If the game were held at Hughes Stadium, Sacramento City College would get a big cut of the revenue, so UCD may not see a financial advantage to "hosting" there. Hughes also lacks any kind of premium seating, which will piss off season ticketholders who pay extra to not sit with the riffraff. It also lacks adequate concession stands for that kind of a crowd. You could have food trucks, but it would be a tricky affair to park them inside and keep customer lines away from the playing field.

If I believe some of the regulars here I'm trolling too.
I'd just as soon see the Causeway Classic end. Some traditions are no longer relevant, and this one just brings out a lot of nastiness and "Well, I never !" types.

Thanks for the ChatGPT research on the UCD season by the way. It was funny, but someone really didn't get it.

.
While its entirely possible Sac starts selling out Hornet Stadium (maybe halfway through the year?) I'd be careful with your attendance prediction.....during the dominant 3 straight conference championships (30-8 record) Sac averaged less than 13,800 This was dominant, fun, high scoring football, and it didn't consistently draw large crowds. (I threw out the 2021 covid year which looked like about 6k).

I'm wondering what possibly going 30-8 over the next 3 seasons looks like in the same stadium with just bigger dudes on the roster. If every game draws like Montana and Davis, you could be in business.


Davis can draw 15,500+ depending on what mood the fire marshal is in. I'm sure Sac fans would help achieve this if they would fill their section (partially trolling)...



Sac averages around 13,500 a game.
2018: 3,709 (I threw this out, your welcome)
2019: 11,918 (6 games)
2020: covid
2021: pretty much covid
2022: 14,338 (7 games)
2023: 13,348 (5 games)
2024: 14,046 (5 games)

If you look over the last 30 years of Causeway, Davis fans boost attendance when it’s in Sac, and in some years outnumbered the home fans. But Sac fans are much less likely to come to games in Davis, even in years when tickets remained. As to why Sac fans don’t travel, I’d always assumed it was because they couldn’t get an out-of-county trip approved by their probation officer in time.

Please allow me to give the CSUS rebuttal.

Ahem... "Something about cow turds and
Duck Favis !"

It amazes me that the thought process of Sac students is that we are going to lose so why show up.

How to you get 15k at a stadium with 10k capacity? I've been at what seem like sold out Causeways in Davis with the lawns filled and its like 11k, maybe?

You know how this works with the grass/standing room.....but I'll bite on the light trolling.....
Utah Tech game last year drew 14,832. Montana State 14,000.
The amount of people let in the grass area and standing room is based on how the fire marshal feels about life that day.

The definition of zero pride.

https://x.com/jakegadon_tv/status/1956852555491000451?s=46

Moving to cal expo?

https://x.com/heykevinjohn/status/1956877509456507078?s=46

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.

Well, the Broad Fieldhouse will still get use-it's just for athletic training. They would just have to put everyone on a bus the same as for a Causeway Classic.. Any improvements to Hornet Stadium (restrooms) on the side could be used for all those track competitions they have.

I like the Cal Expo idea, making use of an existing facility instead of building a brand-new stadium for a program that might be on the chopping block in a few years if it doesn't deliver big. Obviously it's not a permanent solution, but they can use it as a home while they regroup + re-evaluate their plans. In the unlikely event the program flops and gets cancelled they'll be glad they can just walk away from a building they don't own

Sac State is not a big campus and doesn't have very much student housing, although it does have those two student apt. complexes near campus. I don't know that student attendance will be noticeably affected by moving the games to Cal Expo. The ones who currently don't because they're apathetic about sports still won't go. The ones who live on or near campus and want to go can take public transit relatively easily if they don't want to drive. When they moved bball games from Memorial Auditorium to campus the students didn't flock to the games because they're a bunch of commuters anyway. Who has time for a game when they have work or a long drive ahead of them ?

Not to nitpick but I've been to SJSU while it was in session, seen what a typical day looked like, and walked right by SJSU's stadium on the way to the baseball game at Excite. I would not call that off-campus, and if it is, just barely., There are other school practice facilities, school offices and school parking garage. within a couple of blocks. SJSU has that same commuter vibe as Sac State. Perhaps SJSU played further away decades ago and that's what you're referencing ?

There's a slightly misguided idea that if you build it (on campus) students will come. Not necessarily. Don't forget you have lots of students who see college merely as a means to an end, not as a gigantic immersive adventure where they want to get involved with everything.. You're not getting them to go just by waving a shiny object.

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.

That's a very sarcastic AI tool.

Ok, it must have just seemed like it was on campus because the rest of the SJSU stuff right by it (offices, baseball practice field, soccer field, parking garage, golf course). The first time I did an SJ Giants game I stayed a couple of blocks from SJSU and walked to Excite (1.7 mi roughly so 25 min seems right). Didn't cross the freeway, but that's only 1 way to get there. 8 blocks is not an insurmountable distance. Anyone who really wanted to go would not be sweating that. Plus I'm sure SJSU offers some shuttles. Sac State has student shuttles too-I've seen them up near Arden Fair. They kind of looked like prison buses from the outside.

Walkability is not always a good measuring stick anyway. Dobbins and the ARC are fairly easy walks from Segundo and Tercero, and students still don't show up for games in the numbers you'd expect, though they'll pass right by them on the way to class.

I would agree with the off-campus stadium being a nuisance when San Diego State was playing in Carson, but the new Snapdragon Stadium (on the site of the former Jack Murphy Stadium) is an easy trolley (light rail) trip from campus or anywhere along the trolley line.

Things being off-campus is not as big of a concern when you live off-campus anyway. If you don't live on campus and you have to come to campus to see an event that can be just as much of an inconvenience.

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