Sacramento State will join the Big West conference as a full-fledged member from the 2026-27 academic year.
Sacramento State informed the Big Sky on Wednesday that it would leave the conference after this year and the Big West announced that the school would become the 12th school of the conference.
“The members of the members of the members and the conference of Big West are delighted to welcome the state of Sacramento in the Big West,” said Commissioner Dan Butterly in a statement. “In addition to strengthening the Big West competitively and expanding our geographic footprint, Sacramento State is an ardent defender of excellence in academics, athletics and service within their community. The new Big West look promises to bring a new level of competition and a friendly rivalry for students and fans.”
Big West does not sponsor football, the Sacramento State program will be an independent in this sport. The Hornets are trying to go from FCS to FBS as an independence and await a decision next week of the Division I Council I of the NCAA.
The FBS supervision committee recommended against this decision earlier this week, citing “the primordial importance” to have an invitation to join an FBS conference. The NCAA had previously granted a derogation from Liberty in 2017 to move to FBS as an independence, but said that the circumstances had changed since then.
Flames were an independent of 2018-22 football before joining the USA conference.
“Although an exemption from the requirement of invitation in good faith was granted in 2017, this decision was taken at another era, under a different set of facts and rules …”, recommended the committee, according to the report of the public meeting. “Due to the importance of the invitation of good faith of an FBS conference requirement and the convincing lack of attenuation explaining why this requirement, a requirement that several other FCS institutions have encountered in recent years, has not been fulfilled, the Committee does not support relief.”
Sacramento State said that the school would examine all the conference options for football if the Council votes against its request.
The state of Sacramento had been a affiliate member of the Big West in various sports in the past, but will now have 16 teams participating in the conference from 2026-2027.
“We are delighted to become a full member of the Big West and we are grateful to the invitation,” said sports director Mark Orr. “Sacramento State strives to provide our students athletes with the possibility of being in the best position to be competitive nationally, and the Big West for decades is a conference that has been a national success in several sports. We are impatient to compete for the championships, to improve existing rivalries and to develop new relationships with our members of the Peer Conference.”
The Hornets will officially join the Big West on July 1, 2026, joining a programming that includes California Baptist, Cal Poly, Cal State Bakersfield, Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State, CSUN, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and Utah Valley.
The Big West has no current plan to expand beyond the institutions of 12 members.
The Hornets recently made a big investment in the male basketball program, hiring the former NBA star Mike Bibby as a head coach and Shaquille O’Neal as a voluntary GM for the program.
Sacramento State went 7-25 last season under the acting coach Michael Czepil, who was promoted last spring after David Patrick left to take a job as a chief trainer associated with LSU.
The Hornets had gone from 28-42 in two seasons under Patrick and the program has never made a NCAA tournament since its visit to division I in 1991-92. The Hornets only had a victories record twice, going 16-14 in 2019-20 and 21-12 in 2014-15.