Football may or may not survive at Sacramento State over the long haul, but that's OK.
Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't.

Maybe Sac State would be better served as a basketball school.

Maybe it's time for a new way of thinking.

Maybe Alexander Gonzalez will be the guy with the answers.

Maybe, but the still-new Sac State president admits he is short on answers for now.

"I've only been on the job seven months," he said by phone Tuesday.

True. But at least Gonzalez will start asking the right questions about Hornets sports.

At least he'll start asking Sac State athletic director Terry Wanless to prove why football is worth keeping on an apathetic campus.

He'll ask the campus at large for ways to refurbish inadequate Hornet Field during a state budget crisis -- or whether that's even possible.

He'll ask a lot starting today at a news conference, where Gonzalez will also begin charting a new future for Hornets athletics.

Part of that future could be -- will be, according to Gonzalez -- a recreation center that would house a new basketball arena and a much-needed on-campus site for graduation ceremonies.

Such a building could be connected to future football facilities, or they could each stand alone -- a perfect metaphor for Hornets sports in the future.

No one knows what shape that future will take.

Wanless, an old-time football guy, says loudly and publicly that football is the cornerstone of Sac State's athletic future -- and there's no blaming him for that.

It's his job.

But in conversations with Gonzalez, the new president is as neutral about the future as Wanless is hopefully optimistic.

Gonzalez didn't have to be asked about football Tuesday; he brought it up himself.

But most tellingly, Gonzalez said he would make a decision on football's future in the next several months.

Gonzalez is nothing if not smoothly political in the way he speaks -- one moment noncommittal about football, but supportive the next.

For example, Gonzalez didn't say he would ax the program, but he wouldn't give it an ironclad endorsement, either.

He said Sac State couldn't be competitive in football with its current poor facilities, but indicated the school couldn't look toward its general fund for sports and couldn't place all future costs on students' backs.

"That wouldn't be fair," he said.

In other words, Wanless has to find a new way to pay for it.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez is mindful that the program exists in the present and that its immediate challenge is to improve a woeful outfit that finished 2-9 last year.

Sac State's football coaches, he said, "have to assume that we're going to be in the Big Sky Conference and do what we have to do to attract the best players."

Given the president's words, however, that challenge will be tough and potentially troublesome for coaches on the recruiting trail who are just weeks away from letter-of-intent day.

Before Gonzalez stepped forward, the sports debate was led by the worst type of campus denizen -- the loudmouth with bad ideas and no clout.

What we heard were half-baked notions of patterning Sac State after Florida State or Fresno State, two laughable, wrong-headed concepts now dead.

Instead, now you get the feeling that Wanless and the athletic department are out of Gonzalez's loop; that they are gleaning as much information by reading the paper as they are on campus.

The new man definitely seems to keep his own counsel, and given that, it might be tempting for Wanless to use the old sports dodge of blaming the media for raising questions about football.

True -- football isn't directly mentioned in recommendations for Hornets sports that Gonzalez will be addressing today.

But football lurks between the lines and on Gonzalez's mind -- and he seems a man to be taken seriously.

He'll have Wanless start reporting directly to him, and Gonzalez said something curious at one point Tuesday -- "Wanless is the athletic director at the moment." He also said, "As far as I'm concerned, football is here to stay unless someone convinces me otherwise."

Spoken like a man who makes no promises, yet let's make this clear before we finish:

Football might still be around at Sac State years from now.

But if it is, you get the feeling from Gonzalez that it will survive for the right reason:

Because Wanless and the athletic department earned their keep.