1 Day to Max and team USA open.

Here is a great article by UCB writer and stats dude, on Why the USA falls short in mens soccer.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-isnt-the-us-better-at-soccer

Bummer Germany 2 USA 1. A close game which means team USA should be competitive all the way through the tourney. Germany 4 times champs is a European heavy weight.

Player ranking of Arfsten from the pundits.

Max Arfsten (72'): 5

Came on for Tim Ream with 18 minutes to go, allowing Auston Trusty to move centrally. Didn't provide his usual attacking flair, failing to connect with his two crosses and unable to lift the forward line from his wing-back position.

Score not as high as the first game. USA opens in about 6 days.

If you want to delve into how good Arsten is and how important he might be today against Germany and in the entire World Cup tourney here is an excellent YouTube with Max

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36K1nJhUjCI

Go USA go Max!!!!

Tomorrow big game for Arfsten and team USA( ranked 16th in the world), they play Germany( ranked 10th( in the world at Soldier stadium.

Arsten's added bio. The California native has earned 16 caps (13 starts) for the USMNT, recording one goal and five assists since making his debut against Venezuela in 2025.

Arfsten's five assists in 2025 are the most registered by a USMNT player in a calendar year since 2019, according to the Columbus Crew's official website.

GO USA and Arfsten!!!!!

Max making the 2026 World Cup squad is amazing. Looking for him and the USNT team to play hard and stack some impressive games next month. The pundits are pretty down on our team and are questioning having some many defenders. I cannot wait to see how it all plays out.

You are so right about the UC system. They have invested 100's of millions of dollars in the last few decades with retainer fees to firms to make sure that the best firms in CA do NOT go against them. I am sure that the handlers for the Vet school donation have already locked up the donation before going public. Rocko having an outside firm to look at the UCD's department is all the defense that the school needs to avoid a loss in court.

Yes men's horse polo won a couple of times and that pissed off the blue bloods. They started to have invites instead of a national championship and kept the Aggies out. I went on a quick AI search and did NOT find a lot of information on the past titles. The latest they had was in 2018 and did NOT include Princeton and any Ivies but did include a CAL Poly team.

They started a UCD polo club in 2021 but the old polo field on campus is no longer in use and hasn't been for at least 30 years. The current site for horse polo is in Yuba City.

I have no horse or dog in the fight but I feel as if the ICA department did a terrible injustice to the team, and their families. I see the 3rd party hire as a smoke screen for Rocko's desire to promote stunt.

I have been to 3 Equestrian events at UCD. The format of traveling and the draw of the horse is a very cool aspect of the sport. I enjoyed the entire event every time I went. UCD has great facilities and I enjoyed every minute of my day.

I feel for all the riders and the coaches to lose their sports status. The coaches will lose their job at the end of the contract and the program will take a HUGE step backward.

As for the cost, the ICA department did NOT spend large sums. The horses are donated, the families and others covered most of the expenses.

While neither stunt or equestrian are true NCAA sports but emerging I do NOT see the need to cut and promote. Doing a quick look at California schools it looks like we have CBU, SLO and UOP. So no high level school has a stunt and three programs does not mean local or regional competition.

This is Rocko's department and he is the one that should take the heat for this decision. I see it as short sighted and doing way more harm than good.

NCAA tournament for the Aggie waterpolo starts today. We play the 3rd seeded Stanford squad in their home pool. UCD is seeded 6th. I was at the September game against the Cardinals. We shot well from the outside and the Stanford goalie did NOT have a sharp game. The Cardinals scored most of their goals from Aggie turnovers. It would be a big upset but tighter team defense and then shooting like we own the Cardinal keeper could lead to an upset. For the Cardinal to win the tournament they have to win 3 games in 3 days at their home pool. We are in a good position--GO AGS l

Great season-tough loss in the tourney. UCD RPI's pre Big West tourney was 48 (very impressive). UCSB was 51 and Cal Poly 54. With all the automatic bids I think UCD is on the outside looking in. Not sure about how volleyball's NIT works, but they might head that direction. Great season for a the very BEST UCD volleyball in our school's history!

Age played the Trees on Sept 6th at home. Lost 6-12, but the Ags shot very well from the outside. Most of the Cardinals goals were off defensive mistakes. Will be a big task to take them down at their own pool. If they can continue to beat the Stanford goalie and play great team defense, they have a puncher's change. Very excited for Dan and the team to get to the big dance!!!!

In the past it was the student station KDVS 90.3.

Dan Conners has his team on fire. The Big West has a great history of volleyball. Let's hope the 2025 team can net UCD first BW conference title and go to the big dance. The team's current RPI is 62!

Private capital has no place in higher education. The power four schools should throw off their athletic departments . Doing so will drop the facade of education and let it be clear that the athletics department will function as a professional sports league. Leave traditional NCAA operations to mid-majors, D II and D. III. Our football and mid-major football teams do NOT need to be beat up in body bag games for 300-600,000 dollars. I am not surprised by these discussions, just by how quickly the power 4 landscape has changed.

I was in Paris last year for the para-games. It was wonderful. Only great interactions with everyone. Sure that the city was cleaned up, but the Parisians that were in the city. and outside the city had great attitudes. Went to several events where the city brought thousands of school children 14 -8 years olds to events. They brought a huge positive amount of energy. It was such a win-win the athletes inspired the crowd and the crowd inspired the athletes. A huge highlight of attending sporting events. I hope your trip is wonderful like mine.

Riveraggie The Bluebloods of football and men's basketball have generational tribes that have put money into the schools. This money in the way of facilities and traditional excellence generate more money. They have also taken some of the money and used the resources that come with so much money to develop ways to decrease competitiveness and increase their dominance. I fear that this is accelerating.

Kentucky has started a non-profit to increase payment to its athletes and I believe that this will be the standard for P-4 schools.
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/05/20/privatization-of-collegiate-athletics-begins-kentucky-announces-champions-blue-llc/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Non-P-4 schools are going to become less relevant and sports other than true money generating sports (football and men's basketball will also become less relevant.

I fear that the money gap between the p-4 schools and non p-4 schools will widen every year. People and organizations with money tend to gather money at a faster rate than those groups and or people with lesser money. If this happens I see that the P-4 schools are soon going to keep everything internal with only having p-4 schools play p-4 schools. I fear that they will morph into 4 conferences of 16 with 2 sub conferences of 8. Their out of conference games will be with another p-4 conference and they will have conference show downs. Last year's top team will play the other team's top team and the 2nd place will play etc. This would bring in more revenue for them and build a bigger moat for the rest of the teams.

This move will help out UCD aquatics as they will be in the same conference and we will have local rivals. Good for St Mary's for adding sports.

I have heard that they will start construction on an aquatic center on campus. Till then they will be using the SODA center 6 minute drive from campus.

Stats that occurred in the Mercer game arereal in my mind, I watched the game and believe that they should count. As for letting AI add to those stats I am against that. In a normal season over the course of many games multiple factors change stats. Often in blowout games non starters will garner stats as they mop up time in the 4th quarter. Again I don't think stats should be extrapolated by the minutes lost.

I have no problem when an MLB game is called in the 7th inning with the results being official for both the team's win or loss plus the players' stats are kept. Evidently the NCAA football rules committee has issues following baseball. My thought bubble is a different way to handle either the current NCAA model or following baseball's rules.

You toss. a coin to let the winner make the choice of which official to ask. Some games a team may have 85% chance of winning.

As for players stats I believe the reason why they have not counted is because the game one of the metrics to determine an official game is to have an outcome. This can be changed and might be easier to change than having a game determined off the field.