nwp Wrote:So just what would it take to get UCD and Sac State ready for the WAC right now? If it's money, more football scholarships and more sports to comply with WAC standards, they need a plan to raise the funding now, not later. Both schools need to get serious about the WAC. If Idaho can play football in the Kibbie Dome, then Sac State could play on campus or move the game to Hughes Stadium. So could UCD on a interim basis until both of them have a suitable stadium, I think Hughes stadium is only about 12 to 15 miles from Davis and would be a easy trip from Davis . Run buses for free for the fans and students. They may lack in attendance numbers now, but hopefully their fans would embrace the move to D1 football and show up. Granted both would probably take their lumps in football, but tell that to Stanford after the UCD game last year. Both are D1 in basketball already. I only bring this up because sooner or later the conference realignment dance will start again and the WAC could need immediate partners. I'm sure Benson knows this and has an expansion plan, it's just not shared.

Hughes Stadium is smaller than the Sac State on-campus stadium (22K). Or they are at least equal in size, Sac State has network quality lighting and other infrastructure advantages. Plus parking at Hughes is atrocious. Sac State has three parking garages walking distance from the stadium and a light rail link. Sac State is ground breaking in August on a new $9M football fieldhouse, so football at Sac State will stay on campus.

OrneryAggie Wrote:

nwp Wrote:So just what would it take to get UCD and Sac State ready for the WAC right now? If it's money, more football scholarships and more sports to comply with WAC standards, they need a plan to raise the funding now, not later. Both schools need to get serious about the WAC.

Actually Sac St (20) and Davis (26) both sponsor more sports than most schools in the WAC. UCD is not yet a member of the Big West but already has an athletic budget larger than any BW school. The biggest problem with both schools is not money or scholarships, its attendance.

Sac's gym is one of the smallest in DI and funding was approved for a new one. But the arena has been separated from the planned student center and no specific time is set for its construction. The football stadium isn't pretty but holds ~23k. It averaged over 25k/day during the 2000 olympic trials but that was with temporary luxury seating. The attendance records set by the olympic trials and the rivercats show Sacramento has huge potential, but neither UCD or Sac have been able to tap into it yet. Having big time college football come to town would be the cure to all of that.

UCD's new stadium won't be complete til next spring and will seat between 12-18k (nobody really knows at this point). a second phase is planned to expand to 30k but there's no timetable on that. UCD also has no lights for baseball, softball, and soccer but has a nice soccer/baseball complex which seats ~3k for baseball and ~2k for soccer. UCD also has the largest pool in the UC system and has seating for almost 2k at the tennis center.

Good points. Sac did average over 11K for three years when the football team was 7-4 and .500. With a consistently winning program I think interest would explode.

You are right, both schools are in the $11.2M athletic budget range.

jediwarrior Wrote:OrneryAggie - Great info on both schools. Thanks.

How does your "future" schedule look as far as D-1a schools are concerned? I know you're scheduled to play SJSU next year which is good.

It'll be a good gauge to determine where you are currently.

Sac State plays Boise this year...and it could get ugly.

Sac is scheduled to play two IA's in '07, Akron could have been this year in addition to Boise, but Sac would have had to drop Cal Poly to add the Akron game. Poly and Sac are even in our series and it is a good draw and good publicity for both schools.

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Hughes Stadium is smaller than the Sac State on-campus stadium (22K). Or they are at least equal in size, Sac State has network quality lighting and other infrastructure advantages. Plus parking at Hughes is atrocious. Sac State has three parking garages walking distance from the stadium and a light rail link. Sac State is ground breaking in August on a new $9M football fieldhouse, so football at Sac State will stay on campus.[/quote]


It looks like Sac State could play D1A football on campus, so Sac State would only need to expand to add more seating in the sometime in the future. They already have more seating capacity than the Kibbie Dome. I didn't realize Hughes Stadium only held around 20,000, I thought 30,000 plus. Good info.

I think it is clear that UCD has WAC aspirations, but they aren't even in the Big West yet. Atleast not officially until 2007 or 2008. So they will not be making too much noise about the WAC unit they are in the Big West for a little while.

Benson does not have a plan, WAC gets run over every time. I tought he had couple shots to stabize WAC & he missed them. He can't get extra team in bowl ****

Quote:I think it is clear that UCD has WAC aspirations, but they aren't even in the Big West yet. Atleast not officially until 2007 or 2008. So they will not be making too much noise about the WAC unit they are in the Big West for a little while.

Agreed. Nor should they dive into D1A yet.
IMO UC-Davis sponsors too many sports to make it at the D1A level. I think a school sponsoring that many sports is very admirable, and represents what the NCAA SAYS it is all about - but in the reality of D1A, it will be almost impossible to keep that many sports funded at a competitive level.

Davis may have to choose between representing an athletic ideal and being competitive in D1. Frankly, I'm not sure which is the best way to go anymore.

NuMexAg Wrote:Agreed. Nor should they dive into D1A yet.
IMO UC-Davis sponsors too many sports to make it at the D1A level. I think a school sponsoring that many sports is very admirable, and represents what the NCAA SAYS it is all about - but in the reality of D1A, it will be almost impossible to keep that many sports funded at a competitive level.

Davis may have to choose between representing an athletic ideal and being competitive in D1. Frankly, I'm not sure which is the best way to go anymore.

