I recall one of the skeptical Hornet posters on the Sac board mentioning months ago “I hope we don’t pull a Suck State on this”. That comment has aged like fine wine.

Marion is probably gone by January one way or the other. If he’s good, he gets scooped. If it’s bad, he’s the scapegoat for busted dreams.

If Sac doesn’t get a legit invite, at some point Wood will get told to sit down and shut up if the governor decides to run for higher office. The last thing a politician needs is to discuss why a university with negative cashflow is trying to rattle the cage on FBS where there are already too many mouths to feed if you ask the big boys.

The difficulty in making Marion the scapegoat is that Sac’s football record is not what makes them unattractive to conferences. Sac had impressive recent success in football. They had a nineteen game conference win streak just a few years ago, had a winning record in 2023 including a win at Stanford and conferences weren’t and aren’t after them to join.