I always want to beat Sac State, but I do hope they can become successful as well. I think it’s good for all of us if all three CA Big Sky teams can manage to be relevant at the same time. Improves local interest and maybe squeezes the flow of talented recruits heading north. I was privately concerned how much longer their program could stay viable with so many player and fan defections, but hopefully they can get the cart on the rails.

If Nicholls were to win, where would the next round be played? At Nicholls or at the winner of UCD/UNI?

The emcee who opened Aggie Stadium was pretty good. I think his name was Scott, IIRC. Kind of wonder if the guy still rocks plaid shorts everywhere. The Pack was full and loud, but we were still coming off our years of being good. Going back in time at Toomey, there used to be Aggie Pack "characters" in the 90s. I remember Captain Aggie, the SWAT Team, and others. It was amazing how that place would go crazy for Steve's Place Pizza Madness or tube sock madness. Burrito Madness was another story. As it turns out, firing foil-wrapped burritos from a t-shirt cannon wasn't such a great idea.

What I'm reading is that students need to come to Aggie Stadium box office this week prior to the game to pickup their free ticket. How convenient.

Not exactly a weather event, but there was the 2009 game vs. Montana where somebody forgot to reset the light timer and the stadium lights turned off during play. Was like a half hour delay to restart the lights. I'm assuming this is on somebody's checklist now.

Did some quick estimates and calculations looking at the seats available on the ticketing site.
Gen Admission: ~3000 (end zones, 101, 102) $10
Aggie Pack and Band-uh: ~2000 (104-107) $0
Reserved: ~5800 (103, 108, 109, 118-127) $20 regular sections / $30 golf clap & khakis sections

Can't tell from the site what percentage of GA has been sold other than it indicates "many available." Of course never know how many students will show. But as to the reserved seats, there are about 2300 of the 5800 still available. Section 108 & 109 are showing sold out, so I'm guessing these are the blocks given to UNI. Hopefully a big push this week, but doesn't smell like a sellout yet. Good news is that I would think tickets sold are likely to be redeemed since buyers had to specifically purchase them as opposed to it being just another ticket in the season packet.

fwiw - Big West specifically prohibits bands from traveling to away basketball games, unless it is televised and the host school agrees and there is not a home game of any sport the same day, in which case you can bring 30 or fewer members. The rule was specifically targeted at the Aggie Band and came in the Warzecka years. I never got the sense these kind of battles were his priority.

I’m pretty sure the steam engine was gone by early 90s or earlier. Remember that we basically became D2 independent around 1993, so maybe there was some loss of leverage there since nobody was obligated to play us. But in the current state of the Big Sky, if other schools can have a howitzer canon we should be able to blast a whistle. Cowbells persisted into the 2000s if I recall. They started hassling people about them around the time they contracted security out to the Raley Field jerks, IIRC.

yeah, that air horn has been around for a couple of years. I appreciate someone’s effort, but it’s not the same as a 100 year old vintage steam whistle that rings out for miles.

The steam engine was on display (not running) a couple years ago at a game. I would bet there are some steam experts at the CA State Railroad Museum shop who could opine on how close it is to operational state and the safety factor. If it is not reasonably operational within a week, you could probably run the whistle on compressed air at least. Interestingly, Jay Leno has a steam tractor he has modified to run on propane. He said it makes it much faster and more practical to start up and shut down than a coal or wood fire and less smoky. Maybe a good future project?

Fire and building officials have a good amount of interpretive leeway. Without seeing the life safety drawings, my numbers were speculative. In Toomey days, they would have been more concerned with fire. Nothing to burn at AS, but unfortunately nowadays they also have to think about how quickly could they clear for other kinds of incidents. But I’d love to see a SRO crowd!

I believe the home record (not counting causeways at Hughes stadium) was 12,800 at Toomey field in 1977 against Reno. I’m told it was a standing room only crowd packed to the gates. I think the record at Aggie Stadium is around 10,800.

Apparently drinking and driving is a past time there. Last time I drove, the highway into Cheney had one of those electronic “people killed on this road this year” signs. Drive careful.

I will say this, as a distant Aggie who watches everything via these streams... BSTV is a more reliable source than Pluto. That said, the overall reliability of both varies by host location. Games at Aggie Stadium drop out more often than when we are away - they need a tech geek to make sure there is not an upload bandwidth issue. I always stream the KHTK audio via the TuneIN app on my phone, but keep it muted. It is very reliable and then I can immediately unmute if the video feed drops at a pivotal moment (or if I get sick of listening to homer commentators). TuneIN runs about a play behind the video so I don't miss anything.

Which "they" do you mean? Davis, Montana, or the Zebras?

head ref needs to be fired immediately. "do your job" is exactly what Hawk said too and got a penalty on the bench.

While the Montana facility does include a football locker room, the balance of the facility is for all 15 sports they field. True, they were probably not paying the CA $50-75/hr prevailing wage to construction workers, but I will say this - politics aside, I work with both union and non-union labor and the union guys show up on time, have fewer OSHA injuries and less re-work. There's value in that.

Believe it or not, Montana built their training facility for about $275/sf, a pretty good value in construction. I watched a video tour and it is a pretty simple building in terms of construction and materials. Just lots of vinyl graphics and a little architectural lighting make it look more impressive. Actually pretty financially responsible. They were able to fund-raise the full cost of construction, which is not likely at Davis. As Zander alludes to, a common funding mechanism at public universities is to co-mingle athletics and academics in one structure - you can use state academic money to build general use offices, classrooms, and lecture halls. In this way you can help subsidize the sunk costs of site development, utilities, general conditions, etc. under academic auspices and athletic funding covers the difference for their added floors or wing at a better price-point than going it alone. It just means you have to be OK with non-athletes being around and do it strategically enough not to get the Academic Senate's panties in a wad.

My cost estimates are just a wag without really knowing site conditions or having a conceptual design so its just kind of for fun, but normally I charge people for this!

Interesting thought charging for the loo. Although I feel like its only fair to include a $1 token with every couple beers and a $2 token with every order of pulled pork nachos.

I tend to agree with you that the business case for a stadium seating expansion isn't quite there yet. But if this year isn't just an outlier it may be something to think about down the road. There are other expansion considerations too. Limited access party decks have become pretty common and several other Big Sky teams have justified a handful of skybox suites.

I would suggest $1500-$2000 per seat based on comps. For athletic training center, Sac State spent about $650/sq ft in today's dollars and Cal about $1150/sq ft.

If you have a complete design, a good scheduler, and qualified tradespeople, you can get done quickly. Many big projects start construction before design is done, leading to delays and rework.