Cal Expo certainly needs investment. It used to be a really nice fairground and was allowed to fall into disrepair. As the crow flies, not that far from Sac State but not exactly walking distance from the dorms either. From a taxpayer perspective, may be a good thing because with Cal Expo involved, it means Luke Wood is not solely in charge, so it has some chance of not being screwed up. But goes on to show that his “shovel ready” plans for an “on campus” facility were always a lie… this guy’s relationship with the untruth is next level. From a construction perspective this might or might not be less expensive. That grandstand was built in 1967. Depending on what has already been done, there could be plenty of lead paint, asbestos, seismic, life safety and ADA work. My experience with this type of construction project is you don’t know what you don’t know so you have to budget for the unknown.

What about all the $ they've spent on the Broad Fieldhouse and whatever the heck they built on the north side? Wasn't this stuff all or mostly for football? Money down the drain?

Cal Expo idea feels pretty desperate. Moving the stadium off campus sounds like a terrible idea. Its going to make the student atmosphere even worse. Ask everyone who plays (or played) off-campus....San Diego State, San Jose State, even UCLA. Its really hard to get students to travel to a home game. And yes, even a 5 mile trip is far when you are living on campus. Anything more than a walk and students don't want to go.

Why doesn't Wood chill for a minute.....so frantic.

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he wants to strike while iron is hot and before his sponsors see that they are stuck in JV.

Yikes

SJSU stadium is about a 25 minute walk for students. Its on the other side of the freeway about 8 blocks away. Not on campus.

All those athletics upgrades were designed around the football stadium, as part of a plan to enclose it when the stadium was renovated (and upgrade the football program/facilities). And that's what it looks like architecturally as well.

Not a good look to just abandon the plan at this point. It makes everything appear to be poorly thought out, which appears to be true.

The Hornets are making it up as they go. Guess they cannot get their stingers up or down.

This is what is becoming clearly evident. Dr. Wood tried speaking it into existence without a real plan, but by the time he realized it wasn't working he was already in the deep end with media and the fans so now he's just throwing everything at the wall hoping that something will stick.

I would be embarrassed to be a fan of the program at this point when the starting point was FBS and a new on campus stadium this season to now being well... we're still FCS, maybe a retrofitted stadium a couple miles off campus, and the rest of the FCS is laughing. Sac very well may still pull things together as an organization and I personally believe Marion is a good coach and they will have a good season, but right now the amount of pivoting would make anyone dizzy.

I asked AI to simulate a monopoly game between Wood and Gary May. It predicts May as a steely poker-faced player who starts out boring, acquiring all the railroads and utilities, but who is ultimately strategizing moves in advance, calculating ROI of each property and wins most matchups. It predicts Wood enters the game with a splash, buying as many properties on the first half of the board as he can and mortgaging all of them to stay in the game without a solid strategy other talking nonstop to distract other players. Occasionally he hits it big but in most simulations he is bust by turn 20, landing on May’s Park Place Hotel. At which point he is likely to propose desperate non-traditional deals or demand a rule change such as (AI’s choice of words) parking reparations. I think we must be around turn 16 or 17. Time running out for the luck hit.

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that's a bad move for the Ags. Basically giving Sac a home game against a rival every year.

Sac's experience moving basketball games to the Memorial Auditorium fizzled out. Some of that could have been parking and the undesirable location, particularly for night events. Cal Expo is a ways from the CSUS campus. While Cal Expo has parking and is very convenient to freeways it has never been a big draw in the area. The State Fair continues to struggle. The Sac Republic is looking for a better location, though maybe converting the horse racing track to a stadium would benefit soccer also.

Just another demonstration that this has all been vaporware, fake it til you make it. He probably smells some state funding if he can locate at Cal Expo. It's worth floating this, exposing everything to date as a sham and a waste, because he doesn't have any actual money for a stadium on campus, at Hornet Stadium. So, small chance this can pan out is worth a lot more than the dead end plan he had previously. :roll:

I think this sounds like a good option, if feasible. Plenty of parking. I don't think being off campus is a big deal -> it will be harder for freshmen who live on campus to get to games, most students (i'd think) would be driving regardless of location.

Question for the group ...

For 2026, did Sacramento State cancel all Big Sky scheduled games? Been reading that we do not have a game scheduled vs. Sac in 2026 but couldn't we just keep them scheduled for the last game of the year? Any reason that we can only play them at the beginning of season (non-conference games)?

Southern Utah and Utah Tech added to Big Sky schedule, and Sac dropped. With the two new Utah schools thats 9 conference games, leaving room for only 3 out of conference games.
Teams can play out of conference whenever they have an open date, but the league schedule fills up the schedule later.

