UND limped into Aggie Stadium decimated with injuries and I think we need to keep that in mind when we look at the final score. Nevertheless, I thought the Aggie offense was really firing on all cylinders. Maier's quick release and accuracy was impressive and our receivers running were nice routes and they catch balls in traffic. I thought our RB's churned up some tough yards too and our O line did a good job protecting Maier. So the execution on offense was excellent overall.

You've got to love the open playbook on offense too. It's quick, creative and bold. What a breath of fresh air that is after what we've seen in the recent past!

We continue to give up the big play on the ground and we are vulnerable to getting burned on the deep passing routes. The D bent a whole lot but didn't break. We caught a break when they got that big pass called back on a hold and we got away with a face mask on a sack that forced a 3 and out.

We had a really nice pick by Culberson and another DB had very athletic leap to break up a potential TD pass at the goal line. We also dropped a pick six and another potential pick. So our DB's were getting themselves in position to make some plays on numerous occasions.

Overall, I think the D is a work in progress. Parenteau was in street clothes so there must still be some concerns about his concussion at Weber. The D needs to stay healthy and just keep getting a little better each week. They'll be severely tested next week against EWU.

It was a good win with a lot of positives especially after coming off the loss at Weber State.

The west stands had a lot of empty seats. We sit in section 120 and I think it was 40-45% full at best. So it seems to me that a lot of season ticket holders were missing.

I don't understand that. UND is scheduled become a member of the Missouri Valley Football Conference in 2020 so I guess they will be an independent until then. So how would a loss to them count as a conference loss...makes no sense...

The two teams combined for 1102 yards of offense: 651 for the Ags and 451 for the Fighting Hawks. We need to shore up the D because, if we don't, we're going to have to score 45-62 points to keep pace with a team like EWU.

This was the most fun my wife and I have had at Aggie Stadium in a long time. The announced crowd was 9500. The new UCD students ran onto the field before the start of the game and, I swear, they were coming out of the tunnel for 5 minutes...must have been several thousand!

Now if we can only get them to come back. I think we should have an Aggie Pack stampede every game...let the students lead the team onto the field.

Yes, Idaho joins next year...dropping down from FBS. So with ND leaving that will still leave us with an unwieldly 13 teams.

I haven't seen Parenteau. Really nice crowd and a big Aggie Pack

My wife and I will be there in section 121. Looks like the weather will be beautiful for a fall evening football game. I'm hoping for a great collegiate atmosphere.

Go Ags!!!

Bob Dunning takes the Ags by 7 over ND.

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/bobs-picks-lots-of-high-scoring-contests/

If you love college basketball it is worth your time to read the article I have linked below. It is a disturbing, eye-opening, hard hitting article by a journalist from the Indianapolis Star about how the staggering amount of money from athletic shoe companies is involved with the NCAA, colleges and college coaches and how that has led to rampant cheating:

Excerpt: "Abject greed has put college basketball where it is today. The naked and unseemly lust for the wrong kind of money led it here, into the middle of an FBI investigation, with several coaches under arrest and one legend defrocked and more of both, so much more, to come. More arrests. More defrocking. This is the comeuppance of college basketball, but the guilty parties are not just the seedy coaches, the greedy parents, the oily Adidas executive and the slithering agents.

College and university presidents are to blame, too. Because it is their abject greed, their naked and unseemly lust for the wrong kind of money, that let this happen.

By arresting an Adidas executive and laying bare a series of schemes that saw money gushing from a shoe company and into the hands of recruits and their families — with the trade-off being those recruits would play for the right school, sign with the right agent and wear the right sneaker — the FBI has confirmed that the NCAA doesn’t run NCAA basketball.

Shoe companies do."

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2017/09/28/ncaa-presidents-blame-college-basketball-scandal-fbi-rick-pitino-louisville/711098001/

They moved the location of last night's Bud Lite Coaches show to Tommy J's the Grill at Froggy's at 726 2nd Street. You can still view it on the UC Davis Football Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/UCDavisAggies

Excellent article about the inevitable problems of the multi-million dollar, college basketball industry being marketed as amateurism:

Excerpt: "Yes, laws were broken, and the coaches and shoe company executives involved should be punished. They abused the trust they’d earned from players to stuff their pockets.

