early in the game my wife said 'we'll never win, too many man-buns'. i think what she meant is that we looked much softer than Cal in the 1st half.

but, yeah, the man-buns are a really bad look.

I could NOT agree more!

this is kind of a cool video from his first day on the job:

Meet Dan Hawkins

i've heard the 'we should join the MWC' from some of my old teammates for the past 6 months or so, and i can't see how that's feasible. first, why would the MWC want Davis? they have 12 teams now with a conference championship. add Davis and who else? Its not clear what the attraction would be to them to add another northern california team, when they could look to places like texas (UTSA, maybe). secondly, where do we get the money? SJ State paid $2M initiation fee to join. we'd have to add something like 20 scholarships for football and the same number for women (i think that's the Title IX rule). we'd have to increase the size of the stadium to meet the FBS minimum (i think its something close to 20000). and the budgets would go way up to meet the levels of other MWC (especially those in California). third, do our other sports want to abandon the Big West for the Mountain West? Its not going to be a 'football-only' like we have in the Big Sky.

let's focus on getting competitive here. we used to draw 10-11K for games against 'the sisters of the poor' (to paraphrase Bob Dunning), no reason we can't get back there and beyond for Big Sky opponents and FCS playoff games. I'm not sure how we would draw on those wonderful Thursday night 7:30 MWC kickoffs for ESPN2 -> Spartan Stadium is a ghost town for those and even Boise doesn't fill up for those games.

Dan did a fair amount of announcing for ESPN and had participated in a SIRIUS radio show about college football. He's remained in contact with plenty of coaches around the nation, so hopefully he'll have a good list of up-and-comers that can join the staff and have a big impact.

i thought he was referring to a question about 'who was the slowest, least athletic guy you ever saw play at ANY level?'

i had heard through the grapevine that we are at U-San Diego. probably on Sept 16, but that's just hearsay.

just curious...did anyone ELSE here get a shout out during the press conference?

i believe this has been in the works for some time. i know dan had concerns the last go-around about facilities, salaries, support, etc., so maybe some prominent alum ponied up some bucks to get that taken care of. at the causeway, there were many of our teammates (dan and i played together one year) that i hadn't seen in quite some time, some of whom had contributed big bucks to the stadium effort. not too surprising that they were there in retrospect.

my only concern is that he's been out of college coaching for 5 years. he's was the head coach of the US national team at some World Championships, and the offensive coordinator of a team in Vienna down in Australia but away from NCAA for a bit. he'll bring alot of energy, a more innovative offense, and hopefully some experienced coaches. and, hopefully, alot of support from some alum/donors. he does come in with eyes wide open -> realizes the changes that need to be put in place to succeed at this level (more than good old 'Aggie Pride').

his son has been coaching (did a stint at Ohio State as a grad assistant, was an OC at an oregon high school, worked with Dan at numerous overseas clinics). wouldn't be surprised to join the Aggie staff, but, hopefully not in a high profile job (like OC).

completely agree to that! a power run game is a really difficult approach, unless you have plenty of quality depth. that's a tall order for FCS.

i think the challange in recreating the high flying offenses that we used to have, is the current NCAA restrictions on practice time. it times alot of time on the field to implement a dozen screen pass packages every week, time that they are no longer allowed. same with the precise downfield progression passing packages; you just don't see offenses like that in college any more. more and more of the 'read-react' run/pass option that we see week-in and week-out in the Big Sky.

I miss the good old days. i DON'T miss the 4 hour long wednesday night practices (or the in-season 2-a-days we had before school started!) that we endured perfecting the offensive schemes of those days.

USD plays D1 in other sports, so i suppose we could do that. save alot of money on scholarships, but lose out on quality players. be really hard to maintain the rivalry with both poly and sac each year. we could probably do very well at that level, but...........i'd rather strive to get to poly's level of success, then USD's.

hope i'm awake at 9:00. not sure if its the turkey that makes me sleepy or the 4-5 glasses of red wine. i'll go with the turkey.

good test tonight. weber is a 4-point favorite coming off a big sky championship (regular season and tournament).

i'm fine with it also; i think he had made his decision awhile back and is hitting the ground running. much difference than the last coaching search. guys like nick alexander (ucla) and o'brien (usc) went on to coach at major universities, so i don't think they will fall into the 'we were smaller and slower back in our day, but we overcame it with Aggie Pride' mindset. i've talked with both and they see that some changes need to be made before any coach can be successful.

O'Brien was at the game on Saturday as Blue's guest, which is the first time I've seen him since the 2014 causeway. Soi think this was in the works for a little

one thing i'd like to rebut in the article is the 'we could move up or down' sentiment. hopefully 6th can ring in on this but i am under the impression if any of your major sports are classified D1, then football must also be D1. so, we could have only moved football down if we were willing to do that for all other sports (like basketball and football). that was, as i understood, the big reason for us moving up in football. NCAA regulations say : 'Division I is subdivided based on football sponsorship. Schools that participate in bowl games belong to the Football Bowl Subdivision. Those that participate in the NCAA-run football championship belong to the Football Championship Subdivision. A third group doesn’t sponsor football at all. The subdivisions apply only to football; all other sports are considered simply Division I.'

encouraged to see so many former players on the list, spanning several decades. good to see blue reaching out; that's sorely been missing in the past.

I believe that the assistants remain under contract for some amount of time (first of the year?), and they are supposed to continue recruiting as part of their contract. of course, most will be spending a good portion of their time looking for a new job, but they are supposed to recruit. some may (or may not) be retained with a new coach.

here is the link to the site asking for input that was included in the letter from Blue about the move. pretty comprehensive, so this move has been in the making for some time.

Input Survey