autograph hunters that always reeked of old cigars (probably not an issue in college). Giveaways and entertainment couldn't keep people in their miserable south facing seats. Our two contracted Saturday night games with fireworks would be sold out packed to the walls with young families who actually watched. Though that's where we had injuries because that crowd isn't expecting foul balls and even wayward bats getting launched into the stands.

FWIW, Poly's maximum units work different than ours. Rather than a 225 max, their rule is no more than 24 units above the scripted major requirements. Most majors are around 180 units, so that puts their max closer to 204 in a lot of cases and their regular registrar policies are pretty militant about pushing people out in four years on the dot, so it would seem 5-year athletes already require some creative engineering. But I think we may be reading too much into this, the comment was probably just coachspeak cover.

things may be more complex than my understanding as I don’t claim expertise. But to your point I don’t think we have that many graduating seniors right this minute. If we did, and the coaches felt a spring educational leave was strategic, just simply not winning this week would be easier politics than making playoffs and abdicating. But I’m not predisposed to believe that level of conspiracy would ever exist.

its a free year of eligibility for NCAA purposes but several UCD colleges have a lifetime limit of 225 undergraduate units. Since a lot of athletes are already on a 5 year plan, anyone who has been taking more than 12-14 units per quarter all along may not have enough units left before hitting the ceiling to get a 16th quarter in the fall. Options might be to graduate as planned in the spring as if COVID hadn’t happened, take an educational leave for spring and graduate in fall, get a special dispensation from the dean and chancellor, or- unlikely at UCD but common in P5 programs - enroll the student as a “grad student” with no intention of earning said grad degree. Not sure how many players this affects for us or how much strategizing is going into maneuvering things past 2021.

My opinion is it doesn’t seem like the Aggie way to “quit” on this season when for so long we’ve been the anybody/anytime/anywhere competitor, but idk what strategies are being talked.

I get what you are saying. Slightly off topic, I had to lookup Olympic softball to see if it's even a thing. It was introduced in 1996, then cancelled after 2008. The conversation seemed to be that USA was too dominant, followed by Japan and Australia leading to medal count politics in Europe. It is back for 2020 (2021) in Tokyo, but I guess is on the "optional sport" list and Paris 2024 has voted not to include it. Will be back in 2028 in Los Angeles.

HA, if this was real it makes it sound like we should dispatch Tulsa in the fall.