On the other hand, coaches will feel free to play freshmen who are useful Won't have that dilemma where they need a guy like Brayden Rosa, where they had to burn his redshirt year to have him on kick coverage in a fifth game.

Not too much. Replaces the five years to play four plus a redshirt with a simple five years. The few players who never redshirted, like Ty Richardson gain a year

The Davis roster must have anticipated this change because they list players by academic year, so players who’ve been on the team for four years are called seniors, but most still have a year remaining in the five year window so can come back next year. Many of those guys could under the old rule because they redshirted in one of the early years.

The reason behind the move is to get rid of the six to nine year players. The five year window to play being at the latest five years from the academic year following their turning 19, so after the current players age out Division 1athletes will be at most 24 years old, unless they served in military or were on a religious mission

I should mention that no current players suffer, the players on the team can use either the old or new system to qualify.

up to five years of eligibility if they enroll in college no later than the academic year after their 19th birthday. The new rule streamlines a significant portion of the Division I rule book by eliminating season-of-competition limits, sport-specific eligibility and redshirt rules, and eligibility extension waivers.
Players who get an additional year are those few who never redshirted (medical or otherwise),

I’m rooting for them both to get a fair chance. One has been with the team about six month longer than the other. By the end of Fall camp that will be a non-factor.

The guy who was most surprising judging by spring camp reporting was Julian Fernandez. Be interesting to see how he develops. As a HS prospect he looked like a guy whose athleticism hadn’t caught up with his size. Now a short year later he was making plays and 40 pounds heavier.

The Davis defense is always going to be suspect until they put together a dominant year. They usually are in the upper third of Big Sky defenses, but not at the top, and they slipped some last year. They averaged yielding 30 points a game, Now they lose some major contributors like Psyk, Riddick, Rutchena, Stanley, Batson. They were victims of an inordinate number of injuries, but pundits aren’t going to look past last years stats completely despite the Connors twins.

In the NIL rules what is given has to have some relation to the value of the athlete’s name image and likeness. Is Pinnicks endorsement worth a new truck to a dealer? It might be if he starts and stars. Is it worth a loaner truck, probably. The NCAA reviews NIL deals now. Pinnick probably got some revenue sharing too which the school can do whatever they want with.

The primary source is 247sports.com . They rate players on a scale that goes to 100, based on their in house evaluation. 98 -100 are five stars, 90-97 are four stars.
3 stars are players rated 80 - 89, and vary a lot in perceived quality, Davis very rarely gets any in the top half of 3 stars.

https://247sports.com/article/247sports-football-recruiting-rankings-what-the-ratings-mean-when-they-are-released-what-matters-who-is-on-the-team--81574/

That makes sense. I’ve noticed this year that somethings changed. There are guys who apparently have a lot of offers including lesser FBS schools, but no stars.

I’ve only paid attention to college recruiting for a few years, inspired by your lists, but thats long enough to be skeptical about HS player rankings. Some of our best recruits have been highly rated, while some other highly rated players never play. The ratings are too influenced by whether a player has pro dimensions, which very weakly correlates to college performance. Whichever QB Plough choses is going to have the spotlight and they’re both redshirt freshmen, so have a good shot at freshmen awards.

These two guys have a print Big Sky preview at at FCS Football Central
In this podcast they say Ty Richardson had a learning curve when in fact he missed games 4 thru 9 because of injury.
The number of players who played 200 snaps obscures the fact that Davis’ defense lost 5 of the 6 top tacklers from last season.

We’ve got Sac as a test case, let’s see how changing categories impacts Sacs attendance. Ohio, Kent State, Massachusetts and Toledo are their home conference games. Their two contests with directional schools are road games.

I'm agnostic on whether to move up. If Davis can't draw fans and viewers from Sacramento they shouldn't, but thats an open question to me, maybe someone knows where ticket buyers and media viewers live.

Davis is about half the size of Fort Collins but many times more people live within 30 miles of Davis. If Davis just draws from the city of Davis, then they should stay where they are. College football teams usually can draw from a region.

They've got most of the better teams.represented I.e. teams that have appeared in various top 25 pre-season lists
I've seen more mention of Idaho State as a ranked team this year than Idaho. Southern Utah might deserve having a game.

He is rated 85 on 247. That's about as high as we get. But only about half the recruits at that 3+ level live up to expectations. But he is a versatile player.

Parker Johnson (PJ) class of 2026 who played for two different high schools in 2025, announced he committed to Davis a few weeks ago. This was mentioned in the 2026 preview thread.
Team hasn’t confirmed that to my knowledge. Apparently had multiple FBS offers, but ended up without a home.

The Davis run defense was really good in 2005 Stanford averaged 2.5 yards per carry on 30 attempts. NDSU rushed for 3 yards on 23 carries. #10 ranked Cal Poly gained 50 yards on 33 carries. I miss the shut down run defense we had in that era.

These are from the 2024 season and Stony Brook went from 0-10 in 2023 to 8-4 in 2024

None of the 24 million sac is committed to includes items that improve to quality of the team. More scholarships more.coaches, better facilities, revenue sharing are in addition.