From Bob Dunning's column, "The Wary One:"

COMPETING PRIORITIES ... My friend Eric sent me a headline from The Sacramento Bee that stated "Sacramento State to build new football, multi-use stadium" and another headline from CalMatters that stated "Cal State budget woes: Officials warn of layoffs and academic cuts."

Who is going to win this battle?

https://www.thewaryone.com/p/friday-fish-fry-has-either-debate?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2582284&post_id=149742658&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Our AD sent out the tweet that generated all this FBS excitement and speculation just after we had a crowd of nearly 15,000 in the stadium for our first game. So, maybe he was just putting out a teaser that it might be time for a second tier expansion.

Unfortunately, it coincided with the PAC12 announcement that they were adding new members and Aggie fans got excited and thought it may mean that we might be considering a move to FBS. In hindsight, I think it just may have been an innocent tweet reflecting his excitement about the large crowd we just had and suggesting that maybe we'll need to add a second level at the stadium pretty soon.

No harm, no foul as I see it but it sure generated a lot of passionate discussion about the future of Aggie Athletics which is a good thing!

I think you summed it up completely, Kerberos.

Sac may or may not get an invite to the FBS but they've made it clearly and emphatically known that they want to move up and they are ready and willing to do whatever they can to make it happen. Good for them, really.

Aggie fans naturally got excited when DeLuca posted that tweet with the photo of the expansion of Aggie Stadium at the same time that the PAC12 was announcing they had added 4 new members and they were looking to add a couple more members as well. We wondered what the timing of that tweet might mean about the future of Aggie Athletics? Were we really going to actively pursue a possible opportunity to move to FBS?

Now we get an email from him that publicly states that we are in no position financially to make any announcement of actively pursuing a move up. I think most of us thought it was mostly wishful thinking considering how it expensive it would be among many other critical issues that would have to be addressed but, nevertheless, his tweet made us feel like there might be something happening behind the scenes that was not being publicly announced at this time.

He must have known that his tweet was going to create some speculation and excitement among Aggie fans given the how it corresponded with the timing of the PAC12 announcement but now we know the tweet really didn't mean anything and that it's only Sac and not us who is serious about pursuing a move to the FBS. He shouldn't have posted that tweet in the first place, in my opinion. It just gave many Aggie fans taste of false hope...

Here is the main message in the email from Aggie AD Rocko DeLuca:

Over the past few weeks, there has been significant media coverage regarding conference realignment, particularly regarding the Mountain West Conference and the Pac-12 Conference. I’ve also heard from many of you about the possibility of UC Davis making a move to FBS football. While the possibility may be exciting, such a significant and expensive transition decision cannot be driven by public campaigns or stadium expansions, as there are many reasons and factors that play a role in such a transition.

The best path forward to ensure the future of UC Davis Athletics is through increased fan and donor support. Many of our conference rivals have some of the largest FCS season ticket bases in the country. Across the causeway, they've raised $35M to support their student-athletes’ name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities. We have the coaches and campus leadership in place to meet any opportunity presented to us in the ever-changing landscape of college athletics

Here is the link to the official website for Sac's drive to get into the PAC12. There are a lot of additional links to various media reports regarding current happenings for the PAC12, MWC and Sac on the website also.

https://sac12.org

KCRA Nightly News covered the announcement that the Kings and Sac State are working on the details of the Hornets playing in the Golden 1 Center for basketball. They also said that downtown business owners are in favor of the push for Sac to move up to a major D1 conference.

Toke, UTEP is actually joining the MWC.

Here are the start times for the Big Sky games this week:

Weber State @ Montana - 12 noon
Aggies @ Portland State - 1 pm
Northern Colorado @ Montana State - 1 pm
Northern Arizona @ Idaho - 2 pm
Idaho State @ Cal Poly - 5 pm

I was just about to post the same thing! We absolutely need to have a regular Aggie Pride Podcast for basketball. I grew up in a small town in Indiana and basketball is in my blood especially college basketball and, like Aggie football, I want to see Aggie basketball continue to grow and get better.

Jim Les is one of the best basketball head coaches on the west coast. He doesn't routinely get the most highly rated players that some of the other teams like Santa Barbara are able to recruit but no coach in the conference has the ability to get more out of his players he does. He is also a master at finding "diamonds-in-the-rough" and developing them into great players. One thing for sure, his teams play smart and hard and always compete with 100% effort.

I saw that...powerful block...it looked like the Idaho player fell back awkwardly.