Prior to the last four months, not many athletes would have considered Sacramento State University as an athletics destination, and even fewer would have thought of it as an athletics hotbed.
But that’s all changed as the university is making more and more noise in sports thanks to new hires.
In December, the team hired one of the country’s rising stars in former UNLV offensive coordinator Brennan Marion. In his two seasons with the Rebels, Marion was one of the nation’s top coordinators. In 2024, UNLV set a school record by averaging 36.2 ppg, ranking them 14th in the FBS. They also averaged 251.2 rushing yards per game, which is the most by the program in over 45 years.
Then in March, the school brought former Sacramento Kings star Mike Bibby back to the city as the new head coach of the men’s basketball team. Bibby was a highly successful high school basketball coach, as he led his Alma mater, Shadow Mountain High in Phoenix, to five state titles between 2013 – 2019, including four consecutive state championships.
Both coaches walk into programs coming off of losing seasons.
Marion inherits a 3-9 team, its first losing season since 2018 (2-8).
Bibby has a tougher task, as the program has had only two winning seasons since moving up to D1 in 1991 (16-14 in 2019-20 and 21-12 in 2014-15).
Getting these two talents to helm and turn around its biggest programs are great, but university president Luke Wood and athletics director Mark Orr weren’t content and had more power moves in mind.
While the school will be the talk of the Big Sky Conference, Sacramento St had bigger dreams, so this past April it applied to become an independent program and transition from FCS to FBS football, with the hopes of joining an FBS conference in the future.
A few weeks later, the university announced it had named Shaq as General Manager of its men’s basketball team, which is where his son Shaqir plays. And this past week, former high school star Mikey Williams announced he was transferring from UCF to play for coach Bibby.
Those are all power moves for sure, but they were also strategic for they put them in a great position for 2026.
You see, if the NCAA approves their request to move up to FBS, Sacramento St is in a great position to be invited to the reforming Pac-12 conference, which will be adding five new members in 2026 to get to seven football playing schools (Gonzaga makes 8 but they are a basketball-only school). The conference needs eight to be considered an FBS conference, and what better member to add than one that’s on the West Coast and has notable names involved with its sports programs?
While there’s no guarantee that the Pac-12 will extend an invitation to the Hornets, they would be remiss if they didn’t. Adding another California based team to a roster that will include San Diego St. and Fresno St. will mean less travel for its teams and strengthen its presence on the West Coast in media, recruiting and local/regional based alumni and fans.
And if the Pac-12 decides to extend an invite to Sacramento St, the Mountain West Conference (MWC) could easily jump in and extend an invite to the Hornets.
While those decisions are unclear, what is clear is that Sacramento State is all in on its athletics offerings by adding Black sports star power to its teams and staffs, so watch out for the Hornets because their buzz will only increase.
