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.

3

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.

If Sac will agree to continuing the home and home series, we should do that, just like we did when we were D2 and they were I-AA. If they only want home games, they need to pay like Cal or Stanford or other FBS options, which they won't be able to. So that'll be the end of that until we move up.

Nobody has even started talking about the possibility of Sac St. being FCS and without a conference in 2026. Big Sky won't pick up the phone, as they've clearly moved on.

Interesting question legally as to whether the NCAA has any say in who they let in to FBS.
If the court rules the NCAA has to let Sac in, it looks like any school who has $5 million and funds the correct amount of scholarships/ sports is in. This could severely diminish the NCAA's FBS brand. From Sac's perspective: what even is the criteria besides meeting these requirements, arbitrary popularity contest?

Assuming Sac makes it into the FBS, would you still want to play Sac every year if Davis only plays one FBS game? Playing two FBS games is not advantageous to making the playoffs. That may not be true if Sac isn’t good, but hypothetically if Sac played at a level of a Pac12 team, would you want to play them exclusively as the one FBS game?

Right, this has to make sense for Davis too. Including whether Davis would want to play 2 FBS games per year. Because playing one FBS game vs. the same team every year is very limiting to the recruiting / marketing benefit to playing up.

It's probably moot as Sac would not agree to it even if we wanted it. So probably won't happen and that'll be the end of the series until we move up I guess.

This will be really interesting to revisit after this football season.

I’d venture 2026 FCS independent is the likely outcome based on what we know now. Court cases can take a long time. They have 2 games on the books - Fresno and Lamar. Aside from that they just have uncertainty because they don’t exactly have friends or money. But yes, when you remove all guardrails, you end up with bad fries at Taco Bell and worse tacos at Burger King. Categories exist for a reason.

Given how this stadium charade is going, along with the FBS plan, one has to wonder if the bottom may fall out on their 2026 schedule. They don't have money to pay for six homes games. Big Sky games will be hard to come by. Are they going to sign a bunch of oddball FCS home and homes to fill out the schedule?

Its shaping up to be panic time for Dr. Wood...especially with all these FBS transfers signed up for big things.

Lincoln (CA) at Sac State 2026, book it!

We are associated with SACST and have been for a very long time. That being said, natural rivalries make the sport overall better.Cal has Stanford. USC has UCLA. Why? Because they are geographically relevant. We have that in SACST vs UCD. Don't minimalize it, embrace it. Promote it. Make it a Sacramento Metro Area game that everyone watches.

I get all that and agree with you about the importance of the rivalry, but I'm not sure how these schools are expected to work together, and to what end. I honestly want to know in what ways you think Sac and Davis should be working together.

The rivalry is hard to embrace and promote when Sac is jumping divisions and leaving the conference we share. All the other teams you mentioned are conference / subdivision mates. Sac and Davis will be neither.

As I stated above........
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

If Sac actually makes it to FBS, I see us playing them every 2-3 years at their place with a $450,000 pay out to the Ags. Any other scenario doesn’t make sense to me.

There is no way in the next decade that Sac state pays out 400,000 plus to play us unless they back door into the Pac-12. Which is very unlikely at this point. The highest odds are that the entire house of stingers comes tumbling down and Sac state folds their tent on the entire sports program.

Agreed. Without the payout we don’t have much of a reason to play them if they're FBS.

Let's see how this looks after the season. Sports is about winning. Sports is also about having the best talent. Right now SAC has some of the best talent in the FCS if not FBS with that backfield. When you have a coaching staff and big time endorsements from high profile athletes like Shaq and Bibby this thing can grow. One thing SAC has is a great fan base - if it can be tapped for college sports, we all benafit.

Bob Dunning: "Sacramento State, which has severed its Big Sky ties after this season, isn't sure where its football program will land, given that the NCAA has turned down its bid to be an FBS independent. There will be no crawling back to the Big Sky on bended knee, with multiple sources indicating the Hornets burned the Big Sky bridge with their quick exit."

Wouldn't Sac State's athletic future be 1000% better in FCS - with reasonable, logical steps - trying to move up?

It seems like football is on thin ice, which won't make the FB roster committed. Which means the Go Go will be Gone Gone.

Can basketball and the Olympic sports play as independents?

i thought their olympic sports were heading to the Big West?