The Aggie way: Campus move-in day meets home opener for UC Davis football
Scores of freshmen unpack their belongings and settle into the UC Davis dorms of the Yolo County campus during move-in week. And like good ambassadors to the school, veteran members of the Aggies football team, some of whom used to live in those dorms, rolled up their sleeves and helped with the heavy lifting.
There were no pianos or love seats to haul backward up several flights of stairs, but there were plenty of boxes, clothes, books, backpacks, monitors and mini refrigerators.
The intent was to provide muscle, welcome students aboard and invite them to UCD’s home opener Saturday night at UC Davis Health Stadium, providing a festive backdrop to the “Back to School Night” theme. The university aims to fill the 10,743-seat venue, making the environment loud and proud for the visiting Southern Utah Thunderbirds.
At UCD, players and coaches have for decades prided themselves with the motto of “The Aggie Way,” and that includes offering a hand to those who could use it.
“Players want to get students interested in coming to games,” UCD coach Tim Plough said during his weekly news conference. “Hopefully, it’s something students do every Saturday when we have a home game. We need to create a fun environment, and we need to perform.”
The coach, a one-time Aggies quarterback, added this reminder: “If we want to win a championship, we’ve got to win our home games.”
Ranked ninth nationally in the FCS, UCD (1-1) is coming off a bye week, and the Aggies take on a Thunderbirds program familiar to longtime coaches and fans. Southern Utah was a longtime member of the Big Sky Conference. The Thunderbirds will rejoin the conference next season as 30-year member Sacramento State will go independent, meaning no conference affiliation.
Saturday is the nonleague finale for UCD as Big Sky Conference play kicks off next week, including UCD hosting Weber State on Sept. 27.
UCD beat Southern Utah 28-27 in the first meeting between the programs in 1993, though the Thunderbirds own a 14-9 overall series lead, including going 8-3 at UCD. The Aggies have won the last three games of the series, all since 2019.
Southern Utah, in its final season in the United Athletic Conference, and UCD have history. The programs played each other in the American West Conference from 1993-95 and in the Big Sky from 2012-2021, with Southern Utah winning the conference crown in 2015 and 2017 before UCD took a share of the title in 2018. UCD placed a close second in the Big Sky last season, suffering its lone conference loss to Montana State, which played for the FCS national championship in going 15-1.
Bye week bounce-back
The bye week allowed UCD players to rest and recover from the crushing 70-10 loss to the Washington Huskies in Seattle, a game the Aggies knew would be a considerably tall order.
Plough has said that those games, commonly known as “pay-out games,” are necessary for FCS programs that don’t have nearly the resources of the higher-level FBS programs. Washington paid UCD more than $600,000 to play the game, a check that helps fund all athletic programs on campus.
UCD didn’t suffer any significant injuries of note in Seattle, beyond some bruised pride. Plough said it usually takes about three to four games for teams to “figure out who you really are.”
The Aggies have exhibited the ability to be an explosive and balanced offense in an opener against Mercer in the FCS Kickoff Classic in Alabama (which was canceled in the fourth quarter due to continuous lightning strikes) and in a rally over Utah Tech.
But coaches also remind their players that mental mistakes stall progress.
“If we can eliminate the mental errors, we’ll be better,” Plough said. “Mental errors can lose a game. We need to clean up those mental errors. Coaches have to take accountability first, and to do our best to fix it and eliminate those.”
Southern Utah (1-2) at No. 9 UC Davis (1-1)
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
On air: Sactown Sports 1140 AM; ESPN+
Of note: UCD is 46-24-2 all-time in home openers, a nugget unearthed by the Aggies sports information department. UCD’s first home win was a 20-0 effort over the Cal Ramblers — later Cal of Berkeley — in 1947, a game played at A Street Field ... Southern Utah opened the season with a 46-24 win over Big Sky member Idaho State, then dropped tight games against the University of San Diego (30-27) and to FCS No. 18 Northern Arizona (52-49) ... Joshua Day leads Southern Utah in rushing with 383 yards, including 171 yards and four touchdowns against Northern Arizona, and Bronson Barron leads in passing with 837 ... Redshirt freshman Caden Pinnick leads UCD in passing with 303 yards and four touchdowns, and the Del Oro High School of Placer County graduate engineered a 17-point rally to top Utah Tech 31-24 in earning National FCS Freshman of the Week honors ... UCD All-American safety Rex Connors set the Aggies program record for career tackles in the Washington game. He has 291 stops, passing Cal Aggie Hall of Famer Kris Spraker, who had 290 from 1997-2000. He leads the Big Sky with 11.5 tackles per game, fifth best in the FCS.
This story was originally published September 17, 2025 at 3:32 PM.