Well, this guy certainly leaves room for a whole lot of uncertainty by saying the the PAC12 "will include some or all" of these teams.

Yet another question mark for the rumored Sac move to Pac-x or some other FBS conference. Conference athletics are more than one sport. So far in the 2024-25 season, with the completion of fall sports and well into the basketball seasons, only Sac's volleyball team has a winning record. Very litttle likelihood that either of the basketball teams is going to change that.

Dr. Wood talking about how Sac State will prioritize spending while facing a projected $37 million dollars worth of budget cuts for the university:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGRsoZZvSY9/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Granted I was not a math major, but $4.2 million does not equal $100 million very quickly.
The renovation of the stadium seems to be a far cry from the earlier images and more like an expansion of the erector set they have now. This says nothing of the other facilities. My daughter went on the recruiting trips a couple years ago and the deciding factors for her and most others: Off field facilities (weight room, athlete dining halls, athlete lounge/study hall, etc), practice facilities, winning program, stability (Will the coach who recruited me be there in two years?), and education. You are only in the stadium once a week, but the rest of those are every day. Sac has a lot of catching up to do.

So fun fact about these fee increases. CSU has 2 mechanisms for student input on fees. An election or a special committee appointed by the president. He opted for the committee and, wouldn’t you know, they unanimously agreed most of his proposals. They held town hall listening sessions and apparently couldn’t get through his opening remarks before protesters caused his early exit. Not sure if this guy is leading a university or a banana republic. Also, my experience in construction tells me that “phase 3” for the architectural stuff is code for never happening. Of note, one of the things buried in the fee proposal is 1 free ticket to all home athletic events for 3 years after graduation.

I admire his tenacity to improve the “student experience.” Most administrators are pulling away from that. However, he seems to be out over his skis. I maintain that this is a case of grow or die for Sac football.

I agree it is sad that he and his chosen committee ignored the students/protesters concerns to push his agenda to spend their money only so he can be a more famous face and be on tv which he loves to be. He is hoping the PAC buys into their bluffs of big money and the “new” stadium.

for me it’s the lack of transparency. The new fee will raise about $4.2m per year of new money 3 years from now. It’s in a ramp up now. They’re spending $5m on new lights. Great. Where’s the other $95m? Is the plan to issue a $95m bond with $5m in annual payments over 30 years? In which case you don’t really have $5m of new money every year. Like, wouldn’t it be more straightforward to say we want a $200m stadium. We can mortgage half with student fees, we need $50m from Sac Republic for a 30 year lease, $40m from donors and a $10m redevelopment grant from the city. That would be a straightforward deal. Instead you’ve just got another emperor trying on his new clothes in front of all of Twitter/X.

another unofficial visit from local kids with no intention to go there, the visit was done as a favor just like last week. And then they do a photo shoot for their propaganda team to spread it everywhere.

Exactly. Give me a break. This guy has offers from:
Tennessee
Colorado
Michigan
Ole Miss
Stanford
Texas A&M
Nevada
Arkansas
Cal
USC
Oregon
Arizona State
San Diego State
Florida, etc.

I understand a HC can do amazing things like Coach Prime at Jackson State, but this guy 'aint Coach Prime.
The PR machine is getting a little crazy.....

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/

i honestly just see all this ambition crushing the program early, if not with losses, with attracting borderline students who are talented on the field but have issues off.

Yeah as much as I personally like our FBS aspirations… I would much rather be in the MW and eventually join for football than go independent right now. I just think with all that’s going on in CFB rn, this move for sac is really unknown territory

How can a independent put together an attractive schedule of home games, especially after conference play starts for teams in conferences? Sac isn’t that attractive a name or a draw for out of conference home and away deals. I don’t foresee quality FBS teams coming to Sac after their conference play starts,
Also independent FBS Sac would only have one FCS game count for bowl eligibility so if they schedule several they would be playing without any bowl prospects, so the team would be playing without a goal, no conference championship, no chance for a bowl.

If they’re FBS, even independent, they can pay us $450,000 when we travel to their place like other FBS programs do.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/44510429/sources-sacramento-state-apply-become-fbs-independent

My concern is that Dr. wood is doing this to boost his image with goal of jumping ship to a bigger school in a few years and then leave the sac state athletic dept in debt.
He always makes every announcement about him and puts himself front and center when it is the job of others such as the AD.

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?

Now others may disagree including fans of Sac State, but this seems like a fairly big loss for them considering how much Pac12 or bust chatter there was. I mean, congrats to them for making the jump to FBS since that was such a large goal of Dr. Woods, but I would definitely have some concerns if I were a fan of that program.

I can hear my mother now, “In this economy!”

This is a confusing move unless there’s some plan to slide into a conference after the next (inevitable) conference shakeup. They join UConn, UMASS and Notre Dame as FBS independents. I don’t see any of those three traveling to Sac. Maybe a home/home with some MWC teams, but scheduling once conference okay starts seems challenging!

Probably the cheapest way to go FBS - leave the other sports in a ‘FCS’ (lower mid-major) conference, although there doesn’t seem to be a TV revenue stream to offset costs.

Can’t imagine selling a fee increase to students to pay for this!

Can’t imagine the donors who pledged that $50M NIL money had this in mind.

maybe the hope is to fill in their schedule with rest of the Pac 8 and integrate into that conference at some point.

Assuming that conference exists in 2-3 years. Same as us assuming the MWC exists when we’re ready.

In the current state of college football, trying to guess the landscape in 2-3 years seems difficult. The power 4 has taken over.

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

I think Dr Wood is so consumed with the "FBS or Bust" campaign that charting a well researched, prudent path to the FBS is lost in all the hype and hyperbole. He sees Sac as a budding, FBS, power football program that can follow a path similar to what Deion Sanders has done at Colorado. So they bring in a coach with name recognition who is on the college football fast track and build a team by recruiting highly rated players, some of which have a history of problems at previous schools, while showing the door to many of the current players on the roster. Winning at any cost is the name of the game.

He is willing to take the chance to go independent in order to gain national recognition by scheduling a few games against power schools and, hopefully, pulling some upsets while winning their other games by blowouts. The whole idea is betting that the power conferences will come calling if you win and talk loud enough while building a program with a lot of splash and talk of cash. He believes that if they win big and talk loud and they will come...it will be interesting to see how this plays out.