I doubt Sudwerk is totally parting ways because they don’t really compete with Coors. Perhaps they are considering domestic and craft as separate categories. Kind of interesting this is on the athletics side because on the academic side Anheuser Busch sponsored a building. Everyone’s money is green.

Hawkins said they focused on fundamentals

If I had nickel for every post game interview in the history of sports that mentioned “fundamentals” or “execution.”

I knew Crookston sounded familiar… former vice chancellor of student affairs Fred Wood went there as their chancellor some years ago.

hello and welcome! I believe in the 15+ year history of this (and the predecessor) board, you are the first staff person identify yourself, though I’m sure there have been plenty of lurkers. Nice to have you here! My connection to athletics, I’ve been going to Aggie football games since before I could talk, spent four years in the Aggie Band-uh back when we travelled to every single away game (the real band, not this new (sorry) Midwest high school knockoff band), and now I’m a fan from the eastern time zone.

The culture at UC Davis has historically been kind of simple and folksy but aged just to a fine maturity. Back along about 2007, Athletics and the university as a whole decided they were going to go with this “we’re big time now” persona—and it never really worked in the “is that your father’s suit jacket?” kind of way. And while they were busy doing whatever “big time things” they were doing, were sort of late to the party on social media (or even keeping the website up to date). To me the “voice” on social media has been like following IBM or Pfizer—not super timely, odd forced jokes, the appearance that every photo of students is staged and perfectly balanced with one of every race and gender and posts tend to just be announcements, not interactions (and comments get censored). There’s something to be said for the way Wendy’s and Universal Studios engage with people online.

When I think about the ESPN+ coverage, it’s weird they there’s no pregame/postgame show. We just jump in (if we’re lucky, sometimes due to technical issues we kiss a minute of the game. We can also sometimes hear the talent when they they think they are off the air and aren’t). And at the end they rush off the air like the sopranos are coming on… but it’s a stream, there is no other show starting. Back in the days when it was radio only—KHTK and KDVS, there was meaningful pre and post commentary.

As far as student interest and engagement, there’s the elephant in the room—as the university population has become more female and more Asian/Asian American, interest in athletics has dropped. I guess nobody has figured out how to make it relevant to some groups. That said, back in the 90s and 2000s there was more spirit. For example the Aggie Pack didn’t just have an emcee, there were “characters” that were part of an ongoing skit all season long and sometimes they would get together with the band and kind of push the envelope and really get the crowd going. If you were a student, you got an Aggie Pack card and non-students could get an Aggie Fanatics card. At every athletics event, you would get Aggie Bucks for signing in with one of those cards. Most games also had a giveaway item, candy, water bottle, etc usually a sponsored item. They would also hand out Aggie Bucks during the game—popular was tube sock madness where they would use a potato gun to launch tube socks full of Aggie Bucks and coupons. Sometimes they would hand them out at the exit gate too (helped people want to stay 4 quarters!). You could use the Aggie Bucks to buy merch, so fundamentally everyone in the stadium could get an Aggie Pack or Aggie Fanatics shirt free. And then whoever was working on “big time ideas” nixed all of that and decided it would actually be better to have no giveaways and just the bookstore selling $35 adidas T-shirts.

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”