It’s official: the Mid-American Conference has embarked on its Manifest Destiny era.
The conference, known for its long-time commitment to geographic ease of access, is taking a shot at something different, inviting Sacramento State as a football-only member effective July 2026. The Hornets are set to take the place of the departing Northern Illinois Huskies, who— in a twist of ironic fate— are joining the Mountain West Conference next season.
Reactions to the arrangement have been mixed, to say the least. An informal Twitter poll we conducted over the weekend saw 57.2 percent skeptical of the move, with an additional 22.6 percent unsure how to feel.
In the spirit of addressing both sides of the argument, and perhaps to persuade those who are unsure, we decided to do what we do best and write about it! James will address the potential positives, while Alexis does the same for the negatives.
So What’s Good?
There is certainly a lot you can say about Sacramento State, but the one thing you can’t say is that they aren’t committed to mixing things up.
Sac State has ramped up investment to jump divisions over the last two years, with the acknowledgement of emergent changes at the NCAA level necessitating a bold change in direction. To wit, the Hornets have attracted an independent collective full of alumni and influential politicians which have promised approximately $35 million to help Sac State ramp up their NIL efforts and get the university under the public light— with the stated mission of getting to as much $50 million in NIL investment to hit the ground running at the FBS level.
Also noted in the pitch deck are brand-new stadia for football, soccer, rugby and baseball on the site of the old California Expo horse-racing track. Though the cost isn’t explicitly stated, estimates seem to range between $250 million and $310 million, which is quite the pretty penny.
Combined with a feverish commitment to realizing the transition project from university president Luke Wood and athletic director Mark Orr, and it’s clear this is a train which has no sign of stopping— for better or worse.
Sac State’s membership will reportedly include $18 million in membership fees, which will likely be split between the 12 remaining members and the conference to the tune of $1.5 million each— a not-insignificant boost to cash flow depending on how and when it is distributed. It’s certainly a much higher level of investment than fellow FCS jumper North Dakota State, who paid the Mountain West $12 million for the privilege of moving to the FBS level in football earlier in the week.
When announcing their intention to go to the FBS, Sacramento State’s initial goal was to raise $5.25 million to join a conference. Considering initial reports had Sac State shopping at around $10 million at the start of the year, and $15 million as recently as Friday, $18 million is a nice get for a conference with several members in severe money pains.
Sac State is also a positive addition in terms of media market. The MAC’s upcoming media rights negotiations in 2027 necessitated a move— especially with Northern Illinois departing in 2026. Sacramento State brings with them a top-20 television market to enter discussions with, and— importantly— won’t be taking any part of the current or future media deals as part of their agreement with the conference. It’s about as win-win as it gets for the conference in terms of risk/reward.
The concerns about travel are slightly exaggerated; Sacramento State will likely be scheduled in such a way so they can stack visits in one trip, while MAC schools will only have to worry about one visit every three years at minimum. (Their scheduling pod is to be determined, but even then, visits would be once every two years.) As part of the deal, Sacramento State is set to pay for all air travel expenses to fellow MAC members, which should help assuage any concerns.
Regardless of how one feels about Sac State specifically, it was imperative for the conference to make some kind of move this offseason; previous attempts at expansion for the sake of preservation had failed back in 2022, when Middle Tennessee State re-committed to Conference USA after a brief flirtation, killing off the potential additions of both them and Western Kentucky University.
Ohio and the Sun Belt Conference were linked together as well in the wake of NIU’s departure in 2025, while Toledo previously rebuffed an approach from the Mountain West. Even now, rumors continue to swirl around some MAC members exploring drop downs to the FCS.
Sacramento State’s addition does ruin the conference’s geographic integrity, which to this point has been the conference’s biggest strength, but affiliations aren’t something the MAC is unfamiliar with. UCF (now with the Big 12 Conference) and Temple (now with the American Athletic Conference) both had decent stints in the MAC in the 2000s, while UMass joined the conference straight out of the FCS in 2011. There’s a blueprint for success there.
Assuming everything goes to plan, Sacramento State is a scrappy, eager addition who is immediately positioned to make some noise in the football ranks within three years of their jump to the highest division in college football, while taking the increasingly-modern approach of keeping their other sports in a lower division. The move also gives the conference a foothold in the West, which opens up possibilities down the line— whether that’s in the recruiting pipelines, or even looking at potential membership.
(MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher’s excitement for adding UMass to the conference was, in part, to get a firmer footprint in the Northeast, something he brought up during MAC Media Days prior to the season.)
In the short term, the MAC has addressed NIU’s departure and showed its flexibility to its member institutions, while flexing its muscle to outside observers, showing they’re not going to take realignment lying down. With two new members in two years, the MAC now has the ability to prove to media companies and potential prospect schools they have growth potential— and they have done so at terms beneficial to the conference, as Sac State gave the conference a favorable offer for membership.
The long-term outlook is admittedly harder to project. Will Sacramento State leave early if it works too well? What happens if they can’t uphold their end of the bargain? What if the Hornets can’t leverage their MAC success to go elsewhere? How does that change the MAC’s relative stability?
For now, taking a cautiously optimistic approach is for the best.
