I'm.curious what Sac spent on in 2024, which was before they really went crazy with NIL, and coaches salaries.

‘This is a good site for researching college athletic finances: https://knightnewhousedata.org/
They plan to add revenue sharing data once that becomes available.

I don’t mean to divert from the current topic, but for a moment I will. About a week ago I commented that UCD was apparently done with the Big West but for the paperwork and possible associate membership in some sport or another. Turns out there is still one Aggie active this season. Long jumper Kylee Davis will compete in the first round of the NCAA track and field post season.

On the subject of finances there is an article in today’s Bee about Sac’s anticipated revenues from “game guarantees.” The Bee reports Sac will net $225,000.00 this coming year. They will need to step it up to meet an anticipated obligation of $24,000,000.00 over the next five seasons.

wow. 225,000! You can host a bunch more of those 10 min concerts with that $. In all seriousness, is that the total revenue after they have to pay the visiting non conference games and pay for the travel of their in conference opponents? If it isn’t then it will likely be a net negative.

After $24M move to FBS football, Sac State will net $225K in 2026 game guarantees
By Chris Biderman
May 21, 2026 (Online)
May 22, 2026 (Print)
When the Sacramento State Hornets football program earlier this year made an aggressive leap into college football’s top level, the Football Bowl Subdivision, it took on a roughly $24 million obligation over the next five years to join the Mid-American Conference.
Key in helping pay for that ascension, school officials said, would be future money made from playing higher-profile schools in non-conference road games, known as game guarantees.
“All of this is being primarily paid for by game guarantees,” university president Luke Wood said in February, according to the State Hornet student newspaper. “As an FBS school, we can get $1 million to $1.5 million per game.”
But for 2026, game guarantees for games against Hawaii, North Dakota State, Mississippi Valley State and Fresno State will net Sac State just $225,000, according to contracts provided to The Sacramento Bee in response to a California Public Records Act request.
The Hornets have two road games that will bring in funds: Fresno State on Sept. 12, for $350,000; and Hawaii on Nov. 28, for $225,000. They will pay Mississippi Valley State a $350,000 guarantee for a Sept. 5 home game in Sacramento.
Sac State’s home game against North Dakota State on Sept. 19 is the first in a traditional home-and-home agreement, with no money involved and Sac State slated to visit North Dakota State in 2027, though either program canceling without mutual consent would be contractually obligated to pay the other $350,000.
The contract with Fresno State was signed in 2020, well before Sacramento State made its move to the FBS and while it continued to play in the lower-level Football Championship Subdivision as a member of the Big Sky Conference.
The game against Hawaii was announced in March after Hawaii had a home-and-home canceled with UMass. The Mississippi Valley State game was agreed upon when Sacramento State was considering operating as an FBS independent, months before the move to the MAC became official.
Sac State football’s monetary obligations
Sacramento State’s entry fee to the MAC was $18 million, spread out over the five-year agreement. The university made a $6 million payment to the MAC that was due April 3, and is on the hook for $3 million payments each December through 2030.
The school will also pay $75,000 in affiliate member fees this year, which will increase by 4% each of the four remaining years, and $130,000 annually in standard bowl fees charged to each team in the conference.
Additionally, Sac State will pay $5 million to the NCAA for the FBS promotion and will pay travel costs for the four visiting conference opponents, bringing the grand total cost through 2030 to roughly $24 million.
An eight-figure fee to move from an FCS conference into an FBS conference is not unheard of. North Dakota State also newly joined an FBS conference, the Mountain West, for 2026 and paid $12.5 million to the Mountain West to do so, plus the $5 million NCAA fee.
‘Extremely late start’ for 2026 scheduling
The net $225,000 for Sac State from non-conference games is a far cry from what the school would need from game guarantees in future years to pay for the move to the FBS and the MAC.
But athletic director Mark Orr said he was less concerned about the low dollar figure for 2026 and more concerned with getting games on the schedule in the first place.
The FBS move required Sacramento State to schedule a minimum of five FBS home games, which was difficult just months before the season while most non-conference schedules for FBS teams are mapped out years in advance, Orr said.
“We obviously got an extremely late start in putting a schedule together for 2026,” Orr said. “For us to have two non-conference home games, two road games and still come out on net positive in my eyes for 2026, that’s quite an accomplishment.”
How much could guarantees grow in 2027 and beyond?
Orr said he’s been working on scheduling bigger non-conference opponents starting in 2027 through 2034.
He expects there to be games against bigger name schools in the region, including Cal, Stanford, San Jose State, Nevada and regular games against Fresno State in the coming years.
Sac State has played road games against each of those five schools since 2021, including an upset win over Stanford in 2023. Stanford paid Sac State a $625,000 guarantee for that game, news outlets reported at the time.
Orr also noted Sac State is nearing agreements with Power Four schools — those in the SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference — similar to what Fresno State and San Jose State have signed in recent years.
“We’re very close to finalizing a game for 2027 with a Power Four school that will be a significant amount of revenue,” Orr said. “Certainly more than all of our guaranteed revenue combined for this year. ... We’re in conversations and negotiations with several Pour Four programs that are interested in playing us in future years.”
Fresno State received $1.85 million for its road game against Michigan and $1.35 million against UCLA in 2024.
San Jose State received game guarantees of $1.5 million for contests against Arkansas (an upset win in 2019) and Penn State in a game that was moved from 2020 to this September due to the COVID-19 pandemic. San Jose State also reportedly made $1.1 million to play at USC in the 2023 opener and $1.85 million to play at Texas last season.
Sac State is confident it can afford move to MAC
Sac State’s ability to foot the bill for the move to the MAC amid a budget shortfall for the public university of upward of $31 million in 2025 was a key question when the announcement was made in February.
The questions grew sharper as details of the agreement were made public. There isn’t much money coming in from the MAC as Sac State won’t receive broadcast revenue from the conference throughout the five-year agreement. And they have to foot the bill for visiting teams coming for conference games, which are expected to be six figures for contests with MAC programs traveling from Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.
For Sac State to recoup even half of the $24 million being spent to join the MAC via game guarantees over the remainder of the five-year agreement, the university would need those guarantees to net an average of $3 million a year from 2027 through 2030.
College football teams generally play three to four non-conference games each season, so in a balanced non-conference schedule with two home and two road games, Sac State would need to average $1.5 million per road game — and that’s ignoring the need to offset any guarantees Sac State might pay out to visiting teams.
Orr said he believes the school will be able to pay its share to get into the MAC with the help of game guarantees, corporate sponsorships and local revenue despite the obstacles of the agreement and the university tightening its financial belt.
“I think all that’s pretty lined up,” Orr said. “We feel good about the entry fee, what we’ve committed to.
“I think the challenge now is in the marketplace of Division I athletics with NIL (name, image and likeness monetization rights for college athletes), and all the other needs that you have to be competitive at an FBS level, those are also revenue opportunities, fundraising opportunities that we’re chasing as well.
“We didn’t enter FBS and the MAC just to be in it. Certainly we want to win and be competitive.”