From the Hornet Football Forum:

Sac State just doesn’t have the money. This latest pivot to potentially build the stadium around the existing horse racing grandstand at Cal Expo confirms we have a university president who is flying by the seat of his pants to make something happen, and this reeks of more desperation.

I don’t understand how Cal Expo, which is bleeding money ($2.6M in 2024, and halfway through 2025 $1.9, and just spent $22 M improving roofs and air conditioning systems, and, now will lose horse racing and the Sac Republic revenue next year, is in any strong financial position to contribute towards the building of a “Snapdragon type stadium.”

All reports indicate so far that the horse racing grandstand remains in place. I have watched many horse races and attended Country in the Park concerts there. For those events, a suitable venue, but for football, the seating is too low and too far back to watch.

The astroturf campaign for the Pac 12, and the roll of the dice on the FBS waiver with no apparent backup plan is teetering on its last legs. If not true, great, but perception is reality until proven otherwise.

All along, Dr. Wood has said FBS or Bust.

We are losing ground, except for the potential promise of a great 2025 football season; we are headed to an independent FCS schedule and an interruption of the Causeway Classic.

Good thing we will be in the Big West for when it does go officially Bust, and football goes the way of the dodo bird.

What we need now is a Miracle on J Street, which is right now feeling like a horror show.

https://bigskyfans.com/threads/athletic-facilities.13015/page-30#post-286388

This is a mistake if they end the Causeway Classic. Like it or not SACST and UC Davis are joined at the hip when it comes to football and sports. Outside of the local area, nobody knows UC Davis or SACST. If both schools work together they can both succeed. If they go alone, they will be have a much tougher time succeeding. Just my opinion.

If Sac makes it into the FBS, and Davis remains in the Big Sky, do you favor Sac being the only FBS team Davis plays? Davis doesn’t want to play two FBS teams, it would diminish their chance of making the playoffs, assuming Sac is any good. Is a home and home arrangement with Sac even with big crowds as lucrative as the payoffs Davis gets from major FBS teams?

This is a little overly dramatic, but lots of folks are definitely frustrated right now!.

Maybe with Dr. Wood being relatively quiet lately, something good is actually in the works? The President's address is Thursday 8/21. He usually avoids the athletics topics though because the audience is a consists mostly of sports hating superlibs and faculty.

College sports is highly geographical. SacSt and Davis are both geographically in an isolated area within the US. If we work together similar to how many schools leverage geographical areas, both schools would improve faster than doing it alone. For some reason, there are Aggies who believe we are better than SAC in a strange elitism that make working with SACST somehow impossible. That is absurd.

You think Stanford, Cal, USC, and UCLA think we are on par with those schools? Of course not, they laugh at us. We need to build something just for the SAC area. A natural rival is rare in sports, but we have one. SDSU, Fresno St, Cal Poly, none have a geographical rival like we do.

Embrace it. Build it together. In the long run it will be very successful.

I don't see it as "elitism" but more like "be careful who you hitch your wagon to" because if Sac St. blows it all up due to their own incompetence, why would Davis want to be associated with that in any way?

Sac is leaving the Big Sky, is leaving the FCS, is leaving the Causeway Classic.

The notion that Davis is somehow responsible for the possibility of the end of the yearly football game is preposterous and not grounded in reality, yet, its all over their board.

Sac has created two issues:
1. Does it make sense for Davis to play a rivalry game on the road every year? No
2. Does it make sense for Davis to play the same FBS team every year? No

I'm not sure how these schools are expected to work together, and to what end. I'm not trolling you. I honestly want to know in what ways you think Sac and Davis should be working together.
Are you suggesting they make the move to FBS together?
Obviously neither school is ready. Davis just isn't enacting the fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy.

some have suggested we buy out the Stetson (home) game to have the pleasure of traveling to Sacramento, which makes no sense. If Sac is FCS independent for the foreseeable future, maybe an OOC series makes sense, though it’ll be curious to see if they get the cold shoulder from Big Sky schools. If they actually become FBS independent, where’s the money? There’s more fans at a WNBA game than there are dollars in that KMAX 31 tv deal.

the idea of repurposing the horse track into a large concert venue makes sense; making it into a combo concert venue/football stadium is an interesting idea and maybe the only practical approach considering the financial state of the CSU system and the state.

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Maybe Sac should buy out Stetson for us if they want our game so badly! (a perceived sell-out home win in their view) :sweat: It appears Sac has plenty of money laying around just waiting to be spent. Davis is clearly not in a financial position to be buying out contracts.

But more seriously, it sounds like Davis is going to honor its contract with Stetson, which I assume was agreed to a year or more ago? This is completely reasonable as business relationships/reputations are important.