Can Sacramento State football and Cal Expo help each other stay relevant? | Opinion
Sacramento State and Cal Expo’s newly announced potential partnership embodies the desires of two state agencies searching for facilities upgrades needed by both to remain relevant.
Cal Expo has a grandstand for horse racing enthusiasts that now sits empty because there are no more races there.
Sac State wants to move into the big time of college sports, but lacks the money to build a stadium on its own..
Is a football stadium beneath the Cal Expo grandstand the answer for these two institutions?
A potential Sac State football stadium will be discussed at Cal Expo’s Aug. 28 board meeting. Listed under “new business,” the potential stadium deal is described this way on the board meeting agenda: “Review for Approval-Agreement to memorialize activities for the Sac State Football Stadium.”
This first meeting is but a tiny step, but it captures the potential this deal can have.
“We have been having productive and exciting conversations as part of an exploratory partnership between Sacramento State and Cal Expo,” Sacramento State President Luke Wood and Cal Expo CEO Tom Martinez wrote in a joint statement provided to The Bee. “As two state agencies, we’re excited about the potential to create something truly impactful, not just for Sacramento, but for the entire region.”
The path that got the two institutions here explains why this partnership can be a success.
A mutual partnership
The reality that continues to be a drag on Sacramento State’s football ambitions is the poor state of their facilities and a stadium that is so behind modern standards that it’s an Atari in a PlayStation 5 world. Sacramento State currently competes in the Football Championship Subdivision or FCS. It’s like Triple A baseball or G-League basketball compared to the Football Bowl Subdivision, or FBS, where the big teams, big TV contracts and big money play.
According to 247 Sports, Sac State’s football program has had the best recruiting class in the FCS ahead of the 2025 season. Wood has recruited a dynamic, attention-grabbing coach in Brennan Marion. Wood also has an NBA Hall of Famer in Shaquille O’Neal as general manager of the men’s basketball team, whose new coach is former Kings great Mike Bibby. The buzz for Sac State sports has been great, better than ever. Wood is banking on sports as a potential boon for a university that was once sleepy but now has a pulse, a profile and a desire to achieve much more.
But that won’t happen until the facilities puzzle is solved. The NCAA already made the easy decision of denying Sacramento State’s first attempt to move up into the FBS, which proved that having good buzz is far different from having good facilities. Great Sacramento already knows this.
On Monday, city leaders and Sacramento Republic FC fans gathered at the groundbreaking for the soccer team’s new 12,000-seat stadium in the downtown Railyards. It was a moment for the community to celebrate a new chapter beginning for their beloved minor league soccer team. It’s taken more than a decade, filled with setbacks, for Sac Republic to get to that groundbreaking, a cautionary tale for Sac State and Cal Expo.
Sacramento lacks the corporate money to fast-track elite sports facilities. Getting the Golden 1 Center built for the Kings also took more than a decade of stops, starts and setbacks. That includes a 2010 proposal to build the Kings arena at Cal Expo that was much discussed, studied and even supported for a time by the NBA before it failed.
I recently took a trip to Cal Expo and got to see where the potential new stadium could be. The site is prime land. The grandstand is certainly a step up from the current Hornets stadium. It comfortably seats 22,000 people and has spaces for concessions and lounging already built in.
Renovations are sure to happen with any project, but the university would have a good foundation to start building the stadium. The capital city deserves an excellent facility that would lift the fortunes of Sacramento State and Cal Expo.
Sac State needs concrete plans to demonstrate to potential FBS suitors, such as the Mountain West Conference or the revamped Pac-12, that the Hornets should be takien seriously.
Cal Expo needs to revamp its facilities to create new reasons for people to visit the fairgrounds. It would be interesting if these institutions could help themselves by partnering with each other.
Such a partnerships could be the first step in the right direction for both.
