Is he saying $800k is supposed to be such a huge amount of money that it represents "cashing in"??? Moving up to FBS is going to cost a hell of a lot more than $800k per year.

"New stadium will be in place for 2026, latest 2027" :lol:

They would need to be building it now to keep to his stated timeline! They don't have a plan, to say nothing of actual funding for said plan, to say nothing of building approvals to get shovels in the ground. This is ridiculous.

I drafted the exact same response but didn't post. Only one of these is in evidence yet, not three. Non-local commentators on social media, and in the professional media, are way too credulous(/gullible) about this. It's possible that everything about how Sac State has operated to date has changed, and they are finding it way easier to raise money than they have in the past, but we certainly don't have any tangible visible evidence of that yet. Phase 1 of the stadium rebuild that will likely ultimately cost a quarter billion dollars is a $2 million bathroom upgrade. The stadium (and NIL fund) are still fantasy at this point.

So Luke Wood says they have draft schedules for several years. Are they planning to just do full barnstorming road schedules in the 2026-2028 period? Where is the money coming to get any home games?

Everything he does looks like fake it til you make it.

Easy to get road games but none of those Pac 8 teams will have a reason to play at Sac

In addition to all the other obvious problems, how are they going to have any home games in 2026? Who is going to play there besides us?

As seemed likely, Sac State is going to try to move up as an independent. Pretty crazy but Luke Wood seems monomaniacally focused on this. https://fearthefcs.com/2025/04/02/sacramento-state-trying-to-join-fbs/

Pretty risky to take on someone with no college experience based on Luck's personal experience with him in the NFL, but they probably didn't have a lot of great options right now. The bar is low for him at least.

Yes fired officially. Bad timing for the program. https://gostanford.com/news/2025/03/25/stanford-football-program-statement-from-andrew-luck

I wouldn't read too much into the WCC discussions - that was most likely just due diligence. The MWC made by far the most sense for everything including football, so that's where we're going.

It makes him look like a lightweight, a jock, a huckster. Given how young he is and the fact that he doesn’t come from a more traditional/rigorous academic background, I would think he would want to compensate some and act the part of senior, serious academic administrator a bit. He seems to see his job as mostly football and little else though.

Good for Sac that their president is interested in football, but is it a little odd he only tweets about football? Is anything else of note happening at the school?

New stadium built and largest NIL fund in the country at any level, done and done!

https://x.com/joshuawoodsr/status/1877374971888193559

I cannot take seriously a university who appoints a president the same age as me. We are not supposed to be in positions of authority like that.

Stew Mandel pointing out the absurdity of Schefter’s obviously inaccurate reporting https://x.com/slmandel/status/1868772227191275850

Pretty sloppy reporting all around by Schefter. As previously discussed, Sac is not actually currently "building" a new stadium, nor do they have the largest NIL fund in the country (obviously). It's all vaporware today.

So, it was pure fantasy (/fake it til you make it?) when announced in October. A new 25k seat stadium built in Sacramento will be incredibly expensive and Sac doesn't have random pots of nine figures worth of money sitting around waiting to be spent on a new stadium. They can't just decide to build a new stadium in an offseason like Stanford - there will have to be years of fundraising and planning before any shovels are in the ground. They don't appear to be serious about doing any of that work.

Or was that construction timeline contingent on some heretofore unknown megadonor walking in with $150 million of free money

What happened to the new stadium plan? When announced in October, they said construction would start after this season. Is that happening?

Not the full story but I'm a little surprised how close we are to the median on that list. Not great for those schools that our underachieving at a level below almost fits in fine on that list. It seems like with little other program investment, if we just moved up as is we could get a bump to get into the mid tier there based on better opponents and bigger visiting crowds.