The Mid-American Conference was once college football’s most tight-knit geographic conference. Now the league pins its aspirations on Northern California.
Sacramento State will join the MAC in 2026 as a football-only member. On Saturday, Feb. 14, the MAC presidents approved to add the California-based institution for the 2026 season, as first reported by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports.
The Sacramento State Hornets, which operated at the FCS level from 1993-2025, will become the FBS’s 138th program, joining North Dakota State which was recently announced as a Mountain West football-only member starting in 2026. Sacramento State will pay a $5 million entry fee to move to the FBS level and a separate $18 million entry fee to join the MAC.
This stunning conference realignment move, which gained significant ground in a short amount of time, sets the MAC at 13 football programs for the 2026 season, as the conference prepares to lose longtime member Northern Illinois on July 1. Excluding Northern Illinois, the westernmost MAC member prior to the addition of Sacramento State was Western Michigan, located at 85.6 degrees west longitude. Sacramento State, located in the capital of Sacramento, CA, lies at 121.4 degrees west. The MAC’s newest football program is roughly a 2,180-mile drive from its closest conference opponent Western Michigan — a drive which would consume roughly 31.5 hours. It is farthest from UMass, which is roughly 2,950 miles away, or approximately, a 43-hour drive.
Sacramento State becomes the first MAC program in the Pacific Time Zone. Once Northern Illinois departed the league in July, the conference was slated to operate exclusively in the Eastern Time Zone. Now four MAC teams per year will take the long trek to the Golden State’s capital to settle things on the gridiron.
The MAC’s addition of Sacramento State occurs before the conference’s schedule release. The MAC typically releases its schedule in the first week of March, and adjustments must be made to any preliminary schedules include the Hornets.
Sacramento State currently has an FCS schedule lined up for 2026 featuring seven FCS opponents and a non-conference matchup against Fresno State. Prior to their relocation to the MAC, the Hornets — formerly a member of the Big Sky Conference — were planning to tackle 2026 as an FCS independent.
The Hornets will be led by first-year head coach Alonzo Carter who was formally hired on Dec. 15 to replace Brennan Marion, who accepted an offensive coordinator gig at Colorado.
Carter spent the 2024 and 2025 seasons as an associated head coach and running backs coach for Arizona. He will facilitate the FBS transition for a Hornets program fresh off a 7-5 campaign in their final year at the FCS level.
This is considered a developing story, and will be updated as needed.