That's going to have some interesting implications on athletics. First of all there will be no more "Keelhaulers", unless they're tired of the Mustangs. Get your Keelhaulers merchandise while you still can.

Next, most of the prospective CSU Maritime athletes would lose their spots with their redundant programs eliminated, and most likely they won't have the athletic talent to compete for spots at the D-I level. Those NAIA spots will just vanish.

Maybe their sailing, crew, and rugby teams will survive in Vallejo, as SLO doesn't currently sponsor those. Or SLO may just shutter those, as they would represent a big increase to their athletics budget.

Were you referring to Buster Posey ? He's the president of baseball operations- GM reports to him. The Giants' new GM Zack Minasian has even less playing experience than Fenstermaker. Apparently he had a pretty tough PT HS job working odd hours in the clubhouses for the Rangers. He probably didn't play in HS + definitely didn't play in college.

I didn't know about Dan Feinstein. If they ever make a Moneyball 2 maybe Jonah Hill can play him too lol.

Sig Mejdal is another Aggie who holds the assistant GM position-with the Orioles. Used to work for NASA but ccording to Wikipedia he never even played above little league. The common thread here seems to be that if you want to be a baseball GM or AGM you can't be a great college or pro player.

I think everyone knows quite well that when Sac State sucks in any sport they can always find a way to beat the Aggies, and then resume sucking thereafter. The exception is if the Aggies also suck at the time. Fear the unsatisfactory hornets.

The Pac-? needs some of those schools to join for a different reason, as they all sponsor baseball. Colorado St, Boise St, and Utah St do not, which leaves them with 4 teams otherwise. Of lesser importance I'm sure. Boise had a team for a minute in 2020.

Some former D-II championship players have coached there such as Kevin Nosek, Brandon Laird, and Jonathan Surface.

Hopefully they play more like Homer.

That's pretty ridiculous. Grand Canyon seems to have no idea what to do. They were NAIA, Division I, down to Division II, then they wanted to be NAIA again but couldn't because they weren't a non-profit entity. So back to D-II and then D-I again. I believe they were independent for awhile, then the WAC, the WCC and now the MWC maybe. Lunacy.

I don't really see the MWC being very lucrative for them because they don't have a football team. Their big sports seem to be men's bball and baseball.

How unusual that they were giving away High Wheelers gear at a UC Davis football game. At least they were promoting it.

They might be the Yolo High Wheelers of Oakland at this rate. Really doesn't make sense that they fired all the front office staff. Wherever they wind up they need front office people. You can't blame the ticket sales manager for poor attendance, as they had nothing to do with the lights problen. Like I said they really didn't do a good job researching + planning this. Yolo County is a pretty small market for baseball, better for football.

That's pretty harsh, but it's the reality of minor league baseball, especially independent ball. You live and die by your paid attendance. Independent ball failed in Sacramento and Vacaville previously.

So they were told the future of the team in Davis was in doubt-that wording seems to suggest they're consideing a new location in Northern CA. Chico could be a good landing spot. They had a team-the Chico Heat-that drew pretty well in the 00's It didn't so much fail as their league did. A bit far from Oakland but not as far as MT or ID. More likely they wind up at Cal or Laney.

I wonder if they will still fulfill their lights promise if they leave considering they were supposedly already purchased ? Unless they could get their money back.

Even if they stay in Davis somehow I just hate how they let down the community. They sold them a promise and failed to deliver. I'll probably have to change this username.

For a production that big I would have suggested skipping the player interviews. In a summary conference overview like this the coaches can easily handle it. If it were 11separate shows then sure, include the players and enrich the content this way. In the long format it's excessive.

Also, Im of the opinion that player interviews are more valuable during the season, when they can offer insight about the actual games they played in. That is the advantage of interviewing the players.

That sounds about 4 hours too long. I can't imagine being interested enough in Big West basketball to devote 6 hours to watching it. I guess just skip ahead to your favorite team. Thanks for locating the timepoints so we don't have to listen to Hawaii if we don't want to.

Yes, I would drop football rather than drastically increase its budget to move up to FBS. If it remains in FCS it can stay. How much does the program cost to run in order to bring in its portion of $5-6 million ? This is not a huge financial windfall; football just brings in more total dollars to help offset its expenses than the other sports. According to this article I just read the UCD athletics budget was approximately 39 million in FY 2023. 6 vs 39-football- doesn't pay for itself or other sports completely.

That's ridiculous that they told you to put a donation on a credit card. Greed over common sense.

The bank is closed here too. Athletics hits me up for donations 2-4 times a month. Nope. What's humorous is every year they come up with new names for their fundraising programs, but whether it's "Champions Achieve" or whatever it's just another way of saying "Give us Money". The only things new about their "exciting new programs" are the names.

To be honest I was very excited about the move to Division I in 2003 (when I was excited about the move), but now not so much. All it's really brought is more expenses across all sports, more losses (although some of the wins have been really big ones), and more annoying fake athletics administrative positions. At this point I'm closer to saying UCD should drop football and move to D 2 than advocating for any major upgrades for football. Or stay in D1 and just drop football and a couple underperforming programs. Use UCD Health Stadium as a multi-purpose facility (more than it already is).

Of course I'm an outsider so I have no right to tell them what to do with the money they rightfully took from others, willingly or not.. Therefore, that idea dies here on this board, just like the FBS crap should. Good for Sac State doing something. Not necessary to keep up with the Joneses. Wake me up if Sac State threatens UCD in quality of academics.

It's true that football brings in the most money, but it also costs the most. The program doesn't pay for itself, which is why they have to soak students and potential donors to keep it going. It's a slowly dying tradition of which we can't let go, but we can enjoy it while it's still around.

I have to agree with abridge and NCagalum on this. Students/donors are supposed to pony up tens of millions of dollars so UCD can have a mediocre FBS football team that a prospective employer may or may not recognize ?

I don't think the name recognition argument is as strong as it used to be when you could get a degree and find eager employers waiting for you.. Maybe if you're trying out for a professional sports team. A top business has an idea of what schools are producing the most successful graduates in that field. Sounds more like those prospective employers you mentioned didn't really keep up on what the top colleges for engineering were at the time. Seems more like a they problem.

In my experience an employer places much more weight on your experience in terms of what you can bring to them.

UCD needs to concentrate on its academic mission. If all the sports teams were to be cut your degree wouldn't be worth any less. It's ok to dream but this isn't that great of a path.

I wonder why they just gave up on the temp lights completely after that first game ? The lights they were using seemed to be working fine, but they didn't provide good coverage for the outfield. They couldn't have just brought in more lights ?

They didn't plan this too well. It would have been more sensible for them to play 2024 in a temporary venue with lights such as Sac State while working on the lights at Dobbins.

Perhaps they could've played at Laney College's field as is ? Or share the Oakland Ballers' venue. Sac State's park is small but it would have been full every night.

They got greedy and tried to play in Dobbins before it was ready for action. They blew a big opportunity to get people hooked. Opening night had a significantly bigger crowd than I've seen at even a free Picnic Day game. Now they have to re-engage the fans they lost due to poor planning ..

tailgate party.

Sac State is and always will be a commuter school so probably not much difference in student attendance. The deal with Golden 1 is probably temporary while they set up their new arena, which I think was supposed to be in the Well, the Sac State equivalent of the ARC.

I would be happy if they proved me wrong.

Ah I hadn't thought of it in terms of demographics, but you may have a point.