Important to remember that the team bounced back just fine after the UW loss last year. Hoping for an injury free win this week

I imagine it's not literally zero but close to it and not coming from admin. These kinds of athletes can get NIL money "as intended" through social media advertising, merch sales, outside employment, etc. Probably not amounting to more than a bit of pocket change and freebies here and there depending on how hard they promote

I saw they were picked narrowly to finish second in MWC preseason poll (and second easily qualifies them for the conference tournament), so I'd say they're a relatively safe team to support this year. I'm not much of an expert on why they're good other than they were the only team to have two players on the preseason all conference first team, so it might be depth-related.

Larison wearing #34, as I'm typing just got his first catch for a first down out of play action. Kind of play he converted like clockwork with Hastings

The problem is it's only covering conference and home games not picked up by any of the three broadcast partners. In hoops, not much of a problem, most games will be on MW+.

In FB though, something like 0 to only half of the games will be on MW+ depending on how the broadcast partners feel about our schedule. So you have to be subscribed to both MW+ and something that has up to six different channels to be sure, maybe more if you want to catch away noncon games.

Edit: For example, NDSU this year has its conference games on CBSSN, FS1, the CW, and MW+, and that's theoretically much less than it could have been because Fox, FS2, and CBS were also on the table

I would hazard a guess Woodstocks in downtown Davis will, I can't recall it ever not showing a game in recent years.

I will just warn you (as someone who's followed a MWC before), brace yourself for even more complexity if/when Davis moves to the MWC in football. I just resigned myself to the costs and got Hulu+Live TV which has pretty much everything years ago and let that be that.

https://x.com/ralphDrussoATH/status/2097461269800341859

NCAA clarification, if I'm reading right, seems to make a case for WMU (use the broadcast's feed of the official stadium clock for replay purposes if it's accurate, or if not use the broadcast's graphic showing the clock, but either way it points the replay booth to use what the viewers at home see).

I mean I doubt the game will be overturned and I'm not sure it's a good thing for the sport if it can be, but at least all this probably helps WMU's playoff bid if they finish with 1 loss

Can’t imagine anybody who’s questionable or recovering playing this game, I’m not even sure we’ll see Fisher

If Pinnick and Vargas are successful then it’s probably good for UCD in the short/mid term, though maybe encourages both better freshman signings but more transfers

On an Amtrak and just overheard (I think Greek life students?) talking about planning to go to the home opener. I don’t think I ever heard that kind of buzz in my time as a student

Not sure SDSU will be a particularly big draw for the community / casual fans regardless, can't see it really affecting turnout except for dual-loyalty folks. Might affect traffic depending on which way you're traveling to and from the game and where your lodging is.

Used to be, SDSU would make its FCS game its massive fireworks night. That time UCD played there it had something like 40k attendance for that reason. Seems they discontinued the practice.

Planning on all of the home games, less sure on playoffs.

I want to put it delicately to not seem to be counting chickens, but I've been eyeing visiting Nashville for a while and am looking at using some credits and points to go -- might as well do it in mid-January. And if the Ags happen to be there, they happen to be there

After missing the game I finally watched the replay and tried to look for the momentum shift, improvement in different aspects of the game, successful vs unsuccessful plays etc, seeing if I could avoid emotional reactions to what I saw since I knew how the game would turn out.

To my untrained eye I'm honestly not sure there was AS big of a shift between the first and second half as the score would indicate except maybe DL and LB play (or more specifically, better run defense and more TFLs). First half seemed more like a death-from-1000-cuts type deal with all the penalties, batted passes, a mix of genuine drops and bad throws, and then poor run defense. Feels worth pointing out that despite his poor stats in the first half Cleeland generally avoided sacks or putting the ball at risk of interceptions, except for the tipped passes.

What I was not able to detect / still have questions about:

• Was the OL giving Cleeland more time in the second half compared to the first?
• Where was Gbatu in the first half? Was he always covered or was the script to use him as a diversion and target Fisher/Jones/Hennessy? (I remember the 2018 team did that after Doss got a ton of preseason hype)
• Cleeland was under center way more than any Davis QB I've seen since the Gould era. Was there some concern that he wasn't seeing the defense well enough from shotgun or am I reading (pardon the pun) too much into it?

Haven’t quite done the math but sac area UCD fans may have TV access for close to the same number of games as some fans of MWC teams (6 games including these and the ESPN2 game — same as SJSU)

I wonder if anything is in the works for non televised hoops games, or at least some of them that would otherwise be on MW+.

Since it's the last week for offseason talk I wanted to share a hare-brained idea I had, based loosely on a thread on the Montana forum about potentially playing an entire schedule of Big Sky games. An alternate proposal in the thread was to spin off the perennially weaker conference teams then play a round robin of only the stronger BSC teams.

My proposal is a bit of a hybrid where BSC operates in a 2-division pro/rel structure (similar to European Soccer). It's easier to visualize with an even number of teams so I'll outline it assuming at some point there are 14 teams in the BSC:

• 7 Teams in BSC A that play a round robin, the highest of which in the standings wins the auto bid.
• 7 Teams in BSC B that play a round robin
• Each team plays 3 teams in the other division, with preference given to protected rivals. These count for tiebreakers in standings.

At the end of each season, the bottom two (or three) teams in BSC A are swapped with the top two or 3 of BSC B. All teams are eligible for the playoff, but only BSC A teams are eligible for the conference championship and autobid. The idea is it promotes good SoS for the likely playoff teams but also makes the season meaningful and doable for your UNCs and PSUs. A team could theoretically go 4-6 and still have an exciting last week of the season by getting promoted to BSC A with a key win.

Great stuff!

I'm guessing the New Mexico, Grand Canyon, and UNLV games both home and away will all be televised at least, wondering what else will get picked up. Hopefully we can pack the house (or at least fill the lower bowl) for some of the big MWC matchups to put on a good showing.

The English Championship is something like the 6th best soccer league in the world. I went to a Championship game (Watford) a few months ago and the season ticket holders sitting with me were complaining how hard it was to get promoted into the Premier League. Hopefully the Wrexham show along with Ted Lasso are helping build US appreciation for how storied and exciting even non-Premiership football is in the UK, and how big of a deal it is for players like Max to get significant time there.

In terms of ambiance and attendance, it definitely felt like my experiences at MLS games. Very "big time" (just not Manchester/Arsenal big) and not comparable to minor leagues in US sports. So it's awesome for Max to have a chance to build some brand recognition as a starter and hopefully star.

What type of smart TV do you have? I was able to get it on my Roku TV, just had to make sure to download MW+ and not the older Mountain West app

Gotcha -- looks like those are the away games at conferences like the Big West that have ESPN partnerships. At our level I guess it still might be the norm for away noncon games.

Where did you see the ESPN+ inclusion by any chance? It makes sense to me but I haven't found anything from the MWC on it