On Friday, with seagulls squawking in the San Diego skies above, Michigan State and Gonzaga will tip off in a game that is as much spectacle as sport. The Armed Forces Classic, to be played aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, requires a couple of things to make it work: no rain, and two teams worthy of college basketball’s singular attention. Eleven years ago, when former Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis first hatched the idea of playing hoops atop an aircraft carrier and recruited North Carolina as the Spartans’ foe, Gonzaga would not have made the cut.
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The Zags then were on the cusp, their results belying their perception as a charming upstart but not quite pushing them into the national conversation, either. Now with no worse than a Sweet 16 appearance since 2014-15, with five No. 1 seeds and two title game appearances, there is no arguing that Gonzaga belongs on the game’s (floating) center stage.
That’s also largely why Mark Few’s squad finds itself in a unique place in the college athletics space. At the conference realignment poker table, only two non-football schools can even be in the conversation: Villanova and Gonzaga. In a world where brand trumps market, both have the established name recognition to draw eyeballs and interest. The Wildcats, though, aren’t going anywhere. They are firmly entrenched and quite happy in the Big East. Which leaves the Zags in a unique bargaining position. They do not hold all of the chips, or even most of them, but they can at least ante in.
Last week an industry source confirmed to The Athletic that Gonzaga athletic director Chris Standiford met with Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark in Frisco, Texas, after the Zags played a charity game against Tennessee there last month. Though the conversations are early and exploratory, they are “real,’’ as the source put it. The Big 12, however, is not the only conference curious about Gonzaga. Two industry sources, granted anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly, say both the Pac-12 and Big East have made overtures as well. Yormark has just been more aggressive about it. “He’s not afraid to think outside the box,’’ one of the sources says.
Pulling Gonzaga into any other conference comes with complications. Then again, nearly 30 years ago, people thought putting Penn State in the Big Ten would be complicated, too. If realignment has proven anything over its messy history, it’s this: If there’s a will, there’s a way … to pay for it and make it happen. And there seems, at least, right now to be a will. “The world right now, it’s not going to reward the status quo for a school like Gonzaga,’’ one of the insiders says. “I’m not sure the West Coast Conference will be able to deliver what the school needs.’’
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Why Gonzaga makes sense for other conferences
A year ago, Gonzaga and Duke met in Las Vegas for a one-off game, attracting a television audience of 2.79 million, the largest college basketball TV viewership for a pre-New Year’s Day game since 2018, when those very same teams squared off at the Maui Classic.
Thanks to streaming services and social media, the old measurables of school worth are gone. TV markets are out. Brands are in. Certainly the other side of that Vegas equation — Duke — had something to do with the big TV number, but this isn’t rocket science. Marquee matchups drive attention. There is a reason Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State and Kansas make up the Champions Classic — even though Kentucky has not won a championship since 2013 and Michigan State not since 2000. As much as March loves a good Cinderella story, the sport’s regular season ultimately favors the bluebloods.
😎👀🤑🎊 pic.twitter.com/T2RDzNAqbw
— Gonzaga Basketball (@ZagMBB) November 8, 2022
The Big 12 is losing two of its biggest overall brands, with Texas and Oklahoma moving on to the SEC — but the league’s hoops essence remains with Kansas, Baylor and Texas Tech. Pitting Gonzaga against those perennial Top 25 programs would only enhance the appeal and value of a league that already, in the estimation of many, is annually the toughest top to bottom in the country.
The Zags also would make the Big 12 more money in a more concrete way, via the all-important NCAA Tournament shares. Calculating the exact worth of a share is complicated but essentially the NCAA’s pot of gold from CBS is divvied up among teams that make the field, with each game equaling a share. Each is worth roughly $330,000 but also is paid out consecutively over a six-year period. One share in 2021, in other words, is the gift that keeps on giving and is actually worth closer to $2 million.
No matter how you compute it, the Zags are worth millions. The Associated Press estimates that from 1999 to 2019, the Zags brought about $51 million to the WCC. Their last two NCAA appearances alone (a loss in the national title game, and the Sweet 16 respectively) will be worth around $14 million over the course of the payout. The Big 12 already is making plenty off the tournament — an estimated $32 million off of last year’s Kansas title run alone — but the next commissioner to say we have too much money will be the first.
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Undoubtedly, the Big 12 would have to work out some equitable revenue sharing. Even as hefty as those contributions are, Gonzaga’s financials are nothing compared to the gold football stuffs into the coffers. The Big East crumbled amid the infighting of keeping both the football and non-football-playing members happy.
A move to the Pac-12 for Gonzaga would involve the same possibilities — and issues with USC and UCLA leaving. The Pac-12 needs members and oomph in equal measure as it preps to go to the media rights bargaining table (after the Big 12 cut in line and landed a $2.3 billion deal). Gonzaga is not an unattractive solution.
