Talk:UC Davis Aggies football

Cal Aggies?

@Ocfootballknut:

There might need for data cleanup around usage of "Cal Aggies."

• "Aggies" seems to be adopted in 1922 (Category:UC Davis Aggies football seasons)
• "Cal Aggies" seems to be in used from 1922 to 1958 (per same)
• List of Northern California Athletic Conference football standings uses "Cal Aggies" in the YYYY standings templates, whereas the other schools do not include their nickname.
• Some era team articles (Ex. 1958 Humboldt State Lumberjacks football team) reference the team as "Cal Aggies," whereas all other opponents are referenced without a nickname per norms.

University of California, Davis states three era names, of:

• University Farm (1905–1922)
• Northern Branch of the College of Agriculture (1922–1959)
• University of California, Davis (1959–present)

So the questions I see are:

• In 1922 to 1958 era, is the "Aggies" usage reflecting the school's nickname or something else? It seems to be the nickname.
• In 1922 to 1958 era, is the appropriate name "Cal" or "Northern Branch" or something else? No idea, yet. Related, we use "California" for UC-Berkeley Golden Bears, so there is no implicit issue around "Cal" not being a distinct name.

After those issues are better understood, there seems to be some cleanup effort required on related articles and templates. Cheers, UW Dawgs (talk) 20:38, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@UW Dawgs and Ocfootballknut: Third-party answer here and UCD alumnus. Prior to 1959, UC Davis was the Agricultural school associated with UC Berkeley, so their sports teams were probably called Cal Aggies in reference to that ("Cal" being the common name for UC Berkeley sports, and "Aggies" for the Ag School teams). I believe UCLA was the Southern Branch, but a general school not specific to ag. Yosemiter (talk) 20:53, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@UW Dawgs and Yosemiter: I know it's confusing. Because of this I did a LOT of research before I did the articles. That included reaching out to the Director of Athletic Communications from UC Davis. He was very gracious and we sent a series of e-mails back and forth before I published anything. For this particular topic his response is "I would use University Farm up to 1922, Cal Aggies from 1922 until 1959 when the regents designated the school as a general campus and began using the UC Davis name."

If you look at ANY newspapers or magazines of the era you're talking about you'll see that the team was almost always referred to as the Cal Aggies. And that includes printed standings, game programs, advertisements, game articles, etc. I believe that it is correct the way I've done it. Ocfootballknut (talk) 20:07, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@UW Dawgs and Yosemiter: P.S. The Cal Aggies are the ONLY team I've found where the nickname was used practically everywhere. They are definitely the exception. Take a look at some of the references I've included in the yearly articles: 1937 references 1, 2, & 5. 1938 reference 1. 1939 reference 1. 1940 reference 1. 1942 reference 1. 1946 reference 1 & 2. Ocfootballknut (talk) 20:18, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

I 100% agree that "Cal Aggies" can be readily found in RS in that era. I'm sure the above notes will be helpful if anyone else decides to dig into it. UW Dawgs (talk) 20:25, 4 February 2019 (UTC)