Sacramento State is dead set on joining the big time. But what will it take?

New York Times

3 days ago

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — One of the hottest football programs in the country resides in a nondescript office building, sharing space with the audiology clinic, nursing school and cardiovascular wellness program. Take the elevator to the third floor, turn left and you'll find the Sacramento State coaching staff's offices.
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One is occupied by a 37-year-old first-time head coach wearing a gold chain inscribed with 'Go-Go' — the name of his offense. Sitting on the desk next to him is his ubiquitous cowboy hat. He knows it's unusual for a college coach to have tattoos on his hands and neck, but over the years, it became his thing.
'All the young coaches say I'm like the Allen Iverson (of coaching),' he says.
Brennan Marion has been on the job for only six months, but he has already managed to transform a program of modest history into a destination for recruits and transfers who might not have otherwise considered an FCS school. Part of the sales pitch is the aggressive effort by the school, with an enrollment of 31,000 and an alumni base of 280,000, to move up to the FBS level.
The program is expected to spend $4 million on name, image and likeness (NIL) in calendar year 2025, between donations and revenue sharing, according to assistant general manager Chris Parry. Marion's salary is $750,000, and the program has a $2.7 million staff pool. All three figures are believed to be the highest in the FCS.
Seemingly overnight, long-sleepy Sacramento State has transformed into one of the flashiest athletic departments in college sports.
A men's basketball program that has never won its conference or played in the NCAA Tournament and, as of last season, played in a 1,012-seat arena, hired former Sacramento Kings star Mike Bibby as its head coach. He, in turn, brought in NBA great Shaquille O'Neal as the program's general manager.
Meanwhile, the football program's recruiting weekends include Power 4-style photo shoots, with players posing next to a Mercedes-Benz GT, and buffet dinners at a ritzy downtown nightclub. This is the same program that did not notch its first FCS playoff win until 2022 (it won one again in '23) and went 3-9 last season.
The real ONE🤞🏾 pic.twitter.com/yI42l7YtlI
— Jacob Chambers (@jacobchambers__) June 10, 2025
Sac State's 2026 recruiting class is ranked just outside the top 50 nationally on 247Sports. Five-star quarterback Ryder Lyons, who grew up in nearby Folsom, took an unofficial visit there before committing to BYU. Top-10 receiver Xavier McDonald took official visits in June to LSU, Ole Miss … and Sac State.
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Already on board is Jaden Rashada, the former four-star quarterback known for a massive NIL deal gone wrong at Florida, who spent his first two seasons at Arizona State and Georgia. So is running back Rodney Hammond Jr., who ran for 1,400 yards at Pittsburgh. And former Texas and Alabama receiver Agiye Hall. Marion and/or his assistants had relationships with most of the transfers they brought in.
'I love coach Marion's offense, and I like what he's building here,' says Rashada, a Northern California native, of the former UNLV offensive coordinator.
Fueling the transformation is an administration adamant about crashing the top level of college athletics and support from a group of willing donors dubbed the Sac12.
'There's a lot of people in this community with real money … and they're really all in on making this a top-tier football program,' Marion says. 'If we're announced FBS — when we're announced FBS — the only schools on the West Coast that will have more than us financially when it comes to helping players in NIL will be USC and Oregon.'
But unlike those big-name recruits, no one in the FBS is interested in Sacramento State.
The university's application to transition to an FBS football independent starting in 2026 was denied Wednesday by the NCAA Division I Council, making it clear that the climb toward national and even regional relevancy can't just happen overnight.
The denial came a week after the NCAA oversight committee recommended to the council that it deny Sacramento State a waiver to move up without a conference invitation, something it last approved for Liberty in 2017. An invite signals a university's readiness to make such a drastic jump solo.
University president Dr. J. Luke Wood posted on social media Wednesday morning that Sacramento State remains undeterred:
Sacramento State has met every meaningful benchmark for FBS membership, and we believe our university, our students, and the entire Sacramento region deserve major college football. We're full steam ahead and we still plan to be playing FBS football in 2026. pic.twitter.com/NoEcQ7EmyG
— Dr. Luke Wood (@DrLukeWood) June 25, 2025
Wood told The Athletic that the school plans to explore an appeals process and refuted recent reports that Sac State would play 2026 as an FCS independent.