https://www.sacbee.com/sports/article315828546.html

“I think the challenge now is in the marketplace of Division I athletics with NIL (name, image and likeness monetization rights for college athletes), and all the other needs that you have to be competitive at an FBS level, those are also revenue opportunities, fundraising opportunities that we’re chasing as well.“

An expense is labeled a revenue opportunity. No wonder they are hopeful, they’ve got lots of expenses.

Davis admin have been smart taking their time to move up to FBS. Luckily I don’t foresee Davis having to pay anywhere near the same about of fees to the MW because moving up would just make Davis a full member, not an affiliate member like Sac State or NDSU. The game guarantees to play big programs is good. I don’t know how many of those you’d want to schedule though to make sure the team has a competitive record.

None of the 24 million sac is committed to includes items that improve to quality of the team. More scholarships more.coaches, better facilities, revenue sharing are in addition.

I find it very surprising that the sacramento sports community has not realized what is actually going on at sac state. That Luke wood has so bambozled them and especially the students is just beyond belief. It’s like drink the koolaide and it will all be okay. The sac bee has nibbles around the edges on the subject, sees the issues, but seems afraid to do what the old sacramento bee used to do, that is investigative reporting into what could be a very big story, is also odd. I hate watching a train wreck about to happen, but it is a coming.

to be fair, there may be some stuff going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about. I predict that Sac State doesn’t build a new stadium, and they become tenants and the new soccer stadium at the rail yards.

