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The PAC-MWC Dominoes Begin to Fall/Conference Realignment
- Thread starter Kadeezy
- Start date
SHSU's 0-6 record certainly didn't help either.
FBS or bust!
jdgaucho
Member
Hope it's FBS then. Because otherwise your fanbase will grow frustrated rather quickly slumming it with Cal Baptist and the Cal States that don't have football.
As opposed to slumming it with directional Idahoes? Nah, Oly's are set now at least in the short term. A push for an FB only invite is the only immediate move possible. Maybe the pending big boy realignment shakeup opens up the need for a full member down the road but I don't think we renege on the BW for at least a half decade.
HornetFootballFan
Active member
Fresno State / San Diego Stafe / San Jose State. Are those the state programs you’re suggesting?
Sac State football is in limbo, and the president’s antics go unchecked | Opinion
October 28, 2025 / Sac Bee
By Tom Philp
When Sacramento State President Luke Wood recently mocked his football team’s next opponent, the undefeated Montana Grizzlies, by calling them “pandas” on national television, Montana alum Aaron Lasalle knew exactly what he had to do.
A Montana native now living in Truckee, the 39-year-old Lasalle went online and bought himself a panda costume. And on Friday, he drove over the Sierra to watch his Grizzlies take on Wood’s Hornets clad as a Chinese bear.
“We use that as motivation,” Lasalle said of Wood’s jab at his alma mater as Montana was getting its sweet revenge on the field. Hundreds of loud Grizzlies fans in the east bleachers mocked Wood in cheers as Montana blew the game wide open in the second half, eventually winning 49-35.
This isn’t funny. This is merely the latest in a string of troubling instances of how Sacramento State under Wood has been trying to elevate football to the next level, only to take the program in the opposite direction.
One questionable decision after another has now placed Sacramento State into a no-man’s land of college football. The Hornets are without a conference or a clear future. And with a president who is not above openly belittling the opposition, who would want to play the Hornets? Wood did not return a text to his personal phone seeking a comment.
Swinging for the fences, and striking out
College football has been rapidly evolving since Wood, now 45, became Sacramento State’s 13th president in July 2023. The Hornets have long played in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s second tier, the Football Championship Subdivision. The top tier, the Football Bowl Subdivision, was thrown into chaos in 2022 when the top West Coast teams began migrating into other conferences like the Big Ten.
Wood and some of Sacramento’s Old Guard saw this as an opportunity for the Hornets to somehow catapult into the big leagues of the Pac-12 Conference in order to avoid being left behind whenever all the shuffling is finally over. This is when Wood began swinging for the proverbial fences — and striking out.
In September 2024, he announced that Sacramento State would build a gleaming new 25,000-seat stadium on the site of the existing one, a temporary assemblage of bleachers that has lasted some four decades because no president has had the money for anything else. His plan called by winter for a marketing study, a conceptual stadium design and a cost estimate.
These are all public records if they existed. I have been requesting them all year. Nothing about this stadium plan has ever seemed real. Wood has since moved onto a new idea to play football at Cal Expo in front of a gentle sloping grandstand designed for horse racing. Meanwhile, the university since July has refused to provide a single internal presidential communication about football infrastructure.
A real stadium has long been a prerequisite for a team to get an invitation into the big leagues, the FBS. Wood pretended otherwise. He asked the overseers at the NCAA to waive its standard requirements and let Sacramento State into the FBS anyway.
The NCAA, known to play by its own rules, predictably rejected Sacramento State’s long-shot bid in June. Wood then appealed.
Just days earlier, Sacramento State had notified its existing second-tier conference, the Big Sky of the FCS, that the team would leave it come 2026.
College football teams play the bulk of their games in their own conference, with typically three games against other opponents. Now, as an independent without a conference, Sacramento State must cobble together a full season of games. Yet with Wood still stuck in the FCS while still seeking elevation to the FBS, who precisely is Sacramento State to play?
