I went to grad school in the south, where administrators kind of check their academic ethics at the door for P5 football. In some of my grad classes, we had a football player who had too many credits to be an undergrad. It was an open secret that the department had not "accepted" him, but it was some deal between the AD and provost, and the professors were obligated to give him a negotiated B- for work clearly done by his eye-candy personal tutor. He disappeared after football season (which amounted to a losing record unable to clinch even an obscure bowl game). A waste of state money for sure. But he also presumably filled a seat that someone qualified and interested may have been turned down for.

I'm not sure why Elon Musk doing the antigen test. It is not definitive, especially among asymptomatic people, compared to the more expensive and slower PCR test. Antigen tests have a place, like where you are testing a whole team every day and need to basically run a continuous sieve to determine who should get more scrutiny from the limited PCR resources, but Musk could buy his own whole PCR lab if he wanted so he wouldn't have to wait on results for 3 days like the rest of us.

Will be interesting to see if teams are their usual selves or if the change in season has thrown anyone off their game. Not an easy schedule, but at least the home/away dynamic is more or less in our favor temperature wise. While below average for sure, last year it was a high of 6 F on the mercury on Feb 27 in Bozeman.

, @NewGuy Interesting points on grad school but perhaps two key assumptions would be that a particular player would be accepted to a grad program (some have precious few competitive seats) and that the student would still have time for football on the side. I don't know how a football time commitment looks compared to being a TA, but I don't remember feeling like I had a lot of spare time my first year of grad school.

If the years were having a poker match, 2020 would be the player who had too much to drink and was driving up the bet with 1929, 1941, and 1968 while only holding a pair of 2s.

As a long distance Aggie fan, I miss how Scott Marsh marches forward with calling the play after DK makes one of his signature oddball remarks.

I like the classic look the best but I'm ok with names on the back. Hopefully will help identify players better when new guys take the field with some of the number sharing that happens. I think the alternate uniform craze is dumb, but has become part of the recruiting arms race with the side benefit of selling fan t-shirts for "theme" games (though I doubt you will see "blackout" and "whiteout" used as themes anymore because of how they sound). I think the alternate uniform thing is an unfortunate offspring of the Oregon / Nike lovefest.

I don't know much about baseball, but I will say that if you are thinking of a trip to the southeast, Oct-Dec is a beautiful time of year. I usually take a couple cross country flights a year on Southwest and I suppose I'm getting old because I look for Denver layovers. I appreciate a real bathroom halfway through!

Davis receives about 70k applicants a year. If one digs deep enough, there is probably some level of funny business around at least one, especially if the audit goes back to the Katehi years, so I wouldn't be surprised to make the news eventually. It's wrong and deserves to be rooted out everywhere. Probably exists at some level at every university in the country.

Yeah, Pablo Reguerin taking over SA - https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/uc-davis-chancellor-gary-s-may-selects-dr-pablo-reguerin-vice-chancellor-student-affairs . I guess he was announced in May and just took over recently. Comes from UC Santa Cruz and recently earned an EdD at UC Davis. Don't know much about him.

And I'm not saying SA should wink and nod to 50 kegs and some explosives being hauled up to Bixby 5, but calling the police over a 6 pack of Bud Light and a couple special brownies is an overreaction.

I really don't know why the divergence in some rankings lately. 15 years ago Davis, UCI, UCSB, UCSD were all neck and neck. I would think money is comparable among the four, so maybe it is because we are less selective due to fewer applicants than the others.

IMO, Student Affairs has a long history of disrespect, treating students as though they are there to serve the staff's needs rather than the staff existing to serve the students' needs. The Band bit was personal for me, but I don't think it's right that they profit off textbook sales, pick and choose who's free speech they censor, and threaten expulsion for sneaking a beer into the dorm. Interesting that Athletics started operating more smoothly when it was pulled from SA to report directly to the chancellor. VC Galindo was especially incompetent, but looks like she is retiring and a new Vice Chancellor started last week. I will try to give him a chance, but he needs to clean house at the director level.

