Sac State wide receiver Ernest Campbell talks with Head Coach Brennan Marion on the sidelines during a home victory against Central Arkansas, Sept 20, 2025.

Brennan Marion, we hardly knew you.

After several days of unconfirmed reports, Sacramento State today on Friday announced Marion, its coach for one season, has resigned to become Colorado’s offensive coordinator.

The school’s 13th coach, he came to Sacramento with much fanfare, wearing a big cowboy hat at his introductory news conference a year ago, projecting a hero’s arrival to rescue a program that had stumbled into mediocrity during the 2024 season.

Before Sac State, Marion, as the offensive coordinator at UNLV the previous two seasons, was known for creating a dynamic attack called “go-go” that helped the Running Rebels earn consecutive bowl bids.

“Sac State just signed the best offensive coordinator in football as its head coach,” university President Dr. Luke Wood told The OBSERVER a year ago. “We are going to put hella points on the board.”

Indeed. Sacramento State (7-5) ended the regular season ranked third in the Football Championship Subdivision with 262.6 rushing yards per game and averaged 33.8 points. He was an excellent recruiter, bringing more than 70 new players as transfers and freshmen.

Unexpectedly, Marion is taking his talents to Boulder, Colorado.

But it’s not surprising.

Folks, everyone chooses their own career path, or tries to. The profession of college coaching can be particularly mercurial and maddening to fans and observers alike. Marion is being roasted on social media by some disappointed fans.

But coaches come and go. Sometimes abruptly.

At least 15 college football head coaches have been fired this year, with several more firings potentially occurring before the end of the calendar year. Others have left voluntarily for jobs at other schools.

Tens of millions of dollars are being passed around in the form of buyouts and new contracts.

Sac State, under the leadership of Wood and Athletics Director Mark Orr, has charted a course to elevate the entire sports program, looking to join more prestigious conferences than its current affiliation in the Big Sky. Football and basketball are the flagships of that effort.

In addition to Marion, Wood and Orr made another splashy hire, naming former Sacramento Kings guard Mike Bibby as the new men’s basketball coach this season.

Orr, not surprisingly, took the high road on Marion’s defection. He’s been here before.

“I want to thank Coach Marion for his leadership during this past season,” Orr said in a news release. “We look forward to continuing the success of Sacramento State football and will begin a national search for our next head coach immediately.”

Orr has made exceptional hires in the past several years, bringing in Troy Taylor as football coach in 2019 and Mark Campbell to lead the women’s basketball program in 2022. Both led their teams to heights not previously experienced in the school’s history.

From 2019-2022, Taylor guided Sacramento State to a 30-8 mark in four seasons, with two Big Sky Conference championships and a berth in the FCS quarterfinals for the first time, among his achievements.

Campbell in just his second (and last) season captured the women’s basketball conference tournament title, which qualified the team for its first NCAA Tournament.

Larger programs outside Sacramento took notice. Taylor was hired by Stanford and Campbell was hired away by Texas Christian University.

“I love Luke Wood and Mark Orr,” Marion said in the same news release. “They gave me the opportunity to live my dream as a college head football coach and they provided me with every resource to succeed. I’m grateful to the Sacramento community and university for embracing my family. Lastly to my team, I love our players and staff. They restored the pride in Sac State football through a lot of adversity and our relationships will last a lifetime.”

I don’t like the current dynamics of big-time college athletics, but I’ve come to accept it. Players freely come and go with relaxed transfer rules. Some, deservedly so, get paid big money from schools that have long profited off players’ names, images and likenesses.

I wish Marion would stay. I saw potential in the football program under his leadership in year one, despite the team losing a couple of winnable games. Three of the five losses were by a total of 15 points.

Some fans are miffed that Marion is leaving a head coaching position to become second fiddle as an offensive coordinator. But let’s be real: working a seat away from the top job at a Power 4 conference school (alongside Deion Sanders, no less) is arguably a smarter play for Marion than remaining the coach of a program that is leaving a lower-division league for an uncertain future as an independent.

This is college sports today.

And in the immortal words of fictional mob boss Michael Corleone: It’s not personal. It’s business.

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