By the way, all Mountain Conference teams are in EA Sports College Football 25 video game. That video game is unexpectedly so popular that two software developers are rumored to internally discuss starting a college basketball edition.

What are your thoughts about seeing the Aggies potentially being in future video games?

I happen to watch ABC News 7 right now, and Teddye Buchanan was just interviewed. He said there are 2000 guys in the transfer portal.

Michael Vick reporting dispute between ESPN's Schefter, Sacramento Bee reporter

https://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/espn-sacramento-state-dispute-michael-vick-19984939.php

They go in- depth in that article. I'll just highlight one part that is interesting to me:

"The ESPN reporter wrote that the school “has over $50 million in NIL.” If that seems like an astounding total, it’s because it is. The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel noted that this would amount to 2.5 times the size of Ohio State’s roster. Not only that, but the number is a bit of a miscalculation. Davidson pointed out that the total is supposed to be money pledged over the span of a decade from a booster group that is dependent on Sacramento State’s entering the Pac-12 — a head-spinning endeavor on its own."

I don't get free Sacramento Bee articles, and this is the most I can copy:

"National reports that former NFL Pro Bowl quarterback Mike Vick was closing in on becoming the next football coach at Sacramento State are premature at best, the Hornets confirmed Monday afternoon.

Two Sacramento State officials told The Sacramento Bee that Vick being selected to head the Hornets’ football program are not true as the school seeks to find a replacement for Andy Thompson, who left the Hornets after two seasons as head coach to rejoin Troy Taylor, this time as assistant head coach at Stanford.

Taylor hired Thompson before the 2019 season at Sacramento State as defensive coordinator, and the two enjoyed winning three Big Sky Conference championships. Sacramento State won three games this season amid a crush of injuries and tight, close losses, a year after making the FCS playoffs for the fourth consecutive season."

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/sports/article297196234.html#storylink=cpy

I probably wouldn't say the Big West Conference for Women's Basketball is rising.

Here's the Massey rankings before today's games:

139 UC Irvine
144 Hawaii
155 UC Davis
167 Long Beach State
214 UC Santa Barbara
224 UC Riverside
227 Cal Poly
273 UC San Diego
325 Cal State Fullerton
337 Cal State Northridge
346 Cal State Bakersfield

The conference is ranked #25.

Was there a reason why TY Johnson was benched for the final minutes of the game?

I'm guessing Grand Canyon has great attendance due to the rise of the mega-universities. Grand Canyon has over 100,000 enrolled online and in-person.

Here's an article which mentions Jim Les' perspective.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/hi/hawaii/sports/2024/12/10/hawaii-uc-davis-leaves-big-west-for-mountain-west-in-2026-?cid=app_share

I personally prefer to use median values to avoid skewed numbers.
The median ranking for the new Mountain West Conference is 122.
The current Big West's median ranking is 160.

On the other hand, I guess you would need to have outliers on the positive side, like UC Irvine, so that you'll decrease the chance of being a one-bid conference.

I copied this from username pblood40 in the Mountain West subreddit thread:

The biggest reason is that once you announce you are leaving FCS - FCS bans you from post season play. So if they are joining for football, they will likely not announce until after the FCS playoffs in January 2026

Props to Reno 1441 who found this info -

NCAA Bylaw 20.5.3 Championships Eligibility.

A member of Division I that has forwarded to the national office written notice of its intention to change its football membership classification from Championship Subdivision to Bowl Subdivision per Bylaw 20.5.2.1 no longer shall be eligible for participation in the Division I Football Championship.

I was curious to compare the 2026 Mountain West NCAAB Massey ratings vs. the 2024 Big West Massey ratings. This is what I see:

New Mountain West
New Mexico 77
Nevada 70
Grand Canyon 97
UNLV 110
UTEP 118
Wyoming 126
UC Davis 158
Hawaii 162
San Jose St 213
Air Force 293

Current Big West
UC Irvine 46
UC San Diego 99
UC Riverside 145
UC Santa Barbara 150
UC Davis 158
CS Northridge 160
Hawaii 162
Cal Poly 217
CS Bakersfield 228
Long Beach State 248
CS Fullerton 249

Who else is excited to see how this affects our recruiting?

I think the Big West is just Southern California now.

The funny thing about Rocko is that he initially led us to believe we are moving up with the upgraded stadium picture. He later gave us a response that strongly suggested we aren't moving up. He'll be tough to beat at a poker table.

We are all stunned and speechless.

Do you guys have a different opinion of Rocko now?

Who has the links to the archived message boards?

I remembered taking quantum physics many moons ago, and I complained to people that I will never ever see the words "eigenvector" and "eigenvalue" for the rest of my life.

That's good to know. I was worried that the creators of the second board did a hostile takeover that rubbed him the wrong way.