Yet, what are we really talking about here?

Because the feds’ report charging Chuck Person (Auburn), Lamont Evans (Oklahoma State), Emanuel Richardson (Arizona), and Tony Bland (Southern Cal) with fraud and conspiracy can’t be surprising. Not because those four coaches already had raised our suspicion. But because they operate in a morally cloudy system.

And everyone knows it.

That’s what happens when a business is marketed as amateurism. A sleight-of-hand the NCAA has pulled off for decades.

Well, this week’s news may finally change that. The fallout could be seismic."

http://www.freep.com/story/sports/2017/09/27/college-basketball-scandal-louisville-rick-pitino-one-and-done/709273001/

Not really a laughing matter but that's funny!

Of course, the NCAA saw fit to bust UOP for some pretty small potatoes by comparison to scandals like the academic fraud at UNC which has still gone unpunished. But, hey, the FBI sent some heads rolling today and it looks like there's a lot more to come. I guess cheaters will be cheaters until the FBI busts them.

I hear ya, maybe someday when you feel like you have the means you'll be able to subscribe. Hopefully, all those years of study will pay nice dividends for you in the near future!

Please understand that I'm not making a judgement about bypassing the paywall of the Davis Enterprise, but I choose to pay for a digital subscription. All local newspapers throughout the country are struggling in the digital age and very small newspapers like the Enterprise are disappearing quickly.

I've read the Enterprise for free for years and I appreciate their coverage of local Davis news as well the writing of scribes like Bob Dunning. It's not cheap but I want to support them and I hope they won't go under like so many small town rags have.

Article about what the FBI investigation could eventually change in college basketball:

Excerpts: "As more schools are ensnared by this investigation, a more equitable future for college basketball could emerge, where major universities like Louisville, and the similarly implicated University of Arizona, have less of a stranglehold on the sport as they lose the ability to throw around cash. But it’s not just the schools that are now on notice. So too are corrupt AAU coaches, self-interested financial advisers, and multinational apparel companies with a stake in all of it."

"While the game has months of bad headlines ahead of it, if this is the end of what acting U.S. attorney Kim called the “dark underbelly of college basketball,” then it’s a good thing. And if it leads the NCAA to try to stamp out opportunities for bribery by ending the farce of forced amateurism, then it’s even better."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/explaining-the-fbis-college-basketball-investigation.html

The downfall of Rick Pitino:

https://www.aseaofblue.com/2017/9/27/16371900/rick-pitino-louisville-cardinals-kentucky-wildcats

North Dakota's coach, Bubba Schweigert, seems like a soft-spoken, high quality coach. I expect we will have our hands full this Saturday.

Heads are beginning to roll in yet another college sports scandal. I guess it should come as no surprise to those of us who love college basketball that this is happening. The irony is that all of this has been happening right under the nose of the NCAA but "unbeknownst" to them and it's the FBI that is exposing the corruption.

College athletics has become big money for the power conferences and the NCAA and the big name programs are the NCAA's cash cows. Little wonder that this kind of stuff happens on the NCAA's watch and goes unnoticed until something so egregious happens that they have to go public and act surprised. For example, UNC is still awaiting the outcome of their academic fraud scandal and Louisville is still being investigated for providing "escorts" to potential recruits. The little guys get hammered hard and fast by the NCAA but the elite programs fly under the radar and investigations drag out forever.

The union of corporate greed with "win at all costs" college athletic programs is the bane of amateur, college athletics. It's made a mockery of the amateur, college student-athlete ideal at the highest levels of college sports. What a shame.

I like the games with UOP also but, in general, our pre-conference home schedule leaves a lot to be desired for Aggie fans: UOP and Northern Colorado are nice but Holy Names and William Jessop won't get many fans to the Pavilion. So we only have 4 home pre-conference games out of 14 total and 2 of them are not very interesting.

On the other hand, the women's pre-conference schedule is really good at home and on the road:

Home: Washington State, Pepperdine, Portland State, Sac, San Francisco, Central Florida.

Road: Pacific, SUU, Seattle, St. Mary's, Oregon State, Yale, Fordham or Hartford.