Sacramento prep, junior college star ruled trenches for national champ Indiana
Football coaches look to their players as their own.
Those are their sons, their boys, their guys — the skill guys, the stoppers and those doing the heavy lifting in the trenches. When asked Tuesday morning how his gridiron family fared in college football this just-concluded season, Dannie Walker offered an enthusiastic, “The kids are doing well!”
Really well, in fact. Walker is the longtime Sacramento City College coach who was glued to his TV on Monday night in watching the Indiana Hoosiers cap a historically great 16-0 season. Indiana posted a 27-21 victory over the Miami Hurricanes to win the national championship, and the cheers could be heard all the way into Elk Grove and on the Sac City campus on Freeport Boulevard.
Indiana’s defensive line rotation included Hosea Wheeler, a graduate of Franklin High School in the Elk Grove Unified School District who then played a one-year stint as a run-stopping force at Sac City in 2021. Wheeler played in all 16 games for Indiana, including five starts, and he got a front-row view of one the most remarkable turnarounds in college athletics.
Indiana entered the season as the losingest major-college football program of them all and capped the campaign with its first national championship, doing so without a single 5-star recruit on the roster.
Well-spoken, gregarious and driven to achieve, the 6-foot-3, 300-pound Wheeler is an NFL prospect with his strength and agility. He wasn’t thrilled about receiving zero recruiting stars from high schools. He was not ecstatic about landing at a JuCo, but he soon found out that the JuCo guys can play.
Wheeler landed a scholarship out of Sac City to Western Kentucky, an NCAA Division I FBS program, where he earned All-Conference USA honors with 25 starts over 31 games. Wheeler entered the transfer portal after his Western Kentucky career, hungry for more challenges, and was plucked by the upstart Hoosiers before this season.
Before the opening game, Wheeler spoke to Hoosiers media about his path, including the zest to always bring “my A-game.”
“It’s been a journey,” Wheeler said then. “I never expected to go to a JuCo, or to Western Kentucky, or to here at Indiana. I was dying to get a big offer out of JuCo. I worked my tail off to try and get better, to be a leader. I’m just grateful. I feel like it’s home here.”
Wheeler’s senior season at Franklin played out during the COVID year. The prep campaign was pushed into spring 2021, when Franklin went 3-0. Wheeler excelled in his one season with Sac City, and he still has his coaches Walker and John Herlihy raving about his upside and motor.
“Hosea was a worker, a grinder, a detail-oriented guy, and those are the guys coaches love to coach and have,” Walker said.
Herlihy added, “He was obsessed with being great.”
Walker attended the Rose Bowl in Southern California to watch Wheeler and the Hoosiers pound Alabama, 38-3 in a College Football Playoff. Walker had a chance to chat it up with Wheeler after that game, and the Sac City coach never stopped watching Indiana on its championship march.
The Wheeler name still resonates in the Sac City weight room. Wheeler’s younger brother, Joezae Wheeler, is a member of the football program.
“Great family!” Walker said.
Sac City had two win D-II titles
Sac City had 10 alums who competed in the 2025 postseason in four-year college football, including the FBS, FCS and NAIA levels.
Linebacker Isaiah Byars of Cosumnes Oaks High and defensive back Chris Lands of Monterey Trail High, both Elk Grove campuses, were members of Ferris State of Michigan which repeated as NCAA Division II champions. The Bulldogs went 16-0 and topped Harding of Arkansas 42-21 in McKinney of Texas to win the crown.
Ferris State went 14-1 in 2024.
“So proud of all of these guys,” Walker said. “No matter where they go, we’re rooting for them, following them. We talk to players all the time, every step of the way. They’re family. They’re always going to be family.”