Colter overweights the impact of Sac State not being FBS. A good chunk of the transfers and all the 2025 HS recruits signed before April, which is when Sac first announce they intended to go FBS without an invite. A good chuck of the transfers would never have played an FBS schedule nor visit an FBS opponent other than Nevada they visit this year. No reason for those players to be disheartened, they at least have a shot at playoffs.
Projecting that Sac loses at SDSU overlooks that SDSU lost over twenty FBS transfers, so they have their own challenges with integrating newcomers. Same is true for Nevada.

According to 247sports. Somewhat better than the revised Pac-12. But its early.
Idaho is ranked 81, Davis 100

I think it comes down to money, and Sac is willing to promise more than the going rate for a three and four stars.
It is cheap to make promises, when signing date comes around they’ll have to put it in writing,
Sac’s recruiting class is rated 56th by 247 among all schools, even after grabbing McDonald.

Regarding the lack of role models for blacks in coaching.
How many role models does one need? If 40% of the Div 1 football assistant coaches are black that would seem to indicate role models are not hard to find, even if one assumes that your role model should look like you.
Expecting the % of head coaches should be equal to the % of players in Div 1, ignores that coaches are drawn from a larger pool. There are a ton of coaches who didn’t play in Div 1.
The journey to becoming a head coach or AD often includes time coaching high school, division 3 schools, volunteering for no pay as an analyst. There are individuals of all races that take that career path, but one can’t assume they do so in proportion to demographics of players. Cultural issues affect who wants to do what in life.

I’m aware of a single Sac State player, Diesel Gordon facing a criminal charge and his case was treated like a nothing burger by the court. Tell me if there are others.
Gordon was charged with assault and reckless driving related to he and another Washington football players assaulting a bicyclist This was several years ago, He has since olayed at a community college.. i’m not saying he’s a fine citizen.
“ He pleaded guilty to assault and his reckless driving charge was dismissed. His sentence was deferred for two years - it will be dismissed if he has no new criminal violations in that time frame. He had to pay a small court fee and served 24 hours of community service.”

Before all these players sign, the schools are going to have to put in writing everything that is promised. Since the payouts will be directly from the schools for schools that opt into the House settlement, it follows that what these kids are being offered by public schools
will be public info. That will be interesting.

Full athletic scholarships cover tuition, fees, books, housing, meals and probably etc.
I don’t think it matters if the student gets discounted tuition, because the amount of tuition varies in other ways as well, like in state or out of state. Partial and full scholarships can be augmented with NIL money and revenue sharing, to meet or exceed the cost of attendance.
But the scholarship count issue is becoming moot, as the NCAA now has roster size limits in place of scholarship counts, and I suspect conferences don’t audit scholarships, which as you indicate are complicated and debatable. I think the NCAA got rid of scholarship counts just because what is
a scholarship is undefinable when mixed with other payments.

An FCS conference can set a limit and some do. The Big Sky limit is 63.
Last week the Missouri Valley Football Conference, just decided not to set a cap, joining these listed from google AI:
CAA: The CAA has mandated that all member institutions opt-in to the new NCAA rules, effectively removing the scholarship cap.
NEC: The Northeast Conference has also opted into the new rules, allowing for up to 105 scholarships, mirroring the new NCAA roster limit.
Southland: The Southland Conference will not enforce a football scholarship cap, allowing its members to distribute scholarships as they choose within the 105-player roster limit.
Here is why, also from google AI
NCAA Changes: The NCAA has eliminated the previous scholarship caps for most Division 1 sports, including football, and implemented roster limits instead.
House Settlement: The House vs. NCAA settlement, which includes provisions for revenue sharing and the changes to scholarship limits, is prompting these changes.
Conference Autonomy: While the NCAA has made these changes, individual conferences, like the MVFC, have the ability to set their own rules and scholarship caps.

Now that North Dakota State and other MVFC teams can have 105 scholarships while SEC teams have limited themselves to 83, the FBS / FCS distinction is ridiculous.

Gould’s tenure coincided with the beginning of an impressive string of running backs. If this years running backs live up to the average of the last ten years they’ll be fine,
I noticed Larison saying in one of his interviews that our run game was not as dominant last year as the year before. That might be play calling as much as personnel, teams are better at what they believe in and commit to.

On the subject of coaches familiar with both Biggs, Plough and Gould, Kevin Daft is now the tight end coach at Dartmouth, no longer the offensive coordinator.
Here is how Dartmouth summarizes the Daft/Gould offense in the final year ( 3-8 record)
In his final season, the Aggies averaged over 28 points and nearly 400 total yards — of which 238 came through the air. UC Davis also ranked 14th among FCS schools in fewest interceptions thrown (7) and 10th in fewest turnovers lost (13) under his guidance in 2016.

One opposing coach, struggling to find something positive to say about Davis, settled on they “always line up correctly”.

I recall on the pregame show of that game Gould saying something along the lines of “i don’t know how things were done here before, but now we are going to pay attention to detail”. I took it as disrespectful of Biggs and his coaches. I wonder what players and coaches who worked under both thought of the two.

He transferred from Boise, was nearly a 4 star recruit for Boise (89 rating). He was from Rocklin.
Transferred at start of Gould era. Played in August and September 2013 making some starts, lost job again to Wright.

Sac may be chasing their tail, they may end up FBS, just in time for college football to divide into new tiers with new names, and the certainty is that Sac won’t be top tier, The top conferences want to split off, leaving the lessor conference, likely including the Mountain West and the Pac12, as the new “JVs”.

Wright was not the true freshman Scott Marsh says he was, he red shirted the prior year.
You can’t judge players by that type of mismatch. It will likely look similar when they play Washington,
Gould had all of those QBs his first year, he inherited Wright and Scott from Biggs. Scott was from Fairfield, not much recruiting interest, but Biggs liked him.

A big part of the decline in pro QBs coming from Davis is that in the 70s through first half of the 80s, a lot of college teams were run oriented, running the wishbone, veer and power I offenses, so few teams were developing Pro style QBs. Davis in that period was running elements of the Dallas Cowboys offense. That is the period when Davis had NFL drafted QBs.
Now everyone throws the ball a lot, the pro offenses have changed to be more like the college, and therefor the majority of collleges are developing pro QB skills. Add to that the better scouting of HS players by the major colleges, which don’t just scoop up the NFL prospects at QB, but at all positions, as shown by how few FCS or D2 players get drafted at any position.

Sac has had 4 three star recruits decommit since 6/25 according to 247sports and a 5th without stars but with multiple offers.
https://247sports.com/college/sacramento-state/Season/2026-Football/Decommits/

This conversation going over QBs of the last 50 years, and just scratching the surface, would be impossible at most schools. My time at Davis the QBs were Biggs and Speck. I wish i could see a program from that era. If I recall correctly, on Biggs’ Boardwalk Bowl team, one offensive lineman weighed about 210 or 215 lbs and trained by swimming, rather than weights. When playing teams like Massachusetts and Boise that lack if size largely precluded running the ball but the QB put up big numbers.Speck threw for over 400 yards against Boise, and Davis lost a close one simply because they couldn’t get a pass rush against a line that was near 300lbs. I think the Boise QB went on to play in Canada. Davis vs Goliath games.

Highest ranked Davis recruit ever according to 247sports site, and one of two 2026 recruits in the top four.
I’m not counting Jalen Harris, who never enrolled.