One of the unwritten rules of the college game is for campus presidents to set the highest standard of sportsmanship and decorum, as coaches and players tend to get scrappy. Wood on Oct. 18 clearly thought he was funny when he not-so-mistakenly called the Montana Grizzlies the “pandas” and diminished the team’s spotless record. “They haven’t played nobody,” said Wood, predicting a Hornet victory. “I feel bad for their fans, you know, that have to experience a loss like that on the road.”
Grizzlies faithful like Aaron Lasalle, panda costume and all, got the last laugh. And as the fourth quarter Friday turned into a victory celebration in the east bleachers, President Wood found himself the subject of one cheer after another.
“Let’s go Pandas!” “We play no one!”
Where is CSU Chancellor Mildred García?
Overseeing the 23-campus California State University system, there is allegedly a chancellor. It falls to this top administrator to conduct constant supervision over the presidents. This is the vital backstop for this vast system to ensure that nothing, somewhere, is going badly astray. Yet the CSU’s top leader, Chancellor Mildred García, hasn’t saved Luke Wood from himself. A vigilant chancellor would have stopped Wood from announcing a new football stadium back in September that he clearly could not afford. Or prevented the football team from leaving one conference without an invitation from another. Or mandated a prompt and profuse presidential apology for blatantly disrespecting a peer institution on television.
Instead, Sacramento State is the talk of the college football world, and not in a good way. Aside from Wood’s unpresidential mockery of Montana that backfired, his after-game rap concerts, another dubious idea, can get really out of hand.
So far the team has announced just three opponents for next year’s season. The Hornets must find by my count nine more teams willing to play them. This is even more daunting given how Wood hasn’t yet formally given up on the NCAA granting his school a promotion to the FBS. Those prospects feel slimmer by the day given the president’s string of self-inflicted wounds.
What a hot Hornets mess. The CSU, from Wood in Sacramento to system headquarters in Long Beach, has only itself to blame.
October 28, 2025 / Sac Bee
By Tom Philp
When Sacramento State President Luke Wood recently mocked his football team’s next opponent, the undefeated Montana Grizzlies, by calling them “pandas” on national television, Montana alum Aaron Lasalle knew exactly what he had to do.
A Montana native now living in Truckee, the 39-year-old Lasalle went online and bought himself a panda costume. And on Friday, he drove over the Sierra to watch his Grizzlies take on Wood’s Hornets clad as a Chinese bear.
“We use that as motivation,” Lasalle said of Wood’s jab at his alma mater as Montana was getting its sweet revenge on the field. Hundreds of loud Grizzlies fans in the east bleachers mocked Wood in cheers as Montana blew the game wide open in the second half, eventually winning 49-35.
This isn’t funny. This is merely the latest in a string of troubling instances of how Sacramento State under Wood has been trying to elevate football to the next level, only to take the program in the opposite direction.
One questionable decision after another has now placed Sacramento State into a no-man’s land of college football. The Hornets are without a conference or a clear future. And with a president who is not above openly belittling the opposition, who would want to play the Hornets? Wood did not return a text to his personal phone seeking a comment.
Swinging for the fences, and striking out
College football has been rapidly evolving since Wood, now 45, became Sacramento State’s 13th president in July 2023. The Hornets have long played in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s second tier, the Football Championship Subdivision. The top tier, the Football Bowl Subdivision, was thrown into chaos in 2022 when the top West Coast teams began migrating into other conferences like the Big Ten.
Wood and some of Sacramento’s Old Guard saw this as an opportunity for the Hornets to somehow catapult into the big leagues of the Pac-12 Conference in order to avoid being left behind whenever all the shuffling is finally over. This is when Wood began swinging for the proverbial fences — and striking out.
In September 2024, he announced that Sacramento State would build a gleaming new 25,000-seat stadium on the site of the existing one, a temporary assemblage of bleachers that has lasted some four decades because no president has had the money for anything else. His plan called by winter for a marketing study, a conceptual stadium design and a cost estimate.
