So I have about 5 months of service left on this site before I can’t afford to maintain it, which is just enough time and in the right place to cover the regular season for fall sports. Therefore, I decided to use the time given to me to advocate an issue about which I am extremely passionate: getting the hardworking, high-achieving students of UC Davis interested in intercollegiate athletics. I love my school and I love the quiet school spirit that goes on here, but a continual issue I’ve had with the student body is its unmerited dismissive and critical attitude towards our school sports teams (and particularly football). This blog, then, will attempt to address those criticisms, explain apparent faults in UCD athletics, and describe the ins and outs of the Aggies in a way that is accessible to casual student fans.
How it works:
The Football Focus
I focus on Aggie Football in this blog not because I think it’s the best sport (I’m not getting involved in that argument), or that it’s the most fun sport to watch on campus (my vote goes to Gymnastics there), or even that its the most important UCD sport (that would be Men’s Basketball). Rather, Football is the focus here because student criticism seems the harshest towards it relative to its actual merits and potential benefit towards the school. Most UC Davis students don’t follow the majority of our sports, but don’t claim to be experts on them. But from the conversations I’ve had, students seem quite willing to put down our football team, despite having barely any more information on it than, say, our Field Hockey or Cross Country teams. So Football is the subject, and the technical articles will be about our team. But my overarching message (“Go to games, get returns on your investment, we’re not as bad as you think, etc.”) holds true for all sports. Some of the most exciting games an Aggie can watch are from the less popular sports; do not by any means limit yourself to Football and Basketball.
The Info
I’m not an original source of information, nor do I have any ins to the team or athletics department. I tend to draw my information from official Athletics posts, The Davis Enterprise, The Sacramento Bee, The California Aggie, and the best source of them all, Aggie Sports Talk. My goal here is not to beat them to reporting on new information, or steal readership from them. Instead, I’m trying to package and present the amazing investigating and reporting they do so that it engages and captures casual fans. My goal is to get readers informed to the point where they have the background knowledge and interest to avidly follow those sources as much as I do.
Background Knowledge
Knowing the extremely basic rules of football is really the only requirement to reading this blog. Literally everything else will be covered in depth from the ground up.
The Talking Points
At the end of each article I’ll have a list of Talking Points which will serve as a summary of the piece and a guide to talking about the week’s news with your friends. The goal here is to make you, the casual reader, sound knowleageable about UCD athletics and make you an advocate for Davis Football.
Talking Points (sample)
-Hey guys, check out this Aggeek blog!
Up Next: Myths about Aggie Football