Hornets basketball at Golden 1? The latest on efforts to land Sacramento State in Pac-12
Will Sacramento State enter a FBS-level conference for athletics in the coming years, either the rapidly revamped Pac-12 or the longstanding Mountain West Conference?
For either move to even be considered, the Hornets must significantly upgrade their football and basketball facilities as Pac-12 and MWC members already have ready-to-go venues to host NCAA Division I athletics.
In the last nine days, a number of updates on the effort have come.
▪ Sacramento State with all manner of enthusiasm last week announced plans to build a 25,000-seat stadium for football, other sports and concerts with the goal of completing it for the start of the 2028 football season. The school on Thursday released renderings of the venue and will soon announce an update on fundraising.
Sacramento State said money to fund the new venue will come from sponsorships, donations from alumni and community, voted-on student fees and California State University revenue bonds.
▪ The SAC 12 committee comprised of local government elected officials, community members and alums of Sacramento State announced that it has raised $35 million in NIL funds with a goal of $50 million, an effort to compete in recruiting, the lifeblood of college athletics.
NIL is name, image and likeness, from which student-athletes can profit.
▪ Golden 1 Center, home of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, has offered to host Hornets men and women’s conference basketball games, an effort to show the Pac-12 and Mountain West that they can provide a spectacular venue to boost any conference. A source told The Sacramento Bee that Golden 1 Center and Sacramento State would work together to identify mutually agreeable dates to host up to 20 games during the 2025-26 college basketball season, subject to negotiating terms.
Sacramento State played rival UC Davis at Golden 1 for three seasons in a venue Hornets athletic director Mark Orr told The Sacramento Bee in 2022 was “the best arena in the country.” But it was a tough sell for fans with small, midweek crowds, and the series is no longer held at Golden 1 but instead at the schools.
But NCAA March Madness is always a hot ticket at Golden 1 as it is anywhere across the country over the decades. Golden 1 Center hosted NCAA men’s basketball postseason rounds in 2017 and 2023 (and planned to do so in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the entire tournament) and this week announced that it will host first-and-second round games in 2027. An NCAA women’s Regional will be held at Golden 1 Center in 2026.
Sacramento State plans to move out of the outdated and cramped gym, called “The Nest” and into “The Well” on campus starting in December, school president Luke Wood said last week. The Nest seats 1,012, one of the smallest venues in all of college athletics, and though charming, it is not sustainable long term. The Well would initially have a capacity of 3,000 with plans to make it 6,000 in the coming years.
That’s a lot of moving parts with not a lot of time. The Pac-12 of late has announced that Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Utah State will join leftover Pac-12 members Oregon State and Washington State, starting in the fall of 2026. This week, Gonzaga announced it will join the Pac-12. Gonzaga is a basketball powerhouse in Washington state that does not field football.
The Pac-12 needs to have at least eight members to be eligible for an NCAA conference. This is the opening the SAC 12 committee is pouncing on, the window of opportunity. The committee has stressed that Sacramento is the 20th-largest media market in the country and would be a boost for the Pac-12 with the departure of Cal, Stanford, USC and UCLA from much larger media markets.
“Getting Sacramento State into the Pac-12 is essential,” Barry Broome of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council said in a SAC 12 news release. “It would significantly increase the economic impact of the region. It would change the reputation of the university, the city of Sacramento, and the greater Sacramento region.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2024 at 9:59 AM.