Realignment Strikes! Part 2: It’s a Good Home
This is part two of a three part series looking at what could be next for the West Coast Conference in the wake of the latest round of realignment. Read part one first if you haven’t already.
So, BYU’s gone. The Cougars are leaving the WCC behind for the Big 12. As I wrote just before that news broke, I think that’s a terrible move. It’s the worst possible “up” move the Cougars could have made in terms of realignment right now. It’s one that they’ll be stuck with for quite some time, too.
As I wrote just after that news broke, in Part 1, Gonzaga’s now in a position to consider its options going forward without BYU in the mix. It’s critical that Gonzaga makes the right choice here.
In Part 1, after examining the other potential options, I settled on staying in the West Coast Conference as the right choice to be made. I didn’t land there because the other options had too many negatives. And I didn’t pick it just because I cover the whole of the WCC and selfishly want Gonzaga to stay (I promise). I picked it because it’s the best option. Here are the three biggest reasons why.
Gonzaga’s From Here
The Zags have been in the WCC since 1979. That’s more than 40 seasons and the bulk of Gonzaga’s time at the Division I level.
Sure, much of that time was spent in obscurity, but since the mid-1990s we’ve all seen what Gonzaga’s been able to become while playing in the West Coast Conference. At this point, Gonzaga’s been a nationally-prominent program for more than half of its time in the WCC. It’s been a long time since anyone thought Gonzaga’s success story was just a blip on the radar. It’s become about as permanent as is possible in college sports — though nothing is forever, and I’ll get to that later.
Could Gonzaga sustain this level of success in any other league in the country? Yes, though maybe with a few more losses here and there. That’s why I wrote in Part 1 that the only league I would be excited about Gonzaga joining would be the Big East. Hell, if you want to shut the haters up for good, just give the Zags a roving conference status; let Gonzaga join whichever league is the best basketball conference in that given season. The Zags wouldn’t win the league every year, but they’d still be near the top of the NET rankings, they’d still be comfortably in the NCAA Tournament, they’d still rack up big wins and avoid bad losses.
But they’ve shown they can do that in the WCC. Why fix something that isn’t broken?
Gonzaga is a power conference program — get over the hump in one of these title games and it will be damn near a blue blood program —that plays in a non-power conference. That’s what BYU is, too. Especially in football. But this isn’t football. It’s possible to compete for national championships from outside the power structure here.
BYU tried independence. After decades of being boxed out of the power structure they decided to go their own way. They found success, in football and in their other sports, but ultimately football calls the shots there. And in football, you can’t compete for national championships from outside of the power structure. Ultimately, if football is going to call the shots, you’re going to have to join them if you can’t beat them.
Gonzaga has shown it can beat them without joining them. It can beat them from the WCC.
The WCC is Stable
Here’s the thing about those leagues that are better than or comparable to the WCC, specifically the ones Gonzaga would make sense as a member: other than the Big East, they’re all football focused. What does that mean?
They’re volatile, even the Big East. Remember, not long ago that league had to kill itself to save itself.
The WCC is a basketball-focused league that has remained incredibly stable throughout these ever more turbulent realities of realignment. For more than 30 years, from 1979 when San Diego and Gonzaga joined until 2011 when BYU joined, the WCC was solid as a rock. No teams joined, no teams left. It was just eight schools that put basketball first when it comes to revenue sports. Eight small, private, faith-based schools in west coast states that put basketball first.
No league in the country besides the Ivy can match that level of stability and shared identity.
Since the league stopped messing around with big, public, football-playing schools in the ’50s and ’60s, the league hasn’t fallen into the trap of realignment for realignment’s sake. It hasn’t seen its members poached, and it hasn’t gone poaching for new members. With two exceptions, and both have been smart.
The WCC added BYU in 2011, and it was smart. As I wrote in Part 1, everyone knew BYU would leave eventually. It would leave when football told it to leave, and that’s what’s happening now. But for the decade-plus that BYU spent in the WCC, the marriage was beneficial for all involved.
