Volume 24 · Number 4 · Summer 2007
Sports
(Photo: Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
A New Ball Game
The switch to Division I has meant many changes for the campus both on the field and off, for athletic teams and for others. Here’s a small sampling of the quirkier ones:
• The Cal Aggie Marching Band-uh, which has prided itself on turning out in force at every football and basketball game at home and away, must now comply with Big West Conference rules that limit their numbers and restrict travel. Only 50 musicians can perform at home games, and the team can play at league road games only if they’re televised and don’t conflict with a home game being played by the opposite gender.
Already the band is being its usual creative self in working within the new limitations. This past season, for example, as many as 100 members marched into the Pavilion but only 50 played; after a halftime switch, the other 50 band members got their turn.
• The Division I rules manual, which runs to more than 500 pages, includes such complexities as these: It’s OK to give prospective student-athletes a media guide—assuming, of course it meets the rules about its size and color—but it’s not OK to give them a team’s schedule card, the kind found on countertops at local stores. Business cards? They’re fine. Camp brochures, game programs and questionnaires: They’re OK too, within limits specified by the rules. But newsletters, newspaper clippings and a laundry list of other items are prohibited.
• Increased media coverage means that the campus is getting its name out there in national newspapers and even on the “crawl” that scrolls scores on the bottom of the screen on ESPN and other networks. But which name? In addition to the campus’s preferred “UC Davis,” there have been “UC-Davis,” “Davis State” and even “Cal St. Davis.”