According to a report from Yahoo Sports, Sacramento State has approached multiple conferences with a $10 million entry fee, a number that doesn’t include the blanket $5 million fee to make the jump from the FCS to the FBS.

Sacramento State is in the midst of an aggressive effort to join an FBS league, proposing a $10M+ entry fee plus forgoing league revenues, sources tell @YahooSports.

Multiples conferences heard the pitch. One is believed to be exploring the possibility.https://t.co/2X0S63E2DI

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) February 6, 2026

The entry fees would be in tandem with forfeiture of conference revenues for an unknown stretch of time. Southern Methodist University used a proposal like this to move from the American Athletic Conference to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2023, forgoing their media rights for their first nine seasons of ACC play. The dollar amount of media rights income in the Mid-American was in the range of $1.7 million to $3.6 million in 2024.

President Luke Wood has defended the decision to make the conference jump, stating that the decision will become a new revenue stream for the university back in 2025.

Last summer, Sac State’s initial push to join the FBS as an independent was blocked at the goal line when the NCAA rejected their waiver. Without the waiver to grant them FBS independence, their only option to enter college football’s upper echelon is via a conference invite, one that they hope a $10 million entry fee could secure.

The report states that a few conferences, like the more geographically consistent Mountain West and Pac-12 have rejected the proposal. The Mid-American Conference, however, is considering it. The MAC, which is mainly made up of teams from the Great Lakes region, will be losing one of their members next season and has yet to release their 2026 schedule.

Simultaneously, Sac State moved their non-football sports to the Big West Conference and their football program out of the Big Sky Conference in June 2025, leaving their football program as an FCS independent.

They’ve scheduled seven games for the 2026 season thus far with just one, their presumptive season opener against Fresno State, against an FBS opponent.

Sac State will play in 2026 under a new head coach, former Arizona running backs coach Alonzo Carter, who was brought in after the departure of former head coach Brennan Marion to Colorado.

The State Hornet reached out to Sac State Athletics for comment, but they declined.