I agree with this x1000 Mike. I think if we move for football in the next few years like I hope, that move to the MW for all other sports is going to look like the smartest move ever. I do think outside of our Aggie Sports Talk bubble most people assume (even with this sac news) that the MW wanted to add Davis for football in the next few years but understood we needed/need time to build up our stadium before joining and that is why they added Davis and not Sac. Again, I am still in the boat that moving to the MW for all sports but football basically confirms we want to join for football eventually (otherwise I don’t really understand the move totally). I am still going to stand by my believe that the admin plans to move to the FBS in the next few years after joining the FBS, but I’m a hell of a lot happier with that plan than joining the MAC for $20 million dollars and moving other sports to the Big West like Sac is.

I have some annoyances like anyone dealing with big entities and the speed of moving things along, but I already think our other sports moving to the MW is huge for our national profile and football joining in a bit will only increase that, but I’m perfectly fine with what we have been doing compared to the Sac craziness.

The MAC move gets you into the FBS but leaves sac still playing directional regional universities that struggle with attendance in large. Sure, if sac can win their way to the top of the conference or get an invite to another conference eventually that’s great, but that sounds like a tough, long road in the far north of Michigan and Ohio.

Oh by the way, I’ve made a few posts as DavisDude on https://wcsboard.com/forum/8-sports-forum/

Multiple members welcomed me to the board and hoped for more Davis fans, so if anybody wants to join, come on over. Spread the word of the Mighty Davis Ags.

wcsboards seems to be the biggest group of Mountain West/ New Pac fans online.

thank you for this! Really wanted to chat it up with some MW folks so this is super helpful :)

Part of a pro argument I hear from our sac guy is that it opens thems to 2-1 home series with FBS schools. I haven’t scanned the MAC schedules that closely so maybe Central Michigan (one of their attendance leaders) is hosting a Big10 or ACC team…

Enough on this subject from me. Predicting the FBS landscape in two-three years is beyond me.

The Sacramento media has always favored Sac State. I was a student in the late 60'-early 70"s. The then Sports Information Director, Jim Doan kept track of coverage in the Bee, the now-defunct Union, and the TV stations. Even through the run of Joe Carlson/Bob Hamilton basketball championships/small college tournament appearances and the first few years of the Jim Sochor era, Sac State had a consistent 2-1 or more advantage (number of articles or TV features, length of articles, etc)>. This during a times UCD not only beat the Hornets head to head, but while Sac St finished no higher than mid-conference.

If I remember correctly, Sac's initial offer to the Mac was $10 million buy-in, and no media money for 2 years (the Mac's current media deal with ESPN+ expires in 2027). The reports are now $18 million buy-in, and we don't yet know if there's a longer wait for media money, or a restriction on competing for conference championships, etc. At this point it could be a very conference friendly deal (pretty much take it or leave it). We also don't know what it may cost Sac State to buy-out of their already scheduled games. Knowing Sac's ambitions and desperate need for a football schedule, I bet the other schools all demanded a financial guarantee

The current MAC media deal gives each current FULL conference member just south of $700,000 a year for rights to ALL sports. The MAC needs to start negotiating a new deal soon. As a football-only member, Sac will only get a reduced share, whatever the may be. As Sailorgabe has pointed out, the media landscape is also changing. The MAC may potentially be able to get a relatively better deal than now, but perhaps not. Potential, as someone once said, means you haven't done it yet. Regardless, Sac State will also be giving up a grant of rights to the MAC for the duration of the new deal. So, if the MAC is the Hornets' stepping stone, they're going to have a hefty buyout to switch conferences.

Sac will only be able to switch conferences if someone wants them. That means they need to be VERY successful. A few months ago, some people on this forum were predicting that the Marion-led football team and the Bibby-led basketball team would lay waste to the Big Sky, and in football challenge for the national championship. There was also worry by some that Sac was now the local/national media darling, and that would cause huge problems for UCD (recruiting, etc.). How'd that work out?