The school has already announced it will withdraw from the Big Sky Conference next summer and join the Big West Conference for all sports except football.
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Sacramento State has tried to pitch the Mountain West and Pac-12.
The Pac-12 has focused on active FBS programs, will likely add Texas State as an eighth all-sports member and does not have an interest in Sacramento State, according to sources briefed on the league's stance. The Mountain West said in January, after adding Northern Illinois as a football-only member, that it would pause further expansion. The programs Sacramento State is competing with are generally more established and already playing at the FBS level.
In the wake of the denial, Marion says other schools have been trying to get the Hornets' committed recruits to defect but predicted 90 percent of the class will still sign with Sac State. He also says FBS membership is still coming.
'(State) senators are involved, congressmen are involved — people are very serious about us going to FBS in this region,' he says. 'Just me, personally, if I was on the NCAA Council, I don't want to go against the state capital of California.'
Wood put it this way: 'I'm glad that people get to see that these things aren't easy. Because it's going to make the victory even more sweet. Because we will be FBS.'
So, how did Sacramento State, one of 23 universities in the Cal State University system, become such a flash point?
The university announced last September that it intended to capitalize on a years-long feasibility study that delved into how athletics can take off and become a primary moneymaker for the school. That decision comes despite the university facing a $37 million budget deficit in the coming fiscal year. The Cal State University system is also set to face a $375 million budget cut in the 2025-26 budget plan by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Wood told inquirers in an AMA on Reddit this spring that the school was leaving millions of dollars in media rights on the table as a member of the Big Sky Conference.
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'The investments that we have made will ensure that our next media deal is in the millions, not $100,000s,' he wrote.
In 2025, here's how a school tries to ascend in college athletics:
• Flex with your facilities. Sacramento State, which has had some of the most downtrodden athletic facilities in the country, is upgrading its football home, Hornet Stadium, to a 25,000-seat multiuse venue expected to be completed by the fall of 2027. It's estimated to cost as much as $300 million, which Wood confirms will be funded by money allocated to the athletic department, as well as sponsorships and donor pledges. This season, the men's and women's basketball teams will leave The Nest, a relic of a bygone era, and play in The Well, a 3,200-seat renovated event center on campus.
When Bibby played for the Kings, he sometimes played pickup hoops at The Nest. Twenty years later, Bibby was shocked to learn the Hornets still played there.
'I was like, 'Damn!'' Bibby recalls, laughing.
Meanwhile, the football program's move into the office space at Folsom Hall raised concerns by its fellow tenants about the upheaval, according to The State Hornet.
• Secure the necessary funds for transformation. A local coalition of lawmakers, business leaders and Sacramento State alumni called the Sac12 announced in 2024 $35 million in pledges to NIL funds for the athletic department. That number soon bloated to a reported $50 million. The organization was named after the desire to prove a worthy entrant into the remade Pac-12.
But most of those financial commitments, according to athletic director Mark Orr, are contingent on the university receiving FBS status in football, and Marion, Bibby, Shaq and others won't have them at their immediate disposal.
The $50 million represents a stark contrast from Sac State's recent existence, with the school reporting $836,000 in donations for the 2024 fiscal year.
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The athletic department reported operating revenue of $43 million, including $10.2 million in student fees, $10 million in indirect institutional support and $16.7 million in direct institutional support from the university.
Despite the influx, there is always a need for more. The top FBS schools in the country are set to start paying athletes department-wide $20.5 million in revenue sharing each year.
• Attract big names, whether they sign on or not. In December, former NFL star quarterback Michael Vick was linked with the vacant Sacramento State football coaching position, generating more headlines. Orr confirmed preliminary talks with Vick took place, but nothing substantial materialized.
Vick was hired as the head coach of HBCU Norfolk State, and Sacramento State hired Marion, whose offense helped UNLV make back-to-back Mountain West title games.
In late March, Bibby was hired, making $560,000 annually, according to his contract. A month later, O'Neal agreed to become the university's general manager for men's basketball. Shaq's son Shaqir has signed with the Hornets.