Well said. The Bee coverage almost feels intentional or "wait & see" because it doesn't take flipping over many stones to see the glaring risks here..

I hope I am not becoming overly paranoid but I see a trend that I don’t like. I feel like UC Davis is being the focus of a lot of major school’s portal recruiting efforts. They like that we recruit freshmen with good academics, coach them exceptionally thru their first year and then they’re ripe for the portal and ripe for the picking. Recently a cal athlete revealed that he was recruited thru his parents who were the first to contact him for going into the portal too, and eventually be picked off by another school. They had been approached by an agent. “OH, could you use some extra cash for some home improvement?” Do I have a deal for you, or, I should say your son/daughter! It’s happened to our basketball team, our football team, many of our entire women’s soccer team last year. I am here to be convinced that I am wrong.

I don't think you're entirely wrong, though I tend to think it's more the agents/"sports management" companies who are the biggest danger. In addition to getting a %-age of any NIL deal they make for an athlete, I'm pretty sure that there's compensation from the school or a booster for delivering the goods. Teams need practice players as well as stars. And unfortunately, these kids are ripe for plucking.

I think that college athletes (and their parents), because they've always been successful - and usually the best player on most of their teams, are very prone to optimism bias. They have a tendency to overestimate their chances of positive experiences and underestimate their chances of negative experiences. So when a recruiter, be it a coach or an agent approaches them with a sales pitch, they're extremely susceptible.

Or to put it another way, college athletes have been "failure deprived" during their athletic careers. The bad experiences, like NOT starting, or worse, NOT playing haven't been frequent enough to make them (or their parents) wary. Often they've been protected from failure by their parents, or the "blame" has been placed on "that coach" who didn't realize how good the player was.

You understand there are more football transfers coming in than going out, no?

William & Mary
Stony Brook
Sac

All not getting bang for their buck.

These are from the 2024 season and Stony Brook went from 0-10 in 2023 to 8-4 in 2024

My bad, I had read that as 2025 -- then yes! Stony Brook, turning it around.

if you are anxious for us to move up to the MWC in football, you want to be a BIG men's and women's basketball fan starting this season. their success will be a litmus test for our readiness to move football up. personally, i think we have a ways to go before we are in the top half of the MWC men's basketball standings. we were a consistent top level team at in the BWC with an arena that was one of the top 4-5 in the conference; i think we'll be toward the bottom of the MWC, with one of the worst arenas.

Out of curiosity, where do you think the WBB team will finish? Since you didn't make a prediction for them in your post.

I don’t follow WBB very closely. Not sure how they have stacked up with MWC teams in the past.

Davis hasn't played hardly any of the new MWC teams over the last decade; Wyoming (lost) and Nevada (won) were the two that jumped out in my quick scan of past recentish results. Based on last-year's NCAA NET rating, WBB will probably be mid-pack in the MWC. That said, NET rating had Davis behind several BW teams that they beat head-to-head, so.... who knows.

Eye test when i was at SDSU led me to be convinced that Gross's stellar teams of the era would easily be competitive in the MWC. I remember my student who was on the WBB team was quite grumpy about losing to Morgan Bertsch and the Ags

Cutting through the BS of Sac State Administrators and local politicians re: stadium chimera.

Been several decades since I've been to Hornet Stadium on campus there, but why can't they just sit tight, raise less money than all the BS, pipe dream ideas they have, and renovate/improve that joint to an acceptable level? Just curious why they're so eager to move when all the video clips I've seen show pretty solid looking attendance on campus.

feels like admin using Sac St. as a vessel to improve personal resume to climb ladder to next gig. a stepping stone. if you deeply care about something, you aren't reckless with it's survival chances. luckily, it seems the Davis team cares

But good news for the Hornets; the NCAA has removed the two year ban on post season play for teams moving to FBS. Six wins and they could be bowl bound this December. Then the big bowl money comes rolling in.

The games the MAC are tied to like the Mrytle Beach Bowl and Boca Raton bowl have payouts of $500,000, $450,000, numbers like that. Hardly gamechanging money.in today's college football.

