Sacramento State president discusses new era of men’s football, basketball

It’s the dawn of a new era for Sacramento State athletics. After disappointing seasons in men’s basketball and football, the school hired new head coaches.

Former Sacramento Kings legend Mike Bibby was recently hired as the next men’s basketball head coach.

In December, the school hired Brennan Marion, a former offensive coordinator from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after former head coach Andy Thompson resigned.

The Hornets’ football team is coming off of a three-win season after successful seasons in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Marion is known for the UNLV Rebels' uptempo “Go-Go Offense,” which in 2023 earned him the Mountain West Coordinator of the Year award.

On Sunday, April 13, at 4 p.m., the football team will be showcasing that new offense during their spring game, which is when the team practices against each other in front of fans.

Sac State President Dr. J. Luke Wood joined Vick Gonzalez Insight to talk about the spring game, which is open to the public, and how this fits into his goal of boosting student engagement. 

This story has been edited for length, clarity and flow.

So college football is in the fall. Why is there a spring game?

Think of it as a practice or showcase for the students. It's an opportunity for the community to come and see the team, meet the coaches, see the new players. We have a very special offense that is run by Sacramento State with our new football coach, Brennon Marion. It's called the “Go-Go Offense.” It's an opportunity to get an inkling as to what that looks like. So really, the spring game is a culmination of the NCAA allowable practice window. So what we do is the game splits the Sac State team into two squads, green squad and white squad, which the coaches create. And then each team is made up of both offense and defense, and then basically the coaches have a scoring system so we know who wins the game. Either way, Sac State will win.

After a 3-9 season and, of course, a postseason spree spanning many years. When you do a postmortem, you look back at the last season, 2024, what improvements needed to happen this year?

I would say that there were a lot of improvements, but it was time for us to bring new energy and investment into athletics. So we hired a new football coach, Brennan Marion, who's coming to us from UNLV. He's brought with him a new coaching staff that is really player-centric and focused on what's going to be the best for the players and for their families. We have put in upgrades that are going into our stadium between now and the 2025 season, including new lighting, ribbon boards, video boards, concessions, all kinds of different things to really improve the fan experience. 

So there'll be a benefit for the fans there, but it also really comes down to recruitment. So we've been more focused on recruiting students from in-state and out of state, and part of that is our encouragement for students in the local area to stay home. We have incredible talent in the local area, and for a lot of those students, they have historically looked at Sac State quickly and then have decided to go on to other programs because they are what's called FBS, which is the highest level of D1 football. We announced our plans to make that transition to the highest level of D1 football and submitted our application to the NCAA. So if approved by 2026, Sac State will be in the mix as an FBS team, and we have proposed that as an independent approach. 

What does an independent approach mean?  

Independent means not with a conference. So, UConn and Notre Dame are two independent teams right now. So what happens is they have agreements with different conferences for scheduling, but they're not part of a conference. They create their own schedule. And for us, we wanted to have control over our own destiny and be able to play the teams that we want to play, that our fans want to see. While people certainly love the teams in the Big Sky, so do we, it was time for us to play teams that are at the highest level of D1 football. And so that transition, we believe, will lead to more fans being there, but also it makes it so that players who are in the local area want to stay home.

So you put in that request. This could happen pretty soon. In 2026 when will you find out?

We'll find out this semester. We submitted our application with a waiver, and the waiver is for us to be independent without having a conference. So that was in February when we submitted it. It first goes to what's called the FBS subdivision committee. Now, FBS stands for bowl series, so that's basically teams that are able to play in a bowl. So you know how, in the postseason, you have all the different bowls that take place across the country? We would be eligible to compete in that, and so they look at it first, and that's hopefully within the next several weeks. After that, it would go to what's called the D1 council, which is the council at the highest level of NCAA. And with approval from those two groups, we would be making that transition.

There's also the SAC12 push, which is a committee to take Sac State football to the highest level of division college football in the United States, but the focus was joining the PAC-12 Athletic Conference as an FBS school. The organization is independent of the university, but it includes big names like state senator Angelique Ashby, business leaders, including your twin brother, Joshua Wood, who's the co-chair and has been a longtime business leader in Sacramento. How does that fit into this larger push to elevate Hornet athletics?

