Bob Dunning: Aggies scatter to the four winds

THE EXODUS BEGINS … one of the difficult parts of a regime change in college football is that longtime assistant coaches frequently lose their jobs … UC Davis has generally been immune to such personnel shuffles over the years because it always hired from within …

No more … as part of the hiring of Cal assistant coach Ron Gould as head coach at UCD, a number of Aggie assistants are now seeking employment elsewhere … one of those assistants who landed on his feet is longtime offensive wiz Mike Moroski, a standout Aggie quarterback in the late 1970s with significant NFL playing time on his resume …

Turns out Moroski was named yesterday as head coach at the small, but proud, College of Idaho in Caldwell, a school that’s been around longer than UC Davis … never mind that the “Yotes” haven’t played football for 35 years, they are reinstituting the sport in the fall of 2014 and have joined the long-established Pioneer League as a football-only member … (the late R.C. Owens, a San Francisco 49ers legend, was a College of Idaho product, as was former NBA superstar Elgin Baylor) …

UC Davis’ loss has turned into the College of Idaho’s gain … Moroski is a gentleman and a scholar and clearly the right man to resurrect a once-proud program … how many potatoes he will be paid to take his considerable talents to Idaho has yet to be revealed, but make no mistake, he will be paid in potatoes …

ASHES TO ASHES … a kind reader, kidding or not, wants to know if our city’s ban on burning includes pet cremation … yes, the law is the law … that would be known as a “No Urn Day.” …

ZIP IT … defenders of Zipcar, which is now part of Avis, continue to rave about the wonders of “car-sharing” and continue to attack the Above-Pictured Columnist for his opposition several years ago to the city’s one-sided contract with Zipcar that in addition to a subsidy and free parking spaces, agreed to have city employees take the Zipcars in for servicing …

What these defenders of the indefensible seem not to understand is I have no problem at all with the Zipcar concept … if they built a better mousetrap, great … my only complaint was with the city contract, a contract that was not offered to any other company seeking to do business in Davis … if Zipcar has such a unique and wonderful business model, why did it need a city subsidy in the first place? …

And why did the Zipcar corporation never come close to turning a profit? … wrote Kevin in a recent rant to the editor, “Zipcar offers what no other rental car company in town has up to now: online rental of a particular make and model, at multiple locations, for a fixed fee — and most importantly — 24-hour electronic card access.” …

Swell … if that’s what you want, have at it … and if that’s what the people of America want, Zipcar should have been wildly profitable … either way, though, don’t ask the taxpayers of Davis to guarantee a profit you can’t generate on your own … if we’re going to spend taxpayer dollars for vital services, why didn’t the city bail out the Wash Mill laundromat in East Davis? …

FREE MONEY, APPLY WITHIN … my friend Sarah Stevens sent an email to inform me that “YOUR APPROVED” for $1,410.00, apparently available in minutes … as much as I could use the money, I refuse to do business with someone who doesn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” …

Warned Sarah, “You must claim these funds no later than 11:30 p.m. EST or they WILL be given away to the next available applicant.” … holy capital letters, you’re going to give these funds away to the next person in line? … as in “free”? … far be it for me to stand in the way of charity … give away, dear Sarah, give away …

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net