Should it all work out, Sac State would be an immediate stand-out blueprint to build upon for other conference members and show Western-based programs the feasibility of joining the MAC if they so desire. At the very least, this is a move that should up the stakes for the conference and inject much-needed energy (and capital) into a league which is perceived as being dead in the water.
If it doesn’t? The MAC can safely let Sacramento State walk, only suffering a temporary embarrassment for their troules.
Either way, this is a gamble both sides had to take in an increasingly dog-eat-dog college football landscape. Here is hoping it works.
So What’s Bad?
There are several serious questions that need to be asked about this move.
The first, and probably the single most important regarding the immediacy of this move, is where the money is coming from, and whether it will actually be delivered. $18 million, as well as an additional $5 million to the NCAA for the right to promote in the first place, is a lot of money. Per Sacramento NBC affiliate KCRA, the university’s entire athletics department budget last year was $11 million. Between the 21 sports that the university offers and operational costs, it can be assumed that they are not spending all of that on the fees.
That leaves three options, really, for where the money is coming from: the university’s non-athletic budget, outside sources, or most likely, a combination of the two, with outside sources forming the lion’s share. But that still doesn’t answer the question. In no major news source, locally or nationally, was there any mention of who those outside sources were or could be, and that level of secrecy— assuming the best intentions— has plagued any discussion of the Hornets moving up to FBS since they announced their intentions to do so back in 2024.
This is also the same problem with their announced capacity upgrades to Cal Expo to bring it up to FBS standards. They intend for these upgrades to be done by the start of the 2026 season, and yet no contract for construction has been signed yet and most likely won’t be until later in the spring. That is a very tight window to get all of this done in a timely manner.
The PAC-12 and Mountain West previously rejected Sacramento State’s offer of significantly less money (around $10 million). The fact that the Mountain West ended up admitting North Dakota State, a school with slightly more than 50 percent of the budget as Sacramento State and in a significantly smaller footprint for a similar number means that the Mountain West was either entirely smitten with North Dakota State’s brand power, saw something in Sacramento State that scared them away— or both.
It’s fair to question whether Sacramento State actually has the wherewithal to deliver on the exorbitant financial incentives that they’re promising.
The second question revolves around competitiveness, and what benefits Sacramento State brings to the MAC, or doesn’t.
While it’s true that the MAC has had programs outside of the Midwest/Northeast region before, UCF was added in the early 2000s because Florida was (and still is) a major recruiting hotbed for the MAC, and adding an up-and-coming football program in the middle of the state was seen a major value add. Is the hope that Sacramento State can add California as a MAC recruiting target for the future?
In theory it’s not a bad idea; in practice, it’s a bit of a Hail Mary. California does produce the highest volume of recruits in the country, but the state also has 10 Division 1 football programs— four of them in power conferences— and California is heavily recruited by the power conferences as well as the nearby local conferences at both the FBS and FCS levels— including the powerful Big Sky Conference. The MAC would, in this analogy, be trying to get buckets of water from a lake already being thoroughly drained every year by conferences and programs with vastly more pull than them every year.
As for on the football field, Sacramento State’s success is extremely front-heavy, with all of their success in the FCS coming in the Troy Taylor era from 2019-2023. They’ve had only two head coaches in program history finish their tenures with winning records, and the program will be on their third head coach since his departure when they kick off in 2026. The Hornets enter MAC competition as a mid-to-lower tier program— not the worst addition possible (we’ve seen what a university and athletic program with their house in complete disarray looks like)— but not the best either. It likely won’t have an immediate effect on the MAC’s on-field perception.
Which brings me to my third question: were there seriously no better options?
It’s not like there haven’t been programs that have been interested in the MAC in recent years. on both the FBS and FCS level. The conference’s wishy-washy attitude with Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee eventually frustrated both programs enough for them to— at least for now— stay in Conference USA. The conference also had a golden opportunity to add Delaware when that program was promoting itself to FBS, but either wasn’t interested enough or made too poor an effort to secure the Blue Hens, who have taken to their new home like water.
Illinois State, long refusing to even entertain the idea of FBS membership, may or may not be entreating the MAC to talks as we speak (both parties deny such talks are happening). Rhode Island, another FCS contender, would be an attractive addition for the conference which would have massive support from new MAC member UMass, who love seeing an old FCS rival on their schedule again.
Now, are any of those programs offering the conference an $18 million windfall? Certainly not, but could they get there in the aggregate, over a period of a few years? Possibly. With all the programs mentioned here, you are also dealing with known qualities; Sacramento State’s success is far more recent, and flew by like a comet.
If I’m being completely uncharitable, I’d say the MAC is being had by a program that has made big promises for years, but either hasn’t delivered or the method of delivery was uncertain enough to scare away conferences that are actually in their footprint. And even if I’m being charitable— which I would vastly prefer to be from both a personal and professional standpoint— I’d say this was a panic buy. The MAC saw the money and took it, without thinking of ramifications, or if that money can actually be delivered.
Hopefully, it isn’t a death warrant.
What do you think about the move? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter over @HustleBelt or on Bluesky (we’re there too!) over on @hustlebelt.bsky.social!