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.

I have to assume/hope right now the administration is spending a little money on some architectural ideas and renderings to try to grease the skids for new money to support a near future move up. Please do not bring back that 20 year old rendering.

I was also at that game, just to the right of you in the end zone. I thought I had some pictures from that day but I can't locate them at the moment. Hard to believe the school could grow by something like 10k students since that day and the student section is now a fraction of what it was. I don't understand young people these days [old man speak].

Re MWC needing the football program next year or in 2 or 5 years, having this existing relationship with the conference seems like it would increase the chances that this move up would be subsidized by the conference, making it a little more feasible than if we were just on our own, competing with all the other western FCS schools for a spot in the MWC when it becomes available.

It's possible that this really is an ideal situation for the university and the football program specifically. More prestigious, bigger budget conference with FBS peers and a ready-made destination for when the football program is ready to move up (and/or it is desperately needed to be called up by the MWC). It will hopefully help light a fire under the butts of everyone within the University and outside supporters to get the football program better situated to move up.

Cherry on top is leapfrogging Sac despite all their public posturing and lobbying.