It allowed the Cougars to build their football brand in a way that the Mountain West and WAC before it never allowed, which the Cougars have subsequently parlayed into that Big 12 invite.
It also allowed the WCC to jump start the growth of its basketball brand in an instant. No more waiting for cultures to be built, recruiting pipelines developed and everything else that comes over time as mid-major programs try to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In an instant the WCC was given a fully formed, legit basketball program.
The other addition was two years later when Pacific joined. Or, rather, when Pacific re-joined. The Tigers were, after all, one of the five founding members of the West Coast Conference. They left for the Big West two decades later in a football-motivated move (football ruins everything). Pacific stopped playing football in 1995, and the Big West dropped the sport in 2000.
From the 1980s through the 2000s, the Big West was a revolving door of a conference. Teams were coming and going constantly. It was all because of football. Ultimately, when football was pushed to the side and the league started to settle into its current form, the Tigers were left as the only private school in a league they joined for a sport they no longer play. It made sense for them to return home to the WCC.
It also made sense from an on-court competition perspective.
Not only was the WCC bringing back one of its founding members, it was bringing in a basketball program that had been better than most WCC programs over the decade-plus prior.
The WCC has made two additions in the past 40+ seasons, and both have made a ton of sense. No frantically grabbing any team it could find to build out its membership — I’m looking at you, The WAC. No revolving door letting in programs that don’t have any idea what they want or where they should be — I’m looking at you, the 39 programs who have spent at least one season in the WAC since 2000.
The WCC Is Good, Actually
Yes, that’s largely due to Gonzaga. I wrote extensively about how Gonzaga has helped pull the league as a whole to new heights earlier this year. I won’t rehash that entire article here, so this section will be brief. If you want the full explanation, click that link and settle in.
As a whole, the WCC is good. It’s actually good. And it’s getting better. No, it’s no Big East. It’s no Pac-12. Yes, it’s still got Portland. But it’s also got three legitimate NCAA Tournament contenders this season, in addition to Gonzaga and BYU. Saint Mary’s is at the point where the Gaels enter every season as legitimate NCAA Tournament contenders. They’re no longer a flash in the pan either. They’re no Gonzaga, but they’re good.
When BYU basically stashed basketball and the non-revenue sports in the WCC after leaving the Mountain West, it didn’t really matter what happened to those sports. As long as they didn’t all start falling off a cliff or anything.
In basketball, though, the opposite happened. BYU’s basketball program got better in the WCC compared to when it was in the Mountain West.
That’s not a huge jump (especially compared to what the other two programs did (Saint Mary’s, sheesh!)) but it is a jump nonetheless. BYU went from being on average the 56th best program in the country while in the Mountain West to being the 51st best program in the country while in the WCC. The entire league has something to do with that!
Yes, Gonzaga’s the class of the conference, without question. But the WCC is capable of producing multiple at-large berths to the NCAA Tournament. It will remain capable of that even once BYU is out the door. There are few leagues outside of the power structure capable of doing that.
Again, there are better leagues in the sport, but the WCC has been good enough for Gonzaga to become the best program in the country. So, why change?
The grass isn’t always greener. I expect BYU will find that out soon enough. If you’re Gonzaga, and you’re at something of a realignment disadvantage simply because you don’t have a football team, why would you jump into realignment when realignment is driven by football? You’ve got everything you need where you are right now. You’ve got history, stability, success, fit and a future that looks as bright as any program in the country. You’ve got all of that in the WCC.
Short and long term, no option looks as good, and certainly not nearly as safe, as staying in the WCC.
Just because Gonzaga’s best option is to stay in the WCC doesn’t mean getting Gonzaga to stay in the WCC is the only thing the WCC needs to do going forward to navigate the post-BYU waters as smoothly as possible. Part 3 will look at what could be next for the conference as a whole. Should it poach the Big West? Merge with the MWC? I’m kidding. That’s lunacy. There are a few things that it can, and should, do, however. Stay tuned, Part 3 will touch on those in the coming days.
