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.

Good question! They seem to have found some big donors who are all in.

Downtown Sac has made a tremendous investment in new infrastructure and the revitalization in the downtown area over the past few years. There's a lot of new construction along with rehabilitation of older buildings going on currently and lots of street and utilities improvement also. There many new restaurants and bars that have opened and Sacramento has become known as a farm to fork destination. The New York Times recently wrote an article about how Sacramento has become a destination for a wide variety of great restaurants. Downtown Sac has a growing, vibrant night life scene also and there's lots of development going on along the river front by Old Town. The massive Railyard development will have a new stadium for the Sacramento FC Republic soccer team too.

So my guess is that there are Sacramento donors who see a business good business opportunity for themselves by investing in the development of a major college sports program. It makes sense that these donors who have businesses in Sacramento understand that a major college sports program, especially football, would be good for hotels, restaurants, bars and many other businesses.

Here is a link to the whole article that is much easier to read than the X tweet that Kadeezy posted earlier. It's certainly impressive to raise $35 million in less than 24 hours. There's some deep pockets in Sac that are pulling out all the stops to move Sac to FBS.

“The $35 million we have secured over the last 24 hours demonstrates the civic and business commitment of all of those in the greater Sacramento region to this effort, an effort we know will pay great dividends to the university’s athletes and students, as well as Hornet fans and businesses across Sacramento,” said Sac12 co-chair Josh Wood. “We are thrilled to announce this tremendous first step and will continue to work to reach our stated goal of $50 million.”

Whole article here: https://www.on3.com/nil/news/sacramento-state-hornets-pac-12-committee-raises-35-million-nil-funds/

There is no way there were 6000 less there Saturday compared to Utah Tech. — DrMike

I 100% agree, Mike, something is indeed screwy with the attendance number for the Idaho game. The east side stands looked to be slightly less the Utah Tech game and the end zones were quite a bit less full. The west side stands had quite of few barren holes too. Even so, there's no way that the total attendance was 6,000 less.

My guess is that that the Student Run somehow didn't get counted accurately or even counted at all. Team Aggie members aren't getting accurately counted either. The people who scan the tickets at the gate didn't even ask to scan our Team Aggie tags; they just motioned us through. So the Team Aggie fans aren't getting counted accurately either.

I walked around the stadium at halftime and the food trucks and food venues were doing a good business with long lines at most of them. There was a line at the merch store too. It sure looked didn't look like there were 6,000 less in attendance that's for sure.