Yes, this may work out for Sac State. Yes, it may make our task more challenging. But that doesn't mean that the way UCD is proceeding is incorrect.

great post. Two things can be true at once. It really will be an interesting experiment to see how the 2 strategies for the schools (Davis and Sac) look in 5 years time.

funny. More like someone gave AST Tylenol PM and they’ve been asleep at the wheel from a development standpoint for years.

Like RiverAggie said, the middle initial is damning. Yes, the cost of admission is too high.

But what about the cost of non-admission? If you (a non-alumni) can choose between a Sac St, UCD, or your local HS game in a weekend, you won’t be going to the UCD game. We just got relegated guys. Stop acting like anyone gives a hoot about FCS in the region, especially when you now have an FBS team to choose from.

This is not entirely unrelated to football. The programs that are having success at the gate and with Gameday revenues are those that have figured out how to broaden participation in a premium experience beyond suites. Look at what Cal and UW have done converting stadium areas to bigger club areas with TVs, different food options and pricey drinks. UCU has the bootleg version of this under the basket. Irvine and SLO have pregame hoops club events where they feed the donors, fill them up with drinks and the staff comes in and breaks down the other team ahead of the game. This sort of offering appeals to a different segment of the market. At Davis, UCUC shows that simply having more seats does not translate to attendance. Same with football. Even the games with attendance listed over capacity had plenty of open seating. The addition of suites is only beneficial to the extent that Mrak wants to push some of the university partnerships more heavily into athletics. But suites are expensive and don’t generate a ton of cash if you only have 5 to sell (subtracting UC Health, Credit Union, Chancellor). A much greater ROI opportunity is a wine garden one side and a bbq/brew seating section in one of the end zones. Add TVs to appeal to non UCD die hards and the average spend will increase 4x. SLO and Montana State opened up these sections over the past couple seasons and are doing well with them.

Hope you enjoy the Mac or your local hs game.

Davis is building something similar to a club area that’s the $50mm right now.

I do agree about the issue of having an FBS team in the area and people not caring as much about our team since we are in fcs.... except that I think Sac needs to WIN and win regularly to actually be able to do that. If Sac is mediocre in the MAC, I don't think that many people will care about playing Western Michigan or Toledo compared to Montana State. If Davis is still making deep runs in the FCS playoffs and Sac is winning 4 games in the MAC, I dont see a visibility problem. This is coming from a guy (me) who agrees that we should move to the MW for football sooner rather than later but I'll have to see it to believe it that Sac is going to triumph over us right away..

appreciate your thoughtful post. Yes, for Sac to make noise they need to win at least enough to go bowling. That’s a mediocre bar for them. However, even without Sac being at a higher level than us we couldn’t get anyone beyond the student/alumni base. Heck, we couldn’t even get the employee base to show up, or we’d have more than 15k every game easily. This makes it much harder to get the CFB fan who wants entertainment, which, due to marketing and in stadium effort we’d already fallen behind Sac. We needed to double our effort already to compete with FCS Sac, now we need to go double double animal style.

also…how ironic that we did not want to schedule Sac for the Causeway anymore because we thought we held the cards, yet, now it’s them who really can’t schedule us.

Your average person doesn't say, "Oh, it's FBS, Akron is coming to town, let's go to the game."

Is there a personal connection, is the team winning, fun team, relateable players, enjoyable experience, reasonable cost, food options, related events (kids, after game downtown stroll), atmopshere, safe, etc.

This is also affected bc we apparently don't market well on campus, or off campus, which isn't solved by adding more administrative bodies.

Thats what I was saying, I don't think the MAC with Sac will draw even close to Davis if we join the MW and play those teams. I'm just saying if sac can have really good seasons in the mac they will get some national exposure.

oh…IF we join the MWC. But that isn’t as obvious now. We have to be cognizant the financials are a little tougher now with Sac getting first dibs at the corporate money in the region. I also laugh when our stadium/arena naming rights are just parts of the University (UCDHS and Credit Union). We need actual outside money. Not reallocated internal dollars.