I don't understand this. Cal sponsors 29 sports and UCLA 24. Last I checked both those schools were quite successful in IA football and DI overall. While UCD athletics are rarely mentioned in the same breath as those 2, the goal of the university is to eventually be the same caliber or better. The way california is growing I don't see why they can't.

Since the budget crunch in the early 90's the only idea mentioned by the athletic dept has been further expansion. When the university moves to IA expect them to also add at least one women's sport at the same time. Living in the shadows of Cal and Stanford, UCD has seen that athletic diversity is an integral part of buildng a strong overall program.

UC- Davis' athletic budget is somewhere around $12 million (sorry don't have exact figures). With that, they sponsor at a DII level 26 sports.

UCLA's budget ('04-05) is $46.0 million. UC-Berkeley's budget is $43.9 mil.

All three schools are sponsoring roughly the same number of sports, only UC-Davis spends only about a third as much as their California brethern. They have been successful with that because they have competed at a DII level. Moving some 26 sports up to compete at a DI level will cost a lot. Maybe they have the people willing to step up and fund that - I was just expressing my doubts.

By way of comparison, as near as I can tell from the web sites, the most sports any WAC school sponsors at this time is 19 (Hawaii and Nevada). Most sponsor 16.

and Fresno just axed their very successful, albeit money hungry wrestling program.

Also with Davis..... the President barely got the faculty to agree to I-AA, going IA may be down the road, but first they will have to build at least a 15K stadium, fully fund all 26 sports, comply with Title IX, fully fund a IA team at UC prices and get the faculty to agree.

All sports at Davis will be 100% funded by 2008-09, offering 292.5 sholarships. The budget will have doubled, from $7.8M in 02-03 to ~$16M in 08-09. Granted that's still far from it's football playing UC cousins but UCD doesn't yet have the benefits of TV contracts, NCAA tourney money, bowl games, and ticket revenue that IA schools enjoy. They also aren't paying $1.5M for their football coach (the highest paid employee in the entire UC system) like Cal is.

The faculty at Davis disapproved of the move to DI by a 2-1 margin. The chancellor overrode their vote. But one condition he gave the athletic dept was that they continue to expand opportunities and not downsize. It will be hard to compete with the UCLA's of the world with the cash disadvantage, but UCD's budget is far from reaching its full potential.

Is faculty ever for playing D1 football? I swear, even at big money D1A BCS schools where the athletic department is rolling in money, you hear stories about the faculty complaining about football. (The difference is they have a lot less political clout and eveyrone ignores them)

In all but a very few (maybe 25-30?) schools - D1 (A and AA) FB loses money. In most cases it loses money in bucketfuls- even in major BCS schools). There are a lot of other advantages that D1 brings to a school, including prestige, but I think the reason faculty are generally against D1 FB is that they feel it takes money away from academics (probably true in some cases, but I doubt most).

D1 FB most definitely takes funds away from other sports however (Fresno's wrestling program being one of the latest examples - even though administrators will deny it).

NuMexAg Wrote:In all but a very few (maybe 25-30?) schools - D1 (A and AA) FB loses money. In most cases it loses money in bucketfuls- even in major BCS schools). There are a lot of other advantages that D1 brings to a school, including prestige, but I think the reason faculty are generally against D1 FB is that they feel it takes money away from academics (probably true in some cases, but I doubt most).

D1 FB most definitely takes funds away from other sports however (Fresno's wrestling program being one of the latest examples - even though administrators will deny it).

I did a report on this once in my college English class, and it more like 48% of all schools that end up losing money which means about 60 schools make money. This is of course including ticket sales, TV money, and checks from bowl games. If only ticket revenue was counted, then most schools do lose money, but it all depends on how the income is calculated.

The BCS conferences all have TV deals that add a few million dollars per school to a budget, the vast majority average above 50,000 fans per game (and all but a handful average over 40,000 most being members of the Big East or the bottom dwellars of the other five leagues), and they all get at least one BCS paycheck per year. Without a football team these schools would not recieve these funds that come from the conference.

For example Indiana University, which has been in the cellar of the Big 10 for several years, reports that they brought in $13,089,039 in football related income 2005, but only $2,670,141 was from ticket sales. $7,034,619 was from conference revenue distribution. They also report that they spent $10,291,799 on football. Obviously if only the ticket sales from home games were calculated, they'd lose money, but the conference revenue distributions make up for it.

http://www2.indystar.com/NCAA_financial_...hool_id=67

A few years ago CNNSI did an article that showed all of the BCS conferences made money, while only 1 non-BCS conference did. (It was the MWC before Utah made the Fiesta bowl.) I don't remember the exact figures, but the MWC was barely in the black (by a few hundred thousand dollars), while the 6 BCS conferences made several million a piece. The conference revenue distributions make sports at a D-1 level very profitable for the 6 power leagues.

That is where the difference lies.

SJGregg Wrote:I'm also amazed at how arrogant the Davis posters are. One of them went so far as to request to play Harvard and Yale in football as if they're an Ivy League school. That was the topper for me.

What's so arrogant about that? Do you understand that Ivy League teams play two OOC games every year? Yale had a home and home with San Diego recently. They're not averse to coming out west. Either Harvard/Yale-UCD would be an intriguing matchup for both sides on many different levels. I would hope the games would not be competitive, but they would be fun