Aggies

Jim Sochor Field, the playing surface inside UC Davis Health Stadium, carries the name of the man who ran the Aggies through their longest stretch of dominance: an 11-time conference champion whose 156–41–5 record between 1970 and 1988 earned him a place in the College Football Hall of Fame. The stadium itself opened in 2007 as Aggie Stadium and took its present name in 2019, seating 10,743.

That run came during the Northern California Athletic Conference years, when Davis won the title 27 times between 1929 and 1992, including 20 in a row from 1971 to 1990.

The programme has fielded a team every year since 1915 except when the campus itself shut down — 1918 for the war, and 1943 to 1945. It kept the Cal Aggies name until 1959, when the university separated from Berkeley. The rivalry that has mattered most since is the Battle for the Golden Horseshoe against Cal Poly, a series Davis leads 29–20–2 through 2025.

Quarterback Ken O'Brien went 24th overall to the Jets in the 1983 NFL Draft, and Dan Hawkins, who played there in the early 1980s, returned decades later as head coach before moving on to Colorado and Boise State.