Currently, we need to start drawing on ag and wine money, which, it doesn’t seem like we are doing a great job of in ICA, or the 35,000 seats stadium from the early 2000’s would be 10+ years old.

https://i-3n4b60g25ka6-cdn.plushcontent.com/uploads/files/rp/zzkb09l3n4e63i6k.png

Late hire coach, late recruiting, and if there are 5 east coast trips, it won't be pretty.

Right now they're looking at 6 months to make Cal Expo playable.

The credit union is not part of the UC Davis administration?

I also think that the stadium plan in the early 2000s was pushed back from being built out to 30k because of steel prices being outrageous at the time.

I don't see why we would have moved all our other sports to the MW if we didn't have a plan to move to the MW for football? The administration moving all sports out of the Big West to the MW and not having a plan to eventually move our football team (our most popular sport) to that conference makes no sense. I will be as disgruntled as anyone if the university doesn't have that planned out, but I really just don't see any explanation of that happening. Moving to the MW in all sports first just seems like a smart way around insane fees to move to the FBS if we joined as a football only member in the next few years.

I also think to prepare for the MW for football, adding the new suites section that are already planned and filling in a grass berm (where the chancellors tent is right now) or adding additional bleachers on top of the student section side could easily get us to a stadium ready for FBS. I think aiming for a capacity of 18-20k would be a realistic plan to join the MW.

This is more accurate on how a the stadium will look. The right side is in progress with the new club section/ suites.

I’m sure there’s a plan, but just like steel prices, circumstances change and you have to react instead of make excuses. Since 2000 we are mostly still saying why not, instead of we are. NDSU and Sac St. are game changers for the landscape of this whole thing. How conferences look and what they need, and the money side. We just lost access to a sizable chunk of money in Sac. It feels like our admin and many here aren’t even thinking about that.

yeah…currently. But our best image is literally a photo from a picture in a brochure. That’s the best image our AD can tweet/X as well. Not a good confidence builder to woo donors. Let’s see the real plans and real donation benchmarks for various phases of construction to start. Otherwise this image is no different than others our ICA and AD’s have previously pushed.

I think something like this on the student side and/or filling in a berm in addition to the current new suites would have us easily at the MW level. Get us to 20k and we would be realistic in capacity needs for now and ready for the MW.

First step in the $50mm for the upgraded club and suites… one step at a time.

My question is how long after the new club and suites are built do we have to wait to upgrade capacity on the other side. A bigger video board would be nice too.

It will be interesting to see if SAC being FBS actually will result in “corporate money” and increased attendance. It sure increases costs.
I wonder how many people in Sacramento could match the MAC schools with their state, or know anyone who ever went to one of these schools. Long time Davis fans know a couple of them from D2 days. Sac will have trouble selling itself as the attraction after last seasons hype turned out not to be fulfilled.
I think Sac may win a few games because the lower half of the MAC conference is not tougher than FCS competition.

I think getting the club suites built, and then announce new seating on the other side with a MW football announcement in 2028 or something sounds plausible. An announcement like "UC Davis has been ascending, and today we announce our transition to the FBS as a member of the Mountain West conference, in addition to a renovation of the east side of UC Davis Health Stadium will prepare Aggie Football for the future".

Also that’s why we need someone who is going to the wine tasting event to ask the questions and share with others.

If Davis could have a direct link to fundraising for the football stadium, that would go a long way.

that looks very doable

100%…and that group has to have reason to expand. I’m not willing to give my money like I did in the 2000’s to watch nothing real happen.

"also…how ironic that we did not want to schedule Sac for the Causeway anymore because we thought we held the cards, yet, now it’s them who really can’t schedule us."

I posted this three months ago:
https://www.kcra.com/article/71st-causeway-classic-uc-davis-sacramento-state/69516020

Starting after the 15 minute mark, UC Davis Athletics Director Rocko DeLuca said, "The reality is I don't like having the imbalance and support between the two programs, and until I see ultimately where Sac State is gonna land, I don't think it's fair to commit my student athletes to that until I know whether they are FBS, FCS, and see how that plays out."