I do have an acquaintance who is very close to the administration at Sac, an enthusiastic Dr. Wood KoolAid consumer. They tell me that the plan is to hold on until they can attempt to move into the downtown soccer stadium, but that is not even a layup for them. Overall, trying to expand more towards that part of town where they have some sort of auxiliary campus tied to some tech money. You guys in the area will know better about that than I do. What jumped out to me was the uncertainty about being able to get into the soccer venue.

So.....after all that....playing at Hornet Stadium in September? lol

TBH the Sac / SDSU situations further my feeling that Big Sky football is just fine for Davis for the foreseeable future.

Responding (respectfully) to part of Aggie 69’s post last week (“That Luke wood has so bamboozled …the students is just beyond belief”). Actually, the students (and faculty and staff) are extremely concerned and upset about Luke Wood’s FBS push. On-campus polls, surveys, forums and protests, while revealing nothing against Football, have included repeated pleas for our administration to fund the essentials first (offering basic courses, fixing crumbling infrastructure, hiring/retaining qualified faculty) and almost universal disdain for Wood’s agenda and methods.

The fact that all the controversy has failed to result in any journalistic judgement or CSU intervention is indeed puzzling. Some of it may be uncertainty about the finances. Despite incredible Football and Basketball expenditures (in a Chronicle interview last summer Brennan Marion marveled at how much Wood and Orr were willing to spend: “I kept asking and they kept saying yes”), there’s been no audit or detailed accounting. Where is the money coming from? In the March NY Times article about the MAC move, Sac State CFO Rose McAuliffe said the University has been preparing; “We’ve been saving for the last couple of years.” She did not detail the source for these savings.

On campus (and also at the Bee), hopes that CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia would step in have fizzled. As Wood moved forward, Garcia response was to approve raises for CSU Presidents. Garcia's recent claim that the campus community shares Wood's vision was met with disgust and incredulity (see https://www.reddit.com/r/CSUS/comments/1ueoxgt/president_woods_evaluation_results_released/).

But it is certain that the students (and faculty and staff) feel betrayed, even those of us (like myself) who love college sports. Wood raised Fees, in part to support a new stadium, over strong objections from the students. He chose the Alternative Consultation Process; no student-wide vote, but instead required meetings with the students to discuss possible fee increases. Wood appeared only briefly at those meetings. He made introductory remarks and then left before the students could voice their objections to him. While the objections (per documentable reporting) were strong and prevelant, Wood has never acknowledged them. A standard response of his to questions about student obections is "I heard support". Once Wood raised the fees, he then (to tamp down journalists’ questions and suggest on-campus enthusiasm for FBS) told the public that the students “voted” for the fee increases.

Furthermore when the students pleaded with Wood to roll back his fee increases so that more of their money could go to campus basics like academics, Wood claimed he could not do so, trotting out his highly deceptive “separate funding streams” talking point, as in “academics and athletics are funded from different pots, and money cannot be moved from one pot to another”. That’s rubbish. Clear CSU Policy gives Wood full power to reduce Category II fees. The students could then use that money to support an Academic Access Fee (common at other CSUs). So money Wood is planning to take from student pockets to fund help his stadium and athletics push very easily could go where the students and campus want and need it to go. Wood’s other response to students’ pleas has been to suggest that the students impose additional fee increases on themselves to pay for courses and other basics.

Another problem is the CSUS Administration (including College Deans, the Finance Office etc). No one seems willing to speak out or, in a few cases, even talk about the problems. A Bee reporter told me his interviewees did acknowledge how bad things are but then pulled back at the last minute and become unwilling to go on the record.

The new ASI officers give us some hope; the top criteria expressed by voting students was willingness to stand up to Wood. The new Provost gives us some hope. The departing Provost (a Wood hire, see https://www.reddit.com/r/CSUS/comments/1tu6x2y/cameron_out_as_provostwhat_happened/)
was highly unqualified; her previous experience was at a college with 19 Undergraduates (seriously!). Her replacement is a long-term CSUS Faculty member.

Just as I loved Moroski to Ellison, I love Sac State and want to see basics adequately funded.