These are all public records if they existed. I have been requesting them all year. Nothing about this stadium plan has ever seemed real. Wood has since moved onto a new idea to play football at Cal Expo in front of a gentle sloping grandstand designed for horse racing. Meanwhile, the university since July has refused to provide a single internal presidential communication about football infrastructure.
A real stadium has long been a prerequisite for a team to get an invitation into the big leagues, the FBS. Wood pretended otherwise. He asked the overseers at the NCAA to waive its standard requirements and let Sacramento State into the FBS anyway.
The NCAA, known to play by its own rules, predictably rejected Sacramento State’s long-shot bid in June. Wood then appealed.
Just days earlier, Sacramento State had notified its existing second-tier conference, the Big Sky of the FCS, that the team would leave it come 2026.
College football teams play the bulk of their games in their own conference, with typically three games against other opponents. Now, as an independent without a conference, Sacramento State must cobble together a full season of games. Yet with Wood still stuck in the FCS while still seeking elevation to the FBS, who precisely is Sacramento State to play?
One of the unwritten rules of the college game is for campus presidents to set the highest standard of sportsmanship and decorum, as coaches and players tend to get scrappy. Wood on Oct. 18 clearly thought he was funny when he not-so-mistakenly called the Montana Grizzlies the “pandas” and diminished the team’s spotless record. “They haven’t played nobody,” said Wood, predicting a Hornet victory. “I feel bad for their fans, you know, that have to experience a loss like that on the road.”
Grizzlies faithful like Aaron Lasalle, panda costume and all, got the last laugh. And as the fourth quarter Friday turned into a victory celebration in the east bleachers, President Wood found himself the subject of one cheer after another.
“Let’s go Pandas!” “We play no one!”
Where is CSU Chancellor Mildred García?
Overseeing the 23-campus California State University system, there is allegedly a chancellor. It falls to this top administrator to conduct constant supervision over the presidents. This is the vital backstop for this vast system to ensure that nothing, somewhere, is going badly astray. Yet the CSU’s top leader, Chancellor Mildred García, hasn’t saved Luke Wood from himself. A vigilant chancellor would have stopped Wood from announcing a new football stadium back in September that he clearly could not afford. Or prevented the football team from leaving one conference without an invitation from another. Or mandated a prompt and profuse presidential apology for blatantly disrespecting a peer institution on television.
Instead, Sacramento State is the talk of the college football world, and not in a good way. Aside from Wood’s unpresidential mockery of Montana that backfired, his after-game rap concerts, another dubious idea, can get really out of hand.
So far the team has announced just three opponents for next year’s season. The Hornets must find by my count nine more teams willing to play them. This is even more daunting given how Wood hasn’t yet formally given up on the NCAA granting his school a promotion to the FBS. Those prospects feel slimmer by the day given the president’s string of self-inflicted wounds.
What a hot Hornets mess. The CSU, from Wood in Sacramento to system headquarters in Long Beach, has only itself to blame.
Sac State students question cost of post-game football game concerts with rap stars
Sacramento State hosted another post-football game performance over the weekend at Hornet Stadium, but some students are questioning how much it is costing the university.
www.cbsnews.com
Piling on.
Kadeezy
Active member
Yikes. Dr. Wood needs to stack a couple wins... FAST
Bodega Joe
Active member
Dr. Wood gave Griz fans/sometimes SAC-hating trolls a very long, interesting interview on their podcast yesterday. There is tons in here being discussed on X, etc. Everything from FBS to NIL to the stadium.
I guess my biggest takeaway is that he still is insistent there will be news on the FBS front in November.
Griz Fan Radio – Week 5, our chat with Sacramento State President Luke Wood
Podcast Episode · Griz Fan Pod · 10/03/2025 · 49mpodcasts.apple.com
I'm really hoping we hear some positive developments next month on the FBS front.
