During his introductory press conference, new Sacramento State head coach Alonzo Carter recalled a time when he sat atop the stands at Hornet Stadium during a football camp a decade ago.
“There was this moment when I sat at the top of the stadium 10 years ago,” Carter said. “It was at a camp. Everybody was gone. I looked across the stadium, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna be the head coach here one day.’ I put that in the universe.”
Carter, an Oakland native, was officially announced as the program’s 14th head coach on Thursday, Dec. 18 in a press conference alongside Athletic Director Mark Orr and President Luke Wood.
Prior to taking the job at Sac State, Carter was the running backs coach at Arizona and San Jose State, and the head coach at Contra Costa College. His running back rooms have been dominant, powering all three programs to bowl games and a No. 24 ranking on the AP Poll for the Spartans.
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“Today, we welcome Alonzo Carter, a byproduct of Oakland, California, the cultural epicenter of our state,” Wood said. “He understands that when you uplift families, you strengthen teams, and when you serve communities, you build champions. And we expect that we’ll be champions on and off the field.”
During the 14 days after former head coach Brennan Marion’s departure, Orr and his staff embarked on a competitive coaching search, but all roads led back to Carter.
“We spoke to numerous coaches and administrators across the nation, and they all kept coming up with the same thing. ‘Mark, you really need to hire Alonzo Carter,’” Orr said. “The college landscape has changed with NIL, with revenue share, with all the different things that student-athletes are experiencing. Coach Carter has experience in successfully navigating those, and I’m sure he’s going to continue to do well here in that area.”
The press conference, which was held at the Welcome Center at Sac State, was a packed house. Several of Carter’s former coaches and players were present, including former NFL first-round pick defensive end Takkarist McKinley.
“Nothing in my life has come easy,” Carter said. “I was asthmatic, a middle child of four, raised [only] by a mother [until] the age of 21. I didn’t meet my dad until I was 23 years old. He was incarcerated when I met him, so the odds have always been stacked against me. I’ve always been told what I wasn’t going to be.”
Carter stressed the importance of education throughout his press conference, highlighting that as among the most important aspects of the job.
“When you have an administrative team like this, a president, an AD and then you add a coach like me that’s committed to this, this is a dream team jumping off,” Carter said. “I already told my coaches that we are the Avengers. On one stipulation, I’m Black Panther.”
While he may have gained notoriety as a former backup dancer for MC Hammer, Carter is more than the “dancing coach.”
“I don’t look behind me. I always look forward. I always press forward,” Carter said. “I just want to let everyone know, y’all just didn’t hire a coach. You hired a winner. I don’t flinch.”
Carter’s main draw as a head coach is his recruiting ability, and he plans on using his deeply-seeded local roots to get talent from the local area.
“There’s a lot of good football [in the Sacramento area]. There’s a lot of football players in this region, and it’s important that they feel like this is home,” Carter said. “Staying home is priority number one. We will recruit, recruit, recruit, when it comes to the city of Sacramento.”
“Do you love football?” – when it comes to the type of players that Carter wants, he asks that one simple question.
“I want people that I gotta put out of the building. I want people that love education. I want people that want to go back into their community and give back,” Carter said. “Those are the type of people I want in this program. I want to be able to go back and identify does this young man love football?”