I think we are high enough in the rankings that a big name would have to be unseated for us to move up and I think the methodologies pretty well ensure no major upsets because they rely so heavily on past reputation and money. I don't really think these rankings should mean all that much because so many of the things that make Davis great - unique college town, quirky coffee house, bicycle culture, etc. are not measured. But there are also ways in which Davis fails that are not measured. Setting aside administrative mismanagement of things like the student affairs office, all the money and prestige don't necessarily mean better undergraduate instruction. For example, I have it on good authority that if you are actually trying to learn the Chem 2 material, Sac City College instructors do a much better job. At Davis, you might get a renowned professor on paper, but he's too good to come to a lower division class and has his TAs teach, most of whom speak almost no English.

WSJ Methodology

• Resources/funding - 30%
• Engagement/student survey - 20%
• Outcomes (graduation rate, salary, debt) - 30%
• Academic reputation - 10%
• Diversity - 10%

US News Methodology

• Resources/funding - 30%
• Outcomes (graduation rate, social mobility, debt) - 40%
• Academic Reputation - 20%
• Selectivity - 7%
• Alumni giving - 3%

Seven figures is probably accurate. You can light a football field with 4 structures but baseball needs 6-8 for even coverage without blinding players. Lights used to be cheaper up front because maintenance was a separate annual contract. Now the business model is to include 25 years of maintenance in purchase price. Musco is just about the only reputable option, and they know it, so they don’t negotiate much on price.

Speaking of herd immunity, flu shots are now available if you haven’t gotten yours yet. Free with many insurance plans at your local pharmacy.

1. What you describe is the third prong of IX, when athletics can be disproportionate because you can quantitatively demonstrate you are meeting demand and the demand is not proportionate. This is probably the hardest prong to document and defend. I’m sure the modern interpretation of title IX is more extreme than the authors intended.

2. As I understand Dobbins was largely built by weekend volunteers, which couldn’t happen in today’s litigation world. I design and build these kind of facilities for a living. It is never cheaper to halfass it upfront and finish later. Some previous administrations have been professionally incompetent at managing capital projects, like when they tripped over their own feet all the way through the Aggie Stadium project setting cash on fire.

3. Not sure if Coach Swimley types exist at this level anymore. But women’s sports facilities do get a financial boost from Marya Welch, which funded the LaRue Field refurb.

4. Indeed we are fortunate to have the Pavilion, which opened 43 years ago. A modern facility that size would cost $100-150M today. Hopefully the new performance center turns out well.

so many Title IX problems would be solved if football was not considered in the equation or if women’s football was a viable endeavor.

Has a price tag or priority level ever been indicated for lighting Dobbins? I’ve done some Musco jobs and baseball is probably the most expensive to light. Not so bad at recreational light levels like 40-60 foot candles and 70% uniformity (number of bright or dark spots). Getting up to HDTV standards like 120 FC and 90%+ uniformity escalates dramatically. And LED requires uplighting in the outfield, which needs a waiver from dark sky laws. I’ve also had costs explode getting that kind of power to sites or dealing crazy wind or seismic requirements. From a facility standpoint, baseball is inefficient because the women’s equivalent (softball) requires a totally different type of facility - shame on whoever came up with that 100 years ago.

As far as private club atmosphere, you’re not wrong. Back in the day the Band-uh would occasionally turn up at obscure sports matches. I think soccer appreciated us, gymnastics less so.

Were you the emcee who was always rocking the plaid shorts and backwards hat?

Most public land grant universities of our size and prestige category have endowments between $1-3B. There are a few exceptions in the $4-10B range with a long history of donors. Many private schools have much larger endowments because they have been fundraising much longer. UCD didn't really kick endowment fundraising into high gear until the mid-2000s. Before the budget impasses of the Davis/Schwarzenegger years, state funding probably seemed more predictable. For future endowment building, I am aware that Mrak Hall is concerned that we have below average alumni engagement compared to similar universities and before the pandemic they were assembling a team to study this. Not coincidental that they cleaned house at the alumni association. I have my own hypotheses and I hope their study is revealing. The new guard at CAAA legitimately thinks the ticket to wider appeal is holding more Friday afternoon webinars about diversity and social justice.

