Last summer, in an effort to join a power conference, Memphis and its corporate sponsors pooled as much as $200 million in an offer to join the Big 12.
Ultimately, the Big 12 decided against further expansion.
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But the Memphis offer — bold and somewhat unprecedented — provided a future path for those seeking a promotion: Buy your way in.
A few months after Memphis’ proposal, the move — albeit at a much lesser scale — is being replicated.
Officials from Sacramento State are in the midst of an aggressive effort to join a Football Bowl Subdivision conference as soon as this coming football season, proposing to multiple leagues an eight-figure entry fee, plus the forgoing of league revenues.
While many FBS leagues have rebuffed the proposal — the Mountain West and the Pac-12 — other league executives are exploring the possibility, most notably the Mid-American Conference.
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Multiple sources within college athletics spoke to Yahoo Sports for this story under condition anonymity. Officials at Sacramento State declined to comment. Those in the MAC also declined comment, citing a standard policy of not discussing expansion.
For months now, Sacramento State executives — athletic director Mark Orr and university president Luke Woods — have made public their desire to elevate to FBS in football. In fact, the school’s waiver to play as an FBS independent this season was denied last summer. A waiver is necessary for those seeking to move from FCS to FBS without an invitation into a conference.
The school’s athletic department transitions this year from the Big Sky to the Big West, which does not sponsor football. The shift puts the Hornets football program in an awkward position of competing in FCS as an independent. The program has scheduled seven football games for 2026 so far, with six of those FCS opponents.
The MAC has yet to release its 2026 conference football schedule. The proposal puts the MAC in an interesting position. The league loses Northern Illinois this coming year and added UMass last year to remain at 12 member schools. The conference also has upcoming negotiations with ESPN for its new television deal.
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Presumably, Sacramento State’s offer is for football-only with its other sports to remain with the Big West — a model, as it turns out, similar to Northern Illinois, which left the MAC to play only football in the Mountain West with most other sports in the Horizon.
At a time of financial stress for universities — most notably the low-budget schools in the MAC — Sacramento State’s proposal is attractive and lucrative. In proposals made to other leagues, the school offered upwards of $10 million in an entry fee plus the forfeiture of conference revenues for a certain stretch of time— a similar proposal that helped move SMU into the ACC two years ago.
Those financial figures do not include the $5 million NCAA entry fee of moving from FCS to FBS. Executives increased that figure three years ago from $5,000 — a whopping jump that is indicative of the desire from many power conference leaders to slow a rapidly growing FBS group that now stands at 136 universities.
Sacramento State presents a fascinating case for FBS membership.
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The school, part of the California State System with an enrollment of about 30,000 students, is located in a burgeoning metropolis of more than 2 million people that is ranked 20th nationally among television markets, according to the latest Nielsen ratings.
Led by a non-traditionalist president intent on competing in major college football, the university’s athletic department has made significant investments for athletic promotion, even erecting billboards in an attempt last year for an invitation into the new-look Pac-12.
Renovations are planned for its football stadium to reach FBS standards and plans for a new stadium have been in the works. The university last year hired as its men’s basketball coach Mike Bibby, a 14-year NBA veteran, and announced Shaquille O’Neal as the program’s voluntary general manager.
In football, the team is led by Alonzo Carter, a first-year coach who’s won multiple recruiting and coach-of-the-year awards over a 27-year career. Carter replaced Brennan Marion, a long-time power conference assistant who left for a position on Deion Sanders’ staff at Colorado. Marion earned more than $1 million in salary in his one year at the school, dwarfing many of his counterparts in FCS.
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His roster featured several power conference transfers as the program’s NIL-related funding was believed to be on par with many programs in the lower reaches of FBS. In fact, just this week, the university landed a five-year, $7.5 million sponsorship deal with Wilton Rancheria and Sky River Casino.
“They do have money,” quipped one conference executive with knowledge of Sacramento State’s plans.
The school has a recent history of dominant football success. In three years under Troy Taylor, the program won three consecutive Big Sky championships and advanced to the FCS quarterfinals in 2022 with a 12-1 record. However, before 2019, their last conference title was 1995 as a member of the American West Conference, then 1-AA.
Notable former players of the school include NFL receiver DeAndre Carter and Cam Skattebo, who played his first two seasons at Sac State before transferring to Arizona State, where he led the Sun Devils to the College Football Playoff in 2024.
