The game is as much about school pride as it is about football.
"This is like the big game of our season, this is the game to look forward to," says Kim Koford. She plays clarinet for the Sac State Hornet band, which played at this year's annual luncheon leading up to the game, "This is our one rival school. This is the game to show we're better than them."
While Sac State's band wore a traditional uniform, the UC Davis Aggies' band showed up wearing black floppy hats covered with message buttons...Taylor Hunsucker plays the cymbals and has one button that says Taylor.
"I'm not this Taylor," she says pointing to the button, "I don't know who that is."
The bands will be active throughout the game as will Aggie fans like Jane Arp. She was a sideline photographer for four decades and is now having a hard time sitting through a game.
"Can't do it," she says. "Just can't do it. It's too intense, it's too hard to do. If you've been on the sidelines for all that time, it's hard to sit down and watch it."
For alumni who went to both schools, loyalties are torn, though Emir Jose Macari -the Dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Sac State says paychecks trump alumni ties.
"We have a lot of U.C. Davis alums that graduated, got the PhD's there," he says. "But now, their loyalty is with their employer. So, they better be wearing gold and green."
So who's gonna win? Only one mascot attended this week's luncheon -and it wasn't a hornet. Gunrock the blue horse was, and for school spirit, he's the pick. Aggies 27. Hornets 26.
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