Cal also ran a $9 million profit in football and I think around $2 million in basketball. Not too shabby. Keys to remember at Cal were the stadium was mandated legally due to earthquake retrofitting and it was either retrofit or build anew elsewhere. Building elsewhere (likely off campus) would have either cost more or resulted in less ticket sales and thus less revenue. Yes the debt is there, but there was no other choice to retain its largest athletics revenue source. Loose football and they'd have lost other sports too.

Extreme non-excitement around the program and Dykes not lasting past 2017 (even if he had a great season in which case he'd have left as fast as if he had a crap season) were the culprits. He was the cousin no one cared to invite but couldn't find a reason to not have at Christmas dinner. Clearly, some donor money felt it was time to cut losses and instead of waiting for the cousins parents to divorce next year decided to facilitate the separation in advance.

And Hawkins isn't really someone who played for Bama with a coaching staff chalk full of former and future name brand head coaches. He will transfer to a place like Cal that had had success with grad transfers and a proven receiving corps.

all good points...but the question is can we even be mediocre as a Big Sky if we have to beg for basics like computer software. Hearing that up above was painful.

Could we raise more interest and investment ($) if we were stepped up?

Money.

We've been behind forever. We (Aka the ENTIRE UC Davis Football community) need to realize without it no coach can make us competitive.

I truly hope the FBS/FCS question is actually evaluated in a few to several years. A few hundred die hard "Aggie Pride" types can't fund even an FCS program alone. You need the general university community at a minimum and the regional community ideally to be at play.

I know some will call me out, but honestly, at a big time school like UC Davis is now, the students and community it attracts don't really care about playing "Generic Multi-Directional State College." Need evidence? There's more buzz when we play a body bag away game at "University of Heard Of Before" with a near certain lopsided outcome.

I'm not saying FBS is the answer, but has it seriously been evaluated if it just might be a more successful model at UCD? I don't think so...in my opinion it's simply been rejected as it's not "The Aggie Way" and too "Big." Well, we (including EVERYONE here) sure are loving BIG now aren't we?

Hopefully he can lecture on "student section tactics during football games"

Great hire and couldn't agree more with everyone.

But....if he's ultra successful and proves the Colorado experience was a fluke, does he resist a promotion back to FBS and an at least 7-10x pay raise in 3-5 years? Looks like TOP pay at FCS level is around $400,000 total pay (salary + bonuses + other fees). Curious to see Hawks full contract.

If so, is the program left in a place where "next" can continue the progress?

Does anyone know if he has to teach basket weaving? I know some time ago there was talk of the coaches being full time coaches and not splitting time as faux academic educators.