Bibby saw the role of general managers expanding nationwide and thought, 'Let me ask Shaq.' The unpaid role is part talent identification, part donor stimulation, part just, well, being Shaq.
'With a guy like Shaquille O'Neal, you don't tell him what to do,' Bibby says. 'Shaq does what the hell he wants to.'
• Play to vacancies in the media market. Sacramento has been trying to balloon its sports presence in recent years beyond its beloved Kings.
The city was granted expansion rights by Major League Soccer in 2019, and plans for a new downtown soccer-specific stadium were greenlit, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed plans, and its primary investor withdrew funding in 2021.
Major League Baseball's former Oakland Athletics are playing home games in Sacramento's Triple-A stadium before they complete their permanent move to Las Vegas.
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• Attempt to write your own script. Sac State has yet to establish itself as a must-see sports draw. Former football head coach Troy Taylor led the Hornets to three Big Sky championships in 2019, 2021 and 2022, the first conference titles ever won since joining in 1996. The women's basketball team, which made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 2023, went 15-18 last season. The men's basketball team went 7-25.
But now that the Hornets believe they have organized for the big time and are prepped to splash cash on stadium and facility upgrades and finally build consistent winners in revenue-generating sports, Orr believes there's no reason his school can't join the crowded Northern California sports scene. The school reported $419,000 in ticket sales for all sports in fiscal year 2024.
'We're the only top-20 media market in the country that doesn't have an FBS program,' Orr says. 'This market is thirsty for something like this.'
As Sacramento State angles for its chance, Marion and Bibby are trying to take the Hornets to heights never seen in town.
'I want to make the NCAA Tournament this year,' Bibby says. 'I wouldn't say it's a failure if we don't, but that's our goal.'
With the transfer portal, any team that gets all the right pieces in place from year to year can mold itself from an afterthought into a contender, Bibby says.
Sacramento State signed former prep phenom Mikey Williams, who intended to start his career at Memphis but never played there after he was charged with nine felonies for allegedly firing a gun at an occupied car in April 2023. Williams had his charges reduced, pleaded guilty to one felony and served a year of probation that led to that plea being reduced to a misdemeanor. He spent last year at UCF, averaging 5 points a game.
Meanwhile, one of the football staff's most effective strategies is to flood the market with offers, whether or not they're realistic targets.
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Offensive tackle Jackson Cantwell, the No. 1 recruit in the country, is headed to Miami and likely never considered Sacramento State. But when he got an offer from the Hornets, he posted it on social media.
'It was big for branding: Why is this big-time five-star No. 1 recruit posting?' says C.J. Pollard, who runs Sac State recruiting. 'I just wanted to make it cool, and the only way to make it cool was the top dudes setting the trend. 'I need you to report our offer and tell 'em we're coming after you.''
Pollard also noticed that the FCS, unlike the FBS, does not have a rule banning photo shoots on unofficial visits. Instagram is now plastered with photos of recruits in a full Sac State uniform, posed in front of a carefully curated set full of Hornets swag.
'The funny thing is we're now on the dream-school list,' Marion says.
Stephanie Nguyen, a California assemblymember who graduated from the school in 1997 and is a member of the Sac12 Committee, says the enthusiasm around the school is visible. When she's at public events, people throw their pinkies in the air to signify 'Stingers Up.' The school's ambitions have been brought up to her at the state's Capitol.
'I go to Costco now,' she says, 'and Sac State stuff is there.'
But for all the moves and momentum, Sacramento State is still waiting, without a future home for its football program. If the donor base, so excited at the prospect of being an FBS football program, doesn't see significant movement, will those gargantuan financial promises dwindle?
Will the millions of dollars in media rights Wood says are attainable come to fruition?
And, above all else, is Sacramento State, for all its chest-pounding readiness, ever going to be offered a seat at the table?
The Hornets, with all their newfound recruiting swagger, could start by winning some games.
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'All eyes are going to be on us,' says Lafayette transfer running back Jamar Curtis, the current FCS career rushing leader. 'We're popping, we're buzzing across the internet, so there's definitely going to be a lot of people against us.'
— The Athletic's Chris Vannini contributed to this report.
(Top photo of Brennan Marion courtesy of Sacramento State)