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Official: SAC to the MAC

94Hornet said:
In the meantime, get ready for some Tuesday and Wednesday night home games. Attendance will be interesting for those nights.
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StockonLB said:
This could be a disaster still with midweek games that kill attendance and momentum.
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I’ve seen several people making a big deal out of these weeknight games, but is it really?

They only do the Midweek MACtion thing in November. Looking over about a half dozen schedules from 2025, the most any MAC team played Tuesday/Wednesday games was four (Massachusetts). Some only played one (Ball State) or two (Buffalo).

So, at most we’re looking at two home games played on Tuesday or Wednesday nights in November, and possibly only one.

That’s not that big of a deal, far as I can tell. And the novelty and exclusivity of it might actually turn out well. I mean, what else is going on Tuesday/Wednesday nights in November? No NFL games. No MLB games. Maybe only the occasional KINGS game?

I kinda anticipated TV/streaming viewership might be pretty good since the sports betters don’t have much else going on midweek and a cursory google search reveals the following:

“MACtion"—the Mid-American Conference's tradition of weeknight football games in November—consistently draws significantly higher television viewership on Tuesdays and Wednesdays compared to Saturday games, often by a factor of 10x or more. These games, broadcast on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU, frequently secure 100,000 to over 400,000 viewers, with high-profile matchups even exceeding 700,000.
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So, while in-person attendance could definitely suffer — remote viewership should be really good according to the info above. Did Sac State forgo revenue in this deal? I hope not considering the $$$ they had to pay to get in.

Lastly, one could point out that November home games in Sacramento/NorCal doesn’t present the same cold weather challenges that occur in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York.

So perhaps Sac State’s home attendance might not suffer the same level of drop off as all the other MAC teams. We shall see.
 
I’ve never personally attended a weekday college football game so my experience and opinion could be void but it just feels like you lose some of the pageantry. Do do you lose out on big tailgates and the excitement of “Gameday”? Lose out on families making a day out of the game, can’t while someone is at work or high school kids have practice, whatever the case may be. Hopefully we end up on the minimal weekday game case. Nothing more exciting than a college football Saturday!
 
I would sure hope we did not forgo revenue to get in the conference. One of the reasons Wood stated for leaving the Big Sky is the lack of revenue provided by the conference. To jump to a more costly level and get no revenue would not make sense. I think the only way this makes sense is if we can get to the MWC or new PAC 12 conference in five years. Not expecting a big jump in attendance for the conference games. I think the best outcome of all that has happened is getting to the Big West for all the other sports. Should have happened years ago.
 
At least in year one there could be fans from the MAC excited to travel somewhere new. Not that they will come in droves, but hoping they will travel better than the majority of big sky fans. I feel with added excitement of being FBS, around 20,000 for home games this year is completely reasonable to expect. Outside of a quirky one or two midweek games…
 
Greenteam said:
I would sure hope we did not forgo revenue to get in the conference. One of the reasons Wood stated for leaving the Big Sky is the lack of revenue provided by the conference. To jump to a more costly level and get no revenue would not make sense.
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I don’t fully know the difference between conference revenue and TV contracts. But let’s say the rumor was true that we did forgo conference revenue, does that essentially mean that games we are playing televised we will receive zero dollars from?
 
I just took notice that the PAC released their conference schedule and everybody is playing someone twice to fill the needs. I would have to imagine some of those schools would be interested in not playing a team from their conference twice.

But if the schedule turns out 8 MAC games, 3 from the PAC and maybe we keep one FCS MVSU or Youngstown. Just WOW. The last crappy thing I would say is that the PAC schools I feel still will have us in a chokehold over agreeing to come to Hornet Stadium to play.
 
Might get some payouts from bigger FBS programs for out of conference games to offset some costs.

I do hope that we do not have to give up any media rights though. Should be one or the other. Buy our way in, or give up media rights.
 
Hornet25 said:
The biggest hurdle was getting into the FBS. Sac has to overcome lack of history and national presence. They had to convince other schools that adding us is mutually beneficial, despite our lack of prestige on and off the football field, lack of facilities, and lack of an endowment or public billionaire donors. We are a risk. An unknown. But if we waited to do it the "right" way as described by the internet gatekeepers, the door to FBS would be closed with this quickly shifting landscape. I consider us lucky that we had a guy willing to break the rules and force his way into FBS. We weren't getting in any other way. As some have suggested, we may have closed the door behind us by setting the cost if admission.

