Q&A: Sac State’s Luke Wood on new football coach, FBS and student criticism
Sacramento State on Thursday is set to formally name Alonzo Carter its head football coach. It’s the second head coaching hire the school has made in a year, as coach Brennan Marion left the team earlier this month to take an offensive coordinator job for Deion Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes.
I spoke with Sac State President Luke Wood about the new hire; his mission to elevate the team into the highest division of college football, the Football Bowl Subdivision; and his continued relationship-building challenges with students. You can find my column about Wood’s newest coaching hire here on sacbee.com.
Below is a transcript of parts of our conversation, edited for grammar and style:
Q: What does Sac State football need right now?
What we need is stability. But I also gotta say one thing, please, remember, people aren't leaving us for crap programs. They're leaving us for Stanford, for LSU, for Colorado. We're hiring the right talent, but what we need to do better is merge the talent with the commitment to this particular community. And that's what we get with Alonzo.
(Carter) is a seasoned coach. He’s wanted to be at Sacramento State for many years, and he wants to be here and stay here, and stability is something that we were looking for. So having someone who’s also been at the FBS level as an assistant head coach at two programs that you know at our FBS is something that we thought was a great experience, that we highly valued as we’re trying to make the transition to that next level.
Q: You’re now an independent Football Championship Subdivision team (college football’s second-highest level) because you left the Big Sky Conference in what so far has been a failed attempt to join the FBS (college football’s highest level). That move also ends the Causeway Classic game with UC Davis, your highest-profile game of the year. Looking back, was leaving the Big Sky a good choice?
The decision about football was not solely about football. It was about the 19 other sports that we moved to the Big West [Conference]. I think that's the part that keeps getting lost in translation. We moved out of the Big Sky, not because football wasn't great. Big Sky is great football. We moved out of the Big Sky because our 19 other sports needed to be in a West Coast Conference that would allow students to see their families, be in class more, have greater attendance at games, and play teams they'd heard of before. And so it's an elevated conference for baseball, basketball, and other sports.
UC Davis could play us if they want to, and we would love to play Davis. We are willing to do whatever it takes to keep playing UC Davis. The Causeway Classic is something we hope will return, and we believe it will at some point.
Q: So there wasn’t an option for those 19 teams to be in the Big West while the football team stays in the Big Sky?
For us, that wasn't an option we considered. We're trying to transition to FBS, so it makes no sense for us to then stay in the Big Sky.
Q: You have made many declarations over the past year about building new facilities, including a stadium, that have sparked significant skepticism, including from students. What’s your response to the criticism?
People said that we wouldn't be able to get more housing done. But we got two buildings that are being built right now. People said we wouldn't be able to get basketball into a new facility, but we moved into The Well. People said we wouldn't be able to fix Cap Radio and that we should let it die, but we saved it and kept it going. I could go down the line of 20 things where people said, "That's too bold." That's not going to happen. And we've done it.
I would just strongly disagree that's how the majority of our students actually feel. What I see is a very small but vocal group that is successful in getting attention, and honestly, I respect how they approach it. At the same time, I do not think they reflect our student body. You know what the number one thing I heard on stage at graduation [on Dec. 14]? “Don't stop, keep going now ... that was most of what I heard.”
Q: Where do you think the criticism stems from?
There are a number of external groups that try to leverage students for their own personal gain. That is normal, and what we try to do is educate, try to provide people with accurate information about why we do or do not make a decision, and more often than not, when we can provide them with that information, they move on to a different issue, because they realize that there's soundness in the decision-making process.
We've got a whole bunch of strategies for communicating with students. We added digital signs on campus, where we can now communicate messages to 150 different signs on campus. We use text messages to the campus community. And so we have what's called the Hornet heartbeat. They interview me and discuss different topics students are interested in learning about. We also have a separate digital media push through Student Affairs regarding what they're doing with their social media platforms. We also have regular meetings with the various admin leadership teams.
I would say that a significant component of how we spend our time is not just communicating, but also refining how we communicate and making adjustments along the way.
This story was originally published December 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
