The good news about throwing out the individual stats is that our kicker is still perfect! He's the biggest winner in the no contest.

The no contest UC Davis vs. Mercer football game showed a flaw in how college football handles prematurely ended contests. Perhaps a new system, leveraging modern technology, is needed to ensure fairness for both players and teams

For the players the ramifications of a no contest is their stats are wiped out. For the best skill players and best defense players this is a hit to their season and career. For non skill players and non starters this is not a big deal. I believe this is unfair to the players.

For the team records this is a big deal with such a limited number of games. If this was MLB with a 162 game schedule a no contest usually is not a big deal. However with a limited number of FCS football games this is a big swing. Thinking about the impact that not having a win means for a football program, I feel as if there needs to be a mechanism to make these types of games count for wins and loses plus stats.

The next question is how to make this fair. While no system without a full 60 is going to be fair but what might be a good substitute for that. In the UCD Mercer game both sides can rightfully "know “ that they were going to win the game. I am sure that the sidelines on both sides knew that this was their game to win. That is what makes this a good test case. It wasn't like the Aggies were up by 25 points which would have taken 4 scores for the Bears to pass them.

So how do you make this somewhat fair? 50 years ago a coin flip might have been ok, but this is 2025. Sports betting, and networks have all kinds of algorithms that will give current odds of a team winning in sports in the second half.

So my thought bubble goes like this. When the UCD and Mercer game was called this how the new process would work.. First point is that the stats are counted for the players up to the stopping point of the game. The outcome of the game will then be decided off the field. Last week this could have been on ESPN. A pre-arranged algorithm will be used to determine the odds of each team winning at the stopped point For the thought bubble let’s say the odds at the conclusion of play had the Ags with a 57% chance of winning. There will be a coin toss with the Head Coaches. The officials crew will still be there and all the officials crew will have their phone generate a random number between 1 and 99. The winning coach will then ask one member of the officiating crew to show the generated random number. In our thought bubble the number is 42 and the Ags win and Mercer loses.

Comments and or thoughts?

Too bad about the result but no team gets a loss and we don't know how it would have ended-- I thought about the Porter Conners hit on the sideline- surprised it wasn't reviewed in todays world ( it was clean, hard football) but what if they DQ'd him????-- no game, no stats-- I guess the DQ would not be enforced ??-- a joke that a real game was played to 7 minutes left and the stats are erased?

Was it Bruinwoods at Lake Arrowhead? (https://bruinwoods.ucla.edu )

Bruinwoods is, or was, an alumni family camp run by some component of UCLA, very much like The Lair of the Golden Bear (usually just called The Lair of the Bear, or The Lair,) operated by the California Alumni Association and located near Pinecrest Lake off of Highway 108 east of Sonora. (https://alumni.berkeley.edu/camp-at-the-lair/# )

My family and I attended the Lair several years ago when our kids were very young. At that time someone in the group had to be a member of some alumni association from any of the UC campuses. They now require that at least one camper be a member of the California Alumni Association. It's a pretty funky little place. Aging canvas covers over aging wooden structures. We enjoyed it, though as a friend commented, "Do you notice that by about Wednesday the wives are ready to go home?"

Lair actaully has three camps on the same property: Gold, Blue and Oski. At one time there was an effort to have a couple of weeks where the powers that be encouraged Davis alumni. Not sure that ever took off. However one of my now adult chidlren and I have returned in the last ferw years. There are campers from several UC campuses as well as those who graduated from non-UC schools.

Undaunted I head up with a weeks worth of UCD t-shirts, a UCD flag to attach to the "cabin." and now a sign that reads "Lair of the Mare."

Go Ags!

8pm Mountain, 7pm Pacific kick.

Me and SochorField will be at Vdara. Come say hi in Vegas if you're hanging out Friday/Saturday morning. Texas is playing at Ohio State at 9 am on Saturday - we're heading to St. George early/mid afternoon - 8 pm kick St. George time. 2 hour drive from Vegas.

Tix are $8...$8! Cheap for sure, parking maybe $5 we'll see.