Last year the trifecta of student attendance, stadium attendance, and revenue were all set apparently. It sounds like ticket revenue is not too much of a concern because it's flowing with the general increased popularity of the program.

I'd also argue that student attendance is vital considering an (apparent minority) of the students are trying to advance measures to defund athletics. There's an existential need to get students into the games, which could long-term be worth sacrificing a few more sections as student sections. (I think that's what happened on Sat; two of the East Side sections were empty until students filled them, so there was a reduced total number of normal tickets for sale)

My understanding from some web surfing about it last year (the formation or one very similar to it gets hits under the "Swinging Gate" and the color guy did call it that yesterday) is that half the advantage is forcing the other team to spend time preparing for it and creating momentary confusion for the kick blocking team.

Theoretically if you put Tompkins in on the kicking team or line up in the Gate before shrinking to a standard kick formation then Weber has to have personnel out there to defend him and/or mill around until they're sure the Aggies are going to kick or run. My borderline conspiracy theory is that real reason Hawkins showed it last night was to give Gomez slightest additional measure of security next week for PATs, which we know from SDSU can make the difference and area an area of concern.

I'm guessing the numbers in the tweet are redeemed student tickets + sold normal tickets.

My understanding from a variety of discussions over the years is that a sellout is basically whatever the fire marshall says it is. So I can believe 12k or so were actually in the stadium and they stalled on announcing attendance until ticket redemption for late-arriving students dwindled off.

Regarding the game, best experience in UCDH stadium maybe ever IMO. GREAT crowd, dwindled a little at the end but makes sense, it was chilly, we were winning, and the students needed to go enjoy their first weekend in the dorms. Good fan engagement, clever giveaways, classic quirky band show, concession lines weren't terrible compared to what I've seen, mobile ticketing was smooth once I got the email, etc. Good food truck selection too. Really feels like the AD is listening, especially on "easy-win" gameday experience issues.

Of course everything is better when the offense starts of red-hot. Similar concerns with other folks on here that the offense sputtered a little in the middle, but on the other hand I'm thinking we can still wear teams down on the ground mid-game so long as we're in reach or in the lead. I seem to remember that's pretty much what happened at Tulsa back then, we stopped getting TDs as their defense held for large stretches -- but they were so tired after chasing HR and Gilliam all day that the Aggies could chew clock at will at the end.

I know there are disadvantages to being predictable, but there's just such a "cool" factor to the offense when Tompkins comes in at the redzone or two point conversion. It doesn't always work, but it's great to UCD basically challenge the other team to a physical battle and you know TT is going to give it his all to make Magic happen regardless of what gets thrown at him defensively or the stakes on the line. By my count the wildcat was the go-ahead scoring play three times in the last two seasons, which a stunning amount considering by now everyone's seen it on film since the CJ Spencer days.

Our core base is 100% aging. Or to put it another way, there’san age group of about age 22-32 in which we don’t have a fan base. This is the full consequence we’re feeling from those awful sputtering years under Gould with mediocre teams and bad marketing. Covid did not help either.

If I tell an Aggie or local resident my age that I have Davis season tickets the universal reaction is “Oh I heard/remember that Davis is terrible at football”. Doesn’t matter that we’ve had as many winning seasons under Hawkins as we had <4 win seasons under Gould by now, if you lose a fan they stay lost because they never bother to look into Aggie ball again.

I’m in the Young Alumni section but there is no actual section, I don’t know if anyone else sitting there is actually young alumni who purchased season tickets. It all seems to be player families and students sneaking in for better seats.

I know we need water but I’d be really frustrated if this game is our first rainfall in a while lol

Just as an update, I called and got it resolved. I never got the email, even in spam, that was supposed to be sent. It was very weird.

I don't think it is today.

However, apparently the freshmen are gettign their own information streams about the game because it's officially an orientation event. So it could be they're running and have already been told where to go by Orientation leaders and such

Is anyone actually able to access their season ticket bar codes? I've just had a series of conflicting messages that are getting on my nerves:

1. Invited to ticket pickup event
2. Event cancelled, email said tickets would be mailed
3. Called office, they told me they would be all digital tickets
4. No tickets listed on my account logging into ticket site from desktop
5. Game appears under my account when logging into mobile, told to check 48 hours before event for actual ticket
6. Check tonight (within 48 hours); mobile site STILL says to wait until 48 hours before event, but also says that there's no mobile pass going to be available anyway?

