Sacramento State: How’d they get here?
The short and sweet answer is cheap and easy: Sacramento State promised a lot of people a lot of money over the next few years just to get into the Mid-American Conference.
By “a lot”, I mean $23 million. Sacramento State, after not getting its desired invites to either the Pac-12 or Mountain West leagues, is on a short-term plan to be a MAC school.
Because Sacramento State lives in one of the nation’s biggest cities and is neighbors of Silicon Valley, loose $100 bills are clearly easy to find on the streets. How else do you explain Sac State’s willingness to pay for visiting MAC teams’ travels during this 5-year term?
Sac State’s leaders believe that the floor is lava. If the Hornets stood around and waited another minute make any big decisions about its future, it’d live to regret its immediate seconds of indecision in the upcoming decades. Moving up in the world of college football is for those who will beg and pay for more of it. Or at least that’s Sac State’s truth.
The Hornets will be a MAC school for the next handful of years in football only, while the other sports teams will compete in the Big West.
2017 (Jody Sears): 7-4 (6-2 Big Sky)
2018 (Jody Sears): 2-8 (0-7 Big Sky)
2019 (Troy Taylor): 9-4 (7-1 Big Sky); Big Sky Champions; FCS Playoffs (0-1)
2020 (Troy Taylor): no season
2021 (Troy Taylor): 9-3 (8-0 Big Sky); Big Sky Champions; FCS Playoffs (0-1)
2022 (Troy Taylor): 12-1 (8-0 Big Sky); Big Sky Champions; FCS Playoffs (1-1)
2023 (Andy Thompson): 8-5 (4-4 Big Sky); FCS Playoffs (1-1)
2024 (Andy Thompson): 3-9 (1-7 Big Sky)
2025 (Brennan Marion): 7-5 (5-3 Big Sky)
To the program’s credit, the Troy Taylor years were exciting ones. He got the team to top-10 rankings every year until he took the Stanford head coaching job (he only lasted two seasons there), and Taylor’s former defensive coordinator, Andy Thompson, kept things going for one of his two years in charge before he left to be a linebackers coach at Stanford (months before Taylor’s exit).
Brennan Marion, the author of the Go-Go offense, was hired as the highest-paid head coach in the FCS in 2025. While the Hornets got back to winning, it was penalties that ultimately held the team back from winning more. Marion and his playbook are now at Colorado, to coach under Deion Sanders.
Now, it’s Alonzo Carter’s turn.
When he was younger, Carter, an author of the moves seen on the “U Can’t Touch This” music video, was a dancer for MC Hammer in the 1990’s. Today, at 57, Carter enters his first year as a full-fledged college head coach since leading high schools (1999-09) and a community college (2010-16). He had been an assistant head coach at San Jose State (2021-23, including during the Potato Bowl vs. EMU), and at Arizona (2024-25).
Sacramento’s move from FCS to FBS came as a surprise to the coaching staff, as it wasn’t assuming the move-up wouldn’t happen until 2027. The move to the MAC came in February, and this offseason featured no spring transfer window, and the Hornets didn’t exactly have an entire winter to try and recruit like an FBS team.
Maybe that won’t mean much, though.
We are, after all, talking about an FCS team moving up into one of the worst leagues into the MAC. While things clearly haven’t worked out for UMass since it moved up to the FBS, that doesn’t mean the future has to be so bleak for Sacramento.
But despite what Sac State’s problem solvers have been trying to say, that doesn’t mean things are guaranteed to work out so fantastically, either.
PLAYERS OF NOTE
QB, Carson Conklin — A ‘boomerang’ transfer as I like to call it. In 2024, he was one of the best freshman quarterbacks in the FCS (2,876 pass yards, 28 TD). In 2025, a coaching change led him to transfer out to Fresno State. Another coaching change later, he finds himself back at Sac State, but now playing in a totally different league.
RB, Jamar Curtis — Former All-American and two-time Walter Payton Award finalist at Lafayette (34 career games, 3,064 rush yards, 579 att., 32 TD; 74 receptions, 505 rec. Yards, 3 rec. TD) before he came to Sacramento in 2025. Curtis suffered an ankle injury four games into last season (505 rush yards, 37 att., 1 TD) and is back for the new year.
WR, Matt Coleman — Played four years at San Jose State (66 rec., 651 yards, 3 TD) before his recent move to Sacramento.
DL, Jadakiss Vaokakala — Fantastic name, I’m personally excited to welcome Jadakiss into the Mid-American Conference this year. He’s a new transfer who spent two seasons at Citrus J.C. (18 games, 59 tackles, 9.5 TFL, 2 sacks, 1 fumble).
CB, Diontae Thornton — Incoming transfer from Portland State, who also spent the 2022 and 2023 seasons at Boise State. At 6’4, Thornton poses obvious problems for undersized receivers. Last year, he started every game, had 34 tackles (36 solo, 2 TFL, 1 sack), and 5 pass breakups (no interceptions).