To that Facebook poster-- while $1.6B is nothing to sneeze at, the annual report says that current year gifts and endowment income represent about 5% of UCD's revenue. Schools like Stanford or Harvard see 20-30% of their revenue from those sources. They also nab a great deal more money from federal grants and contracts than we do. We have similar expenditures to Stanford (and deliver 2x the degrees). We had a deficit last year but they and the ivies scored a surplus because of the bull market. Over the last 30 years, our philanthropic resources have not grown at the same rate that state funding has declined, so anyone who thinks there is a ton of discretionary cash sitting around would be mistaken. But even if we did have the cash, would it be a good ROI in terms of recruitment, revenue, or name recognition? Not likely in our market right now. Same for the Ivies. "I had never heard of Harvard until they bought their way to a semi-obscure bowl game, but now I might apply" said no one ever. But if you're South Alabama, investing heavily in peripherally-relevant FBS football may have reasonable ROI in their market. This isn't really directed at you DrMike, it's more just facepalm at that recurring thought line.

Sure, there are a couple of ways a gift can be structured. An endowment is a perpetual fund that gets invested by University money managers and a portion of the annual dividend/interest is distributed for the named cause each year. The current minimum is $50,000 to start one and it can come from one person or group of people who raise it and it can be increased over time. I believe they distribute about 5-7% a year and skim a percentage to fund the fundraising call center. So a $50k fund would distribute about $2500-3500 annually to the named cause. This keeps the fund healthy in down market years and lets it still grow a little over time in step with inflation. There are many named scholarships that distribute smaller amounts like this. To fully fund something like a coach or professor position, you would need a lot more capital. Generically, UC Davis has an endowment of $1.66 billion held by the UC Davis Foundation, but this is made up of hundreds of funds, some very specific and some general.

The alternative to an endowment gift is a current use fund gift. This is spent in its entirety the year it is given and could be one-time or recurring. For example, if you want to give $2500 every year, but don't have the $50k for an endowed fund, you sign an agreement to give $2500 per year for x number of years and the award ends when you stop giving. Again they skim a percentage, so you actually have to give like $2750 for the recipient to get $2500.

There are also a few capital funds for specific projects, like there's one to fundraise for Baseball batting tunnels.

If you go to give.ucdavis.edu and search "athletics," you will get a long list of funds you could donate to, some endowed and some current use. They don't advertise how much is in any one fund. I don't know how forthcoming Athletics would be if you asked, but I know on other funds the University is coy about their investment details.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is always fine print saying that your gift is irrevocable and the chancellor can redirect to other uses without your permission if they see fit. Not common, but happens. For example, there was an Aggie Band endowment that was pretty clear in that it could only be spent on a student-run band and if such a band ceased to exist, the alumni band would direct its use. When the Band-uh got burned down, the university stole the endowment funds for unintended uses and said the chancellor could unilaterally do whatever he wanted without recourse. After much fighting, the University made a "one time exception" to allow donors to redirect their donation to a different endowment but categorically refused refunds. Again, this is not a common situation, but I was insulted enough that I cut off donating to any endowment funds. If it concerns you that some chancellor in 20 years might co-opt your gift for something you disagree with and you have significant funds, you would need to form a private foundation to carry out your wishes. The University hates that idea by the way, since it takes control away from them.

As far as we actually know, it's just a hypothetical problem to which we have been batting around hypothetical outcomes. This is the only statement I have seen from Athletics:

"To mitigate the impact of COVID-19, we implemented aggressive cost-savings measures and minimized the impact on our student-athletes. We will continue working hard to generate donor support for all of our 25 varsity programs and position them for success when athletic events resume. If your financial situation allows, please consider making a gift today. Stay tuned for additional giving events coming this fall."