Well, it's showing that we're not just doing this in isolation. There's true community support, and as with the SAC12, their focus has been on raising dollars for Sacramento State, if we make that transition into the into the PAC-12, there's some of those dollars are raised regardless of whether we go PAC-12 or not, but they would like to see us in the PAC-12. That's why their name is SAC12. 

For me, my main focus is on being at the highest level, D1 football, which means being FBS and certainly PAC 12 could be an option in the future. But I really think that we benefit more being independent, and the reason for that is we have a top 20 media market here. Sacramento is one of the biggest media markets in the country, and we're the only top 20 media market in the country without an FBS football team. So we would be filling that void. 

And unlike most media markets, our market is not saturated. It's basically us and the Kings and, of course, the A's for a few years here. So there's an opportunity for us to really benefit from that. But you're right. The SAC 12 has been an incredible support for us in terms of raising NIL [Name, Image and Likeness] and also just raising visibility about what Sacramento as a community brings to the table. 

It’s also a new year of really big, new faces for athletics at Sac State. Last month, former Sacramento Kings player Mike Bibby was named as the head coach of men's basketball. About a week later, the first recruit was announced, and it's Shakir O'Neal, who's the son of Shaquille O'Neal and needs no introduction. How do these big celebrity names and this recognition reflect that larger strategy that you're pushing for when it comes to athletics at Sac State?

It's all about elevation. If you want to be in the big time, you've got to basically act like it. We're bringing in the best coaches. We're bringing in the best players. And it's time for us to fix two programs that did not do well last year. Football did not do well. Men's Basketball did not do well, but many of our other sports teams did incredible. And in fact, our female sports teams absolutely cleaned up this past season. 

But it's time for us to make sure that we are expanding what we're doing in those two very big revenue-generating sports, so I want to also explain the connection here. We're investing in athletics as an investment in Sacramento State. We're in the midst of a severe budget reduction that's coming from the state of California. And so part of what we're looking at is, how can we create new revenue streams that can benefit the campus so that we can be more fiscally viable as a university? 

Athletics is one of the levers that many universities pull in order to do that. So we've made a commitment that 15% of all the new revenue that's going to be coming from men's and women's basketball and football is going to be redirected back into the university, into academic affairs, so that we're using athletics as a tool to support the university in these difficult budget times.

There was a Reddit thread about the amount of billboards about the spring game that's happening on Sunday, and some are criticizing that it was too much, not the best investment of resources. But what is your response to that? 

I mean, for us to be able to maximize revenue that's coming in from athletics, we have to advertise ourselves, so billboards, social media and other avenues are what we're using as a way of being able to do that. And we're seeing big movement right now, both in terms of tickets for football and for basketball. So I think that's an important point for people to understand. We're not just doing this because we love athletics, which we do. We're doing this because this is an investment back into the university at a time when we desperately need the resources. So I hope when people see the billboards, I hope when they see the spring game, that the first thing they want to do is buy soda pop, buy a hot dog and buy a ticket, because those are helping to support the university in these difficult times. 

The last time we had Sacramento State Athletics Director Mark Orr on was in the fall, after the announcement that the university was going to build a brand new state-of-the-art venue to replace Hornet Stadium. Construction was scheduled to begin at the end of last season. What's the progress on that? 

One of the things that I understand is that we have different resources and monies for the campus. So we have our general fund that comes from the state that's meant to support our academic programs, what takes place in the classroom, faculty, etc, and then we have separate resources that are paid for by students that are what we call designated funds, because they can't be used for anything else. So, we have designated funds that can only be used for athletic facilities. So the stadium and all the other investments that we're doing in athletics is based only on the designated funds that we have that cannot be spent on anything else. So we are making changes to the stadium in advance of the season. So in advance of this upcoming season, we're doing modifications underneath the stadium where we have had some issues historically in terms of the scaffolding and making sure that it's safe for our fans. 

We're adding in new lighting. We're making renovations to the track. We're adding in seating in the end zone, ripping boards on the field, video boards, new entertainment options. We're really focusing on the fan experience to draw more fans and, again, to generate more revenue to help go back into the institution. So when fans come in the fall to a football game, they're going to see Hornet Stadium, but it's not going to look like the Hornet Stadium they remember. But that's just phase one of the changes that we're doing.

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