We live in the Raleigh area and after checking flights to Montgomery and to Atlanta figured we could rent a car in Atlanta using the cost differential between flying to Montgomery and Atlanta. Southwest had the best fare from RDU to ATL but Delta has their hub in Atlanta so probably has the most options from the west coast. ATL is southwest of the city so should avoid the worst traffic.

Great place to see a game. Caveats would be potentially dicey weather in November this year and ticket availability unless you have a connection to the UCD allotment. I had to go the third party re-sale route - was not at all happy with vivid seats as they didn’t release them till about hours or so prior to game after purchasing airfare, rental car, air b&b. Had someone on the Bobcat board offer me 2 free tickets but didn’t use them as our purchased tickets came through.

Great atmosphere and Bozeman is nice. Land of Magic steakhouse northwest of Bozeman is great. Very good computer museum (American Computer and Robotics museum) and Jam is a good breakfast place. We stayed in Manhattan (l guess the littlest apple) on 90 NW of Bozeman. Hot springs in the area too.

yah, can increase the number of scholarships but cannot exceed 105 on the roster. So sort of a shell game in the scholarship department. The big schools, like SEC will pour money up to the limit (the direct payment part of the settlement) into the revenue generating sports, I.e., football and men’s basketball.

Some leagues have not imposed roster limits on their teams even for those who have opted-in, and from what I understand there was a change in the settlement to allow grandfathering of players. As for direct payments for most of Big Sky there is not much to go around when you start dividing it up across large rosters. So it seems not opting in at this point in non-bigtime football programs is not a huge issue. But a lot of moving parts. The NIL “constraints” with regard to review of deals over $600 is probably gonna be a joke and the old days of money under the table will return - at least for the P4 teams.

Just bought airline tickets to Atlanta for Mercer game. Looks to be about a 2 hour drive to Montgomery from the airport. Was initially thinking of driving with travel trailer (Cramton Bowl has hookups) but too much time involved even from east coast. Aggie side is western stands so late sun will be on opponents side. Tickets are cheap ($23 for GA) Even thought of “ESPN zone “ for $103 which gives you AC, some food (no host bar) and a general admission seat if you want to slum in the real stands for a while. Probably will go cheap route.

HBCUs are such due to the 1890 land grant (second round of Morrill Act) establishing land grant Universities so Sac State will never be an HBCU or even a land grant for that matter (UC system in CA are land grant Universities.

Matthew Sluka was recruited by Marion to UNLV (from Holy Cross) and according to Sluka’s agent Marion told him he would get a 100k NIL deal …. and when Sluka did not receive compensation he left.

Maybe he “committed” to Sac based on the superior academic experience offered there ,,,,,

My guess is that maybe:
- The SEC offers weren’t that good as a 160 lb. 6’2” (and weight is normally fudged upward in football) would end up as a pretzel in SEC football although he could fill out
-he knew he would ride the bench for a while if not most of his career at an SEC school
- and in either case Marion - who obviously is quite charismatic- sold him “I will get you to the NFL” spiel. 18 year olds hear what they want to hear and Marion won’t be around long enough for those he recruited to experience reality. He seems to always be one step ahead of his promises. The reality is that many of theses young kids think they are going to the NFL and the reality is that very few make it. I don’t think a lot of coaches care about the degree or academic/job preparation of the players, and in that sense the athletes get taken advantage of.

Couple of podcasts by Colter Nuanez and regional sportswriter sidekick about the upcoming Big Sky season. Colter is pretty in the know about big sky - much better than the YouTube interlopers. He is a fan of coach Plough. You’ll have to scroll through some other stuff.

Also available on Apple Podcasts. Show is “Nuanez Now”.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LTn4cMzXAVR2tuGrbs2ci?si=YyXLVRCARsSnhwdZSRaayA&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A4wBXFpIW0vjyBPuB2hapgm

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BrPu4vT2E6TnfNNGo2XYJ?si=mpqXU-wkRJ6i48tnl-2loA&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A4wBXFpIW0vjyBPuB2hapgm

yes, CBS has signed a deal as I too understand. Gary Danielson and Brad Nessler were my favorite announcing team - I guess more old school and less prattling on after each play. Danielson retired after last season. Will miss him.

so is the “Pryor coach” Richard Pryor? And his previous tweet about the logic of “a lack of a conference invite signals readiness”????? Well they didn’t get an invite so….? Obviously should have said “unreadiness”. He needs to proof read or get a spell checker and logic checker.

I have noticed a recent trend of declining civility (and posts rivaling PhD dissertation lengths), and I wonder if it is correlated with last years winning season and quite a few new board posters and changing board dynamics. I sure hope things don’t end up like the self-immolating EGriz board Montana has. Perhaps things will calm down when the season starts and we can all focus on the season. The wait 24 hour rule might be helpful in some instances.

Good for him - nice story ending. I do remember Ron as a very good running back and if I recall correctly he had some nice spin moves.

These are stupid. If UCD partners with PG&E will they have flames on their uniforms ?

Ready kilowatt would be the moniker. My wife used to work for PG&E and said they were always in a corner between regulators (PUC) and customers in a no-win situation. But yah, these wacky uniforms are a bit much in my view. I wonder how much it messes with the QBs eyes with these one-off uniforms when you are used to regular colors when scanning the field.

Agree. I think they just look ugly (I take trying too hard for 200 Alex).

Punting was a glaring weak spot for most of last year so hopefully that will be rectified. Field position is a big deal.

Hard to say. Rich Martini was also on that baseball squad and played football and landed with the Raiders for a couple of years. Martini was a wide receiver and fast. Stole a lot of bases. As I recall, Moroski was also a pretty good basketball player (we played basketball instead of baseball practice when raining - we had some pretty good BB players. Those were the days of Audwin Thomas, who was the basketball teams best player.

I was on the baseball team with Moroski back in the late 70s. We just straggled onto the field after classes/labs and I’d was quite low key. Some guys did extra work and games were against far western conference foes and other close northern/central California colleges. I think the furthest trip was Reno. So not a big stretch to do football and baseball back then.

cynical …….. but spot on.

As @fugawe09 says, the 1M corpus is not eroded so you only are taking 4-5 % of that annually for “use”. At NC State endowments were tapped at 4% annually, and at one time (maybe 2008-9) some endowed scholarships were frozen due to being “underwater”. Depends on markets and investing strategy to a degree. But the big numbers the public sees doesn’t reflect the actual annual disbursement.

I had a former neighbor refer to Florida State University (FSU) as Felony State University back when they had their legal issues with their football program. Now I am not trying to slander the entire student body in this acronym possibility, as I am sure Sac has produced many fine graduates and citizens, but maybe Sac’s football program direction will lead to the unintended consequence of having some label CSUS as “Criminal State University Sacramento”. I am pretty sure Marion cares little about player academics except for football eligibility, and he is looking to the portal in an attempt to feather his own bed for a potential coaching advancement ASAP. If I were a Hornet football fan, I think I would be hoping for a longer term plan with a more stable culture. Maybe that just isn’t in the cards.