The easiest fit, in some ways, would be the Big East. Gonzaga is not only a like-minded basketball-first institution, but also a private Catholic school that slides in seamlessly to the conference’s ideological footprint. The trouble: Spokane is not close to anything. “I would say geography is a factor. It’s not unimportant,’’ Big East commissioner Val Ackerman told The Athletic at the league’s media day last month. “If you’re bringing in someone as a full member, you’re bringing in another 13, 14 or 15 sports, and you have to think about that. What’s the volleyball team, the baseball team, the softball team, what’s their experience going to be like? What’s the travel like? And can we afford it? It’s not insurmountable, but it’s on the pecking order.’’
The last part — Can we afford it? — is the stickler. It is no less complicated for USC and UCLA to traverse the country as Big Ten members than it would be for the Zags in the Big East. There’s even talk about creating road swings, where a collection of Olympic in-season sports hop a charter together and barnstorm on the Big Ten’s opposite coast. The same could work for Gonzaga in the Big East. Except, with the exception of UConn, the Big East schools are smaller private schools with considerably smaller budgets. And though it, too, will be renegotiating its TV deal within the next year, the league cannot command the price tag its football-playing peers can. Cross-country charters for some — but not all — Big East schools could simply be cost-prohibitive.
Why other conferences make sense for Gonzaga
Asked about bringing Gonzaga to the Big 12, Bob Huggins puffed out his chest and took hold of his Big 12 pride. “To get in this league and play who we play day after day, I would think it would be a tremendous awakening,’’ he said. “You don’t get to make your own schedule in the Big 12.’’ Snideness and smugness aside, he’s not wrong. Moving to the Big 12 would be a serious step up for the Bulldogs.
Except that might not be a bad thing. Along with the game against the Spartans on the aircraft carrier, this year the Zags will play Kentucky in Spokane (but not at the Kennel), in the loaded PK85 in Portland, Baylor in South Dakota, and Alabama in Birmingham. It is the only way for the Bulldogs to get their due with the selection committee and stand a chance at a single-digit seed. Since 2002, the conference has never ranked better than eighth in Ken Pomeroy’s standings.
But the not-so-secret question being bandied about in college basketball circles is if the WCC is leaving the Zags ill-prepared for March? It’s a tricky argument to make, what with two national title game appearances in the last five tournaments. It’s also hard to erase the image of Baylor feasting on and spitting out the then-undefeated Zags in 2021.
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Gonzaga now has the quality of players to rival any team in the country. The 2019, 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes ranked 13th, sixth and fourth, respectively, in the country, per the 247Sports Composite. Since 2019, nine Bulldogs have been selected first- or second-team All-Americans. Yet they have no title to show for it. Of course, the best team does not always win the championship, and Villanova lived under the same whiff of skepticism until the Wildcats won two titles in three years.
There is also an argument to be made for easing into March and not being beaten to a pulp by conference opponents. The Big Ten, in fact, would like a word on that issue.
There is, however, validity to Baylor coach Scott Drew’s “iron sharpens iron” approach. Once the calendar flips to conference play, the Zags rarely are challenged. They haven’t lost more than one West Coast Conference game in a season since 2015-16. From 2016-17 through last year, they’ve dropped four by a combined 34 points. Two of those losses came at the hands of BYU, which is leaving the conference for the Big 12.
More telling, their margins of victory read like chasms:
Gonzaga in WCC games
| Year | Avg. margin of victory | Close game record |
|---|---|---|
2016-17 | 25.9 | 0-1 |
2017-18 | 24.5 | 3-1 |
2018-19 | 28.1 | 0-0 |
2019-20 | 20.1 | 2-1 |
2020-21 | 24.1 | 0-0 |
2021-22 | 23.5 | 0-1 |
* Close games defined as final margin less than 10 points.
Now compare that to how the national champions have fared in conference in that same period:
National champs in conference games
| Year | National champion | Avg. margin of victory | Close game record |
|---|---|---|---|
2016-17 | UNC | 9 | 6-4 |
2017-18 | Villanova | 12 | 4-4 |
2018-19 | Virginia | 13.8 | 5-2 |
2020-21 | Baylor | 13.6 | 5-1 |
2021-22 | Kansas | 6 | 8-4 |
The selection committee is wise enough and selective enough to value conference depth, and whatever Gonzaga might lose in the aesthetics from a Big 12 versus WCC conference record it will make up for in the meat of it.
All of this, of course, remains wildly speculative. The expected shakeup to follow the exodus of UCLA and USC has yet to fully materialize. The Big 12 already is adding UCF, Houston, Cincinnati and BYU. It could very well sit down at a very nice, round 12-team membership.
But if the history of conference realignment is firm about anything, it is that the moral of the story is always the same: “Look, if UCLA and USC can join a league and go play all the way at Rutgers,’’ a source says, “anything is possible.’’
(Top photo of Drew Timme: James Snook / USA Today)
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