I'm sure this is all going to be fine and I'm not going to be denied entry to the game or anything, but this brings me back back to the minor league kind of logistics problems that haunted Athletics back when I went to school. Having a reliable way to deliver tickets to your season ticket holders when you had 9 months advance notice that they were going to go to the game, and being able to properly communicate what that delivery method would be, should have been solved literally decades ago no???

EDIT: Searched my mail again, found a packet. Got excited that this might be the solution only that it's pretty much an empty envelope with a flyer that says my tickets will be emailed to me as links. I received no such email.

Omg

Also, oof

Blocked PAT return is 2 pts yes

Someone tell me what happened online score didn’t update lol

Can’t watch or listen today but it sounds like our defense has taken a step up but is just utterly not being put into a position to succeed

we beat Idaho in HR’s first start and Weber last year and I THINK they were both ranked barely in the top 25. That said the point could easily be amended to that we’ve never beaten anyone who conceivably could be a real playoff contender on the road.

A win today would massively outpace most other FCS wins I can think of in the Aggie program history.

It seemed like we ran tempo some percentage of the time -- admittedly some of that was 2-minute offenses at the end of each half -- but there definitely wasn't that unrelenting speed of the first couple of years. If I was paying more attention maybe I would have noticed a pattern where Hastings was only running a no-huddle offenses after prolonged breaks or something where multiple plays were hashed out on the sidelines.

I noticed Cal started picking up the pace against us to great effect mid game.

Summation of things that didn’t go the ags’ way (not all of which were controllable, like the interception call) led this to be a somewhat less competitive game than it could have been, but still frustrating. Kicking concerns me, and I thought I saw Hastings staring down receivers too much from the nosebleeds. Also do we just not have the speed at WR to throw deep at all? It’s a bit conspicuous that the go to people both in long situations and special team ball handling positions seem to be RBs/TT

For the positives, I liked the majority of playcalling and the general commitment by coaches to stick to game plan and personnel . We were in this game at the start of the fourth even without particularly lucky breaks, and that’s something. (I’m not going to call UG’s run a lucky break, you need your best player and senior captain to make explosive plays to win big games). Some good wrinkles thrown in with three different people capable of passing all in the same packages.

Im of the opinion that BSC defenses will generally not have the manpower to stuff the wildcat snaps the way a PAC team can. I’m thinking there will be more low risk but med/high reward options on the table once conference starts, which will be a relief because we might be going for a lot of fourth downs and 2 pt conversions.

SJSU is up a score at the half against Portland, but the Vikings look like the better team. PSU can seem to move the ball at will vs SJSU except for a few miscues in the end zone.

Ironically the Cal writer is higher on Hastings than most of this forum.

He happened to play in the games we lost but I'm not sure how much is on him -- those games included Sac State, EWU, and part of the SDSU game as I recall (and SDSU made life brutal for HR as well).

I'm of the opinion he could be fine -- in this offense in particular given where our known talent and experience is -- if he's making throws when he needs to and otherwise the talented backs, TT, and Hutton are mostly advancing the ball. I'm thinking back to to grad school where SDSU's QB (the one who started against Davis) was a pocket passer whose job was understood to be 12 attempts a game and otherwise let the backs take turns grinding down the defense.

Problem with that is if Hastings' job is to hand off 3/4 of the time, why not have someone more mobile primarily take the snaps in order to add another threat?

The video is difficult to watch because it gets blocked by the automatic tracking blockers on web browsers.

I disabled some security features in Edge and watched it. The interviewer leads with mentioning Hastings won the job and Dunning gives a take on what he likes about Hastings and a bit of the "QB U" history at Davis.

He says the day before Hawkins was insisting that there were multiple candidates from camp and the starter would be revealed Saturday, but that "it kinda leaked out that Miles is the guy, which I don't think surprised anybody".

So not clear to me if Dunning was responding to the interviewer's leading question, or they both had a mutual source, or it was something Dunning mentioned before the camera started rolling, or what.