The Dreams of Sacramento State Football & Basketball vs. Harsh Reality

Sacramento State's pursuit of big-time sports meets immediate challenges that may make FBS and March Madness success fantasies.

The bit of conference realignment that didn’t go down fell somewhat to the wayside following realignment that did occur. Days before the resurrected Pac-12 introduced Texas State as its newest member, Sacramento State’s big swing at Football Bowl Subdivision membership ran into a significant roadblock.

So where does that leave an athletic department with lofty ambitions but limited options?

The NCAA denied Sacramento State’s waiver to transition to FBS beginning in 2026, citing the program’s lack of conference affiliation. The Big Sky Conference member moves to the Big West for its other sports next year, commensurate with its wishful jump to college football’s top level. But, as Press Break readers know, the Big West hasn’t hosted football in more than two decades.

College football pundits will never pass an opportunity to tell their audience that the NCAA is a dying and toothless organization. The first adjective might be true, but the second applies more so to the exclusive club of wealthy programs that wield influence. In that sense, the collegiate regulatory body functions much like our owns laws and society’s super-rich, but I digress.

A department like Sacramento State’s may have dreams of wild, on-field success that translates to cashflow and influence, but it ain’t there yet. Not even close, despite a sudden influx of resources invested in its growth.

The NCAA appears to have little issue with rubber-stamping FCS-to-FBS moves, despite the ongoing threat of the Big Ten and SEC forcing a further schism to Div. I football. With their debuts as Conference USA members in 2025, Delaware and Missouri State make 17 college football programs joining the FBS ranks since 2012:

• Delaware, 2025

• Missouri State, 2025

• Kennesaw State, 2024

• Jacksonville State, 2023

• Sam Houston, 2023

• James Madison, 2022

• Liberty, 2018

• Coastal Carolina, 2017

• Charlotte, 2015

• Appalachian State, 2014

• Georgia Southern, 2014

• Old Dominion, 2014

• Georgia State, 2013

• South Alabama, 2012

• Texas State, 2012

• UMass, 2012

• UTSA, 2012

For context on how significant of an expansion that is, the previous 17 programs to transition to Div. I-A/FBS did so over a timeframe that was twice as long, 1983-2009.

Indeed, football’s top level (for now) has grown at a dizzying pace reflective of the record-setting TV contracts. Now, it’s been apparent for several years that the bonanza is a bubble, but the repercussions for not climbing aboard could be more severe than doing so late or haphazardly.

There’s a palpable anxiety in college sports that predates COVID-19, but certainly accelerated with the pandemic and its fallout, leading to a downright hysteria that in the past I have compared to Fargo Season 3 antagonist V.M. Varga’s monologue about “mongrel hordes.”

But as for the NCAA opening its FBS gates to Sacramento State, the increasingly laissez faire governing body suggests even it has limits. By denying a bid for independence, the NCAA is presumably trying to avoid a repeat of the disastrous UMass reclassification of last decade.

The Minutemen moved up as members of the Mid-American Conference but only in football. The school’s refusal to move its other programs from the Atlantic 10 — a much stronger league for men’s basketball and more regionally logical in other sports — forced UMass into independence following the 2015 season.

UMass was hardly a world-beater in its brief, initial¹ MAC tenure, going 7-25 in four seasons. However, the Minutemen showed signs of improvement with their two, multiple-win seasons coming at the end of the partnership. Any momentum built in the MAC ended shortly after the program went independent, with a pair of four-win finishes in 2017 and 2018 marking its peak.

Without an FBS-caliber stadium on or near campus, and thus played home games a 90-minute drive from Amherst at the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium. Such a colossal venue hosting a maybe a few thousand attendees was a grim sight and bad look for all parties involved in the decision to move UMass from FCS, where the Minutemen were national-title contenders, to FBS, where they have yet to even sniff bowl qualification.

UMass returned part-time to its on-campus venue, McGuirk Alumni Stadium, after two brutal years in Foxborough, and the Minutemen now play their home games exclusively at McGuirk. It’s the right decision, but at 17,000 capacity, McGuirk is more comparable to a good-sized FCS stadium than it is an FBS venue.

