Staff Report
University of Arizona running backs coach Alonzo Carter is expected to be named the new head football coach at Sacramento State, sources have told The OBSERVER. Carter replaces Brennan Marion, who abruptly quit the Hornets after one season to join the coaching staff at Colorado.
An official announcement is scheduled this week. Sac State officials will name Carter over the other finalist, DeSean Jackson, the head coach at Delaware State who was named the HBCU football coach of the year.
Alonzo Carter
Carter, 57, is no stranger to Northern California, having spent seven seasons at San Jose State as an assistant coach. He was named assistant head coach at San Jose State in 2021. Born and raised in Oakland, he also was head coach at Contra Costa College from 2010-2016, and he coached high school football at Berkeley and McClymonds in the Bay Area for a decade.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Carter became a national figure through his West Coast Zoom clinics — weekly sessions involving hundreds of football coaches to assist minority coaches with upward mobility in the coaching profession.
In August 2020, he was named to the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches (NCMFC) executive committee. The organization’s goal is to identify and groom coaches of color and create a list of coaching candidates for upward mobility. The NCMFC recognized his organizational commitment through his recruitment of more than 100 new members, providing mentoring, and mock interview sessions with its MVP Advocate Award for 2020. Since August 2020, he assisted 26 NCMFC members that advanced to coaching positions of greater responsibility or visibility.
Carter joins a Hornets program that has experienced turbulence at the top in recent years. After a successful four-year run that included three Big Sky Conference titles and playoffs victories, then coach Troy Taylor left for Stanford and his successor Andy Thompson resigned after two years and an 11-14 record.
Marion, who was hired a year ago with much fanfare as an offensive innovator, was supposed to stabilize things, finishing 7-5 in his only season. He picked up and fled to Boulder where he will be offensive coordinator for the Buffaloes.
Carter — as was Marion — is known as an excellent recruiter. He will need those skills in an era where players can freely transfer from one school to another. Under Marion, Sac State brought in about 70 new players from other colleges and as freshmen.
Additionally, Sac State is leaving the Big Sky after nearly 30 years in the conference. Most of its teams will join the Big West Conference, which doesn’t compete in football. So the football team will play as an independent in 2026-27 until it can find a conference to accept it.
How Marion’s departure impacts the current roster also remains to be seen, but a bit of unrelated trivia from Carter’s youth might speak to his nimbleness in addressing what comes next.
As a student at Cal State Hayward, he and a group of friends answered an audition call, became backup dancers and rap artists, and toured extensively with iconic hip-hop artist MC Hammer. Carter was awarded a multi-platinum record signifying at least 10 million albums sold for “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Em.”
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