Great conversation with Scott Marsh. I really enjoyed it especially the discussion about Pinnick and the tough schedule we have to start the season with a young QB. Also liked the discussion about all the noise Sac has created across the causeway and it was nice to hear a bit about the new Aggie recruits for men's basketball too and Scott saying that the Ags have "some marquee games" scheduled for this fall. Exciting times for Aggie sports!
They have put the 2025 Roster back up on the web site.
I don’t see what has changed since it was there last.
Good news is that Davis’ entire starting OL for games 6-12 returns. This includes tackles All Big Sky second team Eli Simonson, and honorable mention Ernesto Nava. Good depth too, including RS Freshman transfer Hasson. None of the FCS previews considered that the entire line returns, Sports Illustrated said Davis returned 4 “contributors” which means players that played 180 plays or so.
The roster inexplicably doesn’t list the year players graduated from high school, which makes their eligibility hard to decipher. In most but not all cases, players who came to Davis as freshmen are listed according to their academic class, not their eligibility. Players who started elsewhere are mostly listed by eligibility. But they are inconsistent even in that,
I have to think this is not a surprise to Woods or the Sac administration. If they were truly blind sided by this, they either bought into their own hype, were too naive to run a D1 athletics program, just plain stupid, or all of the above. If they were serious about FBS, from the start this was a hastily contrived and poorly executed plan. Just track the narrative:
PAC 12 membership gave way to FBS independent which gave way to FCS independent in a Olympic sport conference their rivals just upgraded from.
New stadium gave way to renovated stadium which gave way to renovated bathrooms.
These “facilities renovations” are small capital projects for a mid-sized college and calling them “phases” is just showmanship. I do not think Dr. Woods is stupid, but I do think this was never a serious plan.
All this may very well get them an FCS championship with players and a coach who were brought in on promises of an FBS transition and new facilities. That is if they can keep their “student athletes” out of trouble. I could sit here and say I wish Sac the best and hope they find their footing, but it would be a lie. In order to gain attention, they sold their plan on smoke & mirrors and outright lies. This allowed them to attract a group of highly athletic players as hired guns, disregarding and standards of academics and integrity.
How would you like to be the California state university chancellor now who is probably getting calls from every chancellor in the system as to why this Sac state guy is making all these grandiose plans to spend money he and none of the other chancellor’s actually have? How is he doing this and we can’t? Well, because he is making irresponsible statements and I do not condone them. Nice to know. All done while the students are gone and not watching where there hard earned tuition is going under this Woods guy. I really wonder if he has the ability to withstand this. If this FBS thing of his backfires, he is also going to have to deal with a ton of litigation from the players who were (allegedly) recruited under false pretenses. The NCAA has this figured out and will not be willing to take on that exposure IMHO.
Sac has 39 transfers on the roster, and they are a mixed bag. About 18 are seniors or redshirt seniors; those guys all knew they would be playing an FCS schedule, whether the school was transitioning or not. The decision doesn’t really affect them. Many of the transfers committed before Sac announced they intended to transition this year. Maybe some of the younger ones will bail.
Sac might have a great year, if so they may get a conference invite, in which case getting turned down in their attempt to go independent could be in their interest,
Division 1 could split, separating off the power 4 conferences, and leaving the lesser conferences as essentially in the same situation FCS faces, being perceived as minor league. Sac may be trying to crash a party that has moved on.