Sacramento State’s Hornet Stadium is closer to 22,000, among the most spacious in FCS and with roughly 8,000 more seats than the temporary home of its Sacramento sports counterparts, Major League Baseball’s Athletics. It’s a better situation than UMass entered into — and more accommodating than the Athletics’ boondoggle, but that’s another matter — but still a reminder that Sacramento State’s ambitions don’t align with its reality.

A 22,000-seat stadium is cozy for a Group of Five program, say nothing of a football team with designs on quickly ascending to the upper echelons of FBS. And all indications point to Sacramento State eyeing more than just FBS inclusion.

If simply moving to FBS was the immediate target, Conference USA feels like a logical option. Eight of the 17 programs to move up to FBS since 2012 were CUSA members at one time, including four as of 2025. Go back to 2009 when Western Kentucky moved up, and half of all FBS members spent at least some time in the league, with five still in it now.

Conference USA also lives up to its moniker as a continental association, so expansion west to Sacramento hardly seems out-of-bounds for a league that already extends from Delaware to the Rio Grande.

However, neither the magnitude of Sacramento State’s measures to build up football and men’s basketball nor the speculation about its ultimate aspirations align with it eyeing FBS membership as the short-term goal.

It would seem from all the buzz of a Hornets move to the Pac-12 that percolated for months and hasn’t blossomed that the former Conference of Champions is the preferred destination of those affiliated with Sacramento State. The school’s athletic brass tabbed a Pac-10/12 legend to head up its basketball program, hiring Mike Bibby in March.

The University of Arizona retired Bibby’s No. 10 in recognition of his leading the Wildcats to the 1997 national championship as a freshman.

Bibby gained similar acclaim in Sacramento as point guard of the best teams in the NBA’s Kings history since the franchise came to California.

The Kings fell short of the NBA Finals at their peak with Bibby running the show, famously tripped up in 2002 by Shaquille O’Neal and the Los Angeles Lakers. But while Shaq was once Sacramento’s greatest basketball rival, his upcoming post as Sacramento State hoops general manager reflects the university’s desire to build a genuine power in the city.

Their hires are bold cuts for a program that has never qualified for March Madness.

Sacramento State football has had more success since becoming a Div. I member in 1996, but not much. The Hornets floundered until the latter-half of the 2010s, when Troy Taylor coached Sacramento State to three Big Sky titles before his short-lived and spectacularly dismal time at Stanford.

Sac State garnered mention as a potential landing spot for Michael Vick, a head-coaching choice that shared similarities to the basketball hire of Bibby but with more risk². While not as splashy for navel-gazing college football media as landing Vick, Sacramento State made one of the best hires of the offseason with its signing of Brennan Marion to a contract.

Now, hiring Marion instead of Vick didn’t exactly kick Sacramento State out of headlines altogether. The innovative offensive coach Marion grew into something of a media darling in previous stops as an assistant at Pitt and Texas, then his two seasons as coordinator for the most successful teams in UNLV history.

And, to that end, The Athletic’s recently profile of the Sacramento State situation leads with Marion and focuses exhaustively on his recruiting prowess, high-powered offense, and infectious charisma. But he’s also no media creation, either; I followed his work closely previously at William & Mary, and it was evident then that Marion had star potential. His work on Pitt’s passing game during Kenny Pickett’s Heisman finalist season and the past two seasons at UNLV reinforced Marion’s potential.

Marion has been a coaching vagabond thus far in his young career, so I hesitate to suggest he could be Sacramento State’s version of Chris Petersen. But could he be to the Hornets what Dirk Koetter was to Boise State early in the Broncos’ Div. I-AA transition? Absolutely.

But that’s contingent on Sacramento State having a landing spot to work toward its aspirations. Among my favorite genre of content are YouTube channels dedicated to exploring ambitious buildings scattered throughout the West; those who have made the drive from Southern California to Las Vegas know some of these places, like the abandoned water park between Barstow and Baker.

Until the restructured Pac-12 or perhaps the retooling Mountain West left in the Pac’s wake come calling, Sacramento State’s aggressive investments may be doomed to college sports’ version of a similar fate.

1. The Minutemen rejoin MAC football in 2025.

2. Vick is heading into his first season as head coach at Norfolk State in 2025, which is also his first coaching job period. Bibby, for his part, coached high school ball in Arizona previously.