It's easier to work on the funding of the facilities than a conference invite, as you don't have to convince other Universities or governing bodies to accept it. It's within Sac States control. Easier now when the path has been set in stone and FBS is not hypothetical for possible donors. Easier. Not easy.

This was a big accomplishment and we should relish it for awhile and wait for the other pieces to fall in line.
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Excellent post and spot on. The FBS invite was huge because it was completely beyond Hornet admin control. Everything from this point forward is all in Hornet admin control. I fully anticipate Dr. Wood to leverage this FBS status for donors, corporate sponsors and ticket sales to get the momentum on a stadium going.
 
BuckeyeHornetFan said:
I’ve seen several people making a big deal out of these weeknight games, but is it really?

They only do the Midweek MACtion thing in November. Looking over about a half dozen schedules from 2025, the most any MAC team played Tuesday/Wednesday games was four (Massachusetts). Some only played one (Ball State) or two (Buffalo).

So, at most we’re looking at two home games played on Tuesday or Wednesday nights in November, and possibly only one.

That’s not that big of a deal, far as I can tell. And the novelty and exclusivity of it might actually turn out well. I mean, what else is going on Tuesday/Wednesday nights in November? No NFL games. No MLB games. Maybe only the occasional KINGS game?

I kinda anticipated TV/streaming viewership might be pretty good since the sports betters don’t have much else going on midweek and a cursory google search reveals the following:



So, while in-person attendance could definitely suffer — remote viewership should be really good according to the info above. Did Sac State forgo revenue in this deal? I hope not considering the $$$ they had to pay to get in.

Lastly, one could point out that November home games in Sacramento/NorCal doesn’t present the same cold weather challenges that occur in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York.

So perhaps Sac State’s home attendance might not suffer the same level of drop off as all the other MAC teams. We shall see.
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Yeah not too worried about the Maction games, especially if it's just one a year. Since we'll be the only west coast G6 team in a conference with an ESPN media deal, I hope they give us the Friday night ESPN2 time slot in lieu of the BSC games. That would be poetic justice.
 
Our youtube troll is at it again (not linking to his video because fvck that guy). I love how badly he missed on calling out Dr. Wood's FBS ambitions and instead of eating crow, he is doubling down and cherry picking more negative narrative with some completely irrelevant comparisons. The meltdowns generated from Dr. Wood delivering on his FBS promise have been enjoyable to watch/read. Straight into my veins!
 
SDHornet said:
Our youtube troll is at it again (not linking to his video because fvck that guy). I love how badly he missed on calling out Dr. Wood's FBS ambitions and instead of eating crow, he is doubling down and cherry picking more negative narrative with some completely irrelevant comparisons. The meltdowns generated from Dr. Wood delivering on his FBS promise have been enjoyable to watch/read. Straight into my veins!
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There are a lot of folks on YouTube and Twitter who were invested in our failure.

Now their credibility is shot. They're in shambles.
 
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Greenteam said:
I would sure hope we did not forgo revenue to get in the conference. One of the reasons Wood stated for leaving the Big Sky is the lack of revenue provided by the conference. To jump to a more costly level and get no revenue would not make sense.
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I mentioned the same thing in a prior post. If they agreed not to share any conference revenue while also paying such a large entry fee —that’s a very one-sided and potentially program destroying deal.

I certainly hope forking over 18M to join means they are sharing in the conference media rights deal in some capacity.
 
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2025 MAC Average attendance by team;

Toledo 21,199
Ohio 20,007
W. Mich. 20,194
Bowling Green 18,566
C. Mich. 16,277
E. Mich. 14,842
Buffalo 13,808
Miami 11,658
Kent State 9,875
N. Ill. 9,309
Ball State 8,968
U. Mass. 8,789
Akron 7,729
 

​

We finished 10th in FCS attendance out of 129 teams at 15,468. We were only 580 behind # 9 North Dakota State. We should do better in 2026 with all the FBS hype.​

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