If you’re reading this you already know why you’re reading it: BYU is reportedly leaving the WCC for the Big 12. College football, folks. It’s the worst.
Part 1 of this series looked at the main concern for the WCC: keeping Gonzaga. Part 2 looked at why staying in the WCC is the best option for Gonzaga. Part 3 is here, and it’s time to look at the WCC’s options going forward.
The reality of realignment is clear. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Once one domino falls, more follow. The SEC poached the Big 12 by taking Texas and Oklahoma. The Big 12 responded by deciding it needed to fight for its life, and it poached the AAC (Houston, Cincinnati, UCF) and WCC (BYU).
So, what’s next? The AAC is now in the same position the Big 12 was in just prior to making these moves. It’s a dead league walking. It went from arguing it was a power conference, through the use of the grotesque hashtag #AmericanPow6r (I will make fun of American Powgr anytime I am given the chance), to now clearly on the same level as the Mountain West, WCC and A-10, at best. That league was born out of realignment, and it will need to turn to realignment once again if it wants to maintain anything close to its current status.
Who cares about the AAC, though? We’re talking about the WCC here. Losing BYU is obviously a blow, and it’s unfortunate. But should the WCC perpetuate the cycle of realignment by looking to replace BYU with another team? Does it need to? It’s worth considering. So, let’s consider.
If the WCC looks to replace BYU, which schools should it look at?
There are two, and only two, schools to be seriously considered. Seattle and Grand Canyon.
The case for Seattle:
The Redhawks have a historical connection to the WCC. They were members of the league during the 1970s before dropping down to the NAIA level. They spent about 30 years at the NAIA, DIII and DII levels before rejoining Division I just over a decade ago.
They’re currently in the WAC, where they are somehow the second-longest tenured current member (that’s a league you don’t want to take realignment advice from). They’re also completely out of the WAC’s footprint. The WAC is now dominated by teams in Texas and the Southwest. Seattle’s closest conference rivals are in Riverside, California and Orem, Utah.
Moving from the WAC to the WCC would make sense for Seattle from a geographical and competitive perspective. They’re already in the WCC’s footprint, whereas they’re outside of the WAC’s, and the WCC is a considerably better (and far more stable) league than the WAC. Seattle doesn’t play football, and the WAC just brought football back in yet another last ditch attempt to stave off the death of the league.
Basically, it doesn’t fit in with the WAC in almost any way, other than it’s not a very good program and it hasn’t ever been in a stable, long-term relationship with a conference. But we’ll get to that soon enough.
Seattle would almost certainly love to join the WCC. What would they bring to the league, though?
First, they’d bring the league back to 10 teams, and that’s a nice, round number and leagues tend to like nice, round numbers.
They’re also a small (just over 7,000 undergraduates) private, Jesuit institution. That sounds like a WCC team. Like I already said, they’re also in the WCC’s footprint. They’ve got some, not a ton but certainly some, history with the league. They fit geographically, culturally and historically. That’s pretty good.
The case against Seattle:
The program sucks. Sorry, but it’s true.
Think about Portland, the worst program in the WCC right now. They’ve been so bad that they’ve won one conference game over the past three seasons. Over the past 12 seasons, the time since Seattle moved back to D1, the Pilots’ average end of season ranking on KenPom has been 221st. The only WCC team outside of the top-200.
Seattle’s average ranking has been 230th. They’ve been worse than literally every team in the WCC since they returned to D1. Why would you add that? In a league that is basketball-focused and basketball-first, why would you bring in a team that would damage, rather than improve, your basketball product?
Sure, some of that has to do with the fact that Seattle’s been in the WAC, and the WAC has been terrible. Would they improve in the WCC? Probably. Could they improve to the level of Portland? Absolutely. Do we really want another Portland, though?
It’s not like they’re getting better, either. Their best season in KenPom was their first. Over the past four seasons, since hiring Jim Hayford, they’ve won 20, 18, 14 and 12 games. In that order. They’ve been bad, and they’re getting worse.
Conclusion on Seattle:
Adding Seattle makes a ton of sense from an off-court perspective. It makes absolutely no sense on the court.
Seattle is a natural fit from an institutional standpoint. They’d be an instant rival for Gonzaga and Portland, they fit with the league’s culture, and I wouldn’t mind making a few road trips over there each season — Seattle’s campus is a stone’s throw from Downtown on Capitol Hill (I don’t know if it’s technically on Capitol Hill, and I do not care), it’s in an incredible location. I know quite a few Seattle U grads. They’re good people and it’s a good school, but it’s a terrible program. Basketball aside, the Redhawks would be a fantastic addition to the WCC. You can’t put basketball aside, though. They’re so bad that they would damage the league’s basketball product and as a result, make the league more vulnerable going forward.
Don’t add Seattle.
The case for Grand Canyon:
The Antelopes (calling them the “Lopes” makes me want to vomit) have been a Division I school since 2014. They, like Seattle, compete in the WAC. Unlike Seattle, they’ve actually been able to win the WAC — though just once, this past season.
They’re a basketball-first school. Well, they’re a profit-first school but I’ll get to that later. In sports, they’re a basketball-first school. They hired Phoenix legend Dan Majerle as head coach, and when they fired him before last season they replaced him with Bryce Drew. They care about basketball (because basketball can help them make money, which they care about more).
With an average end-of-season ranking on KenPom of 173 over their eight seasons at the D1 level, they’re ahead of Portland, LMU, Pacific, Santa Clara and San Diego over that span, and just one spot behind Pepperdine. On the court, they’ve been right there with the middle of the WCC pack.
There’s reason to be hopeful that their success will increase in coming years, too. Like I said, they put basketball first and it shows. Their basketball account has 17.7 thousand followers on Twitter. Gonzaga clocks in at 216.6 thousand, and BYU has 35.2 thousand, but no other team in the league has more than Grand Canyon — the next closest is Saint Mary’s with 6.4 thousand.
This is a promotional video made by the university, so take it with a grain of salt, but aside from calling it the best atmosphere in college basketball it’s pretty spot on based on what I know of their fans.
The university really does put basketball above almost everything (besides money), including education (sorry but I can’t even write the case for GCU without crapping on it). In that way, it’s a perfect fit for a league that also puts basketball first (among sports).
It’s also a geographic fit. If BYU, in Provo, Utah, can be in the West Coast Conference, than Grand Canyon, in Phoenix, Arizona, can too.
The case against Grand Canyon:
The school sucks. Sorry, but it’s true.
Oh, also, it’s a for-profit university. That sucks too.
But seriously, it doesn’t fit in at all with the rest of the WCC academically. U.S. News and World Report’s annual college rankings list puts Grand Canyon in the 298–398 range nationally. It doesn’t even bother to give it a ranking. Every other WCC member institution is either top-100 nationally except San Francisco (103rd) and Pacific (133rd). The publication didn’t include Portland or Saint Mary’s in the national rankings, but they were listed as second and sixth regionally.
Only 61% of students stay after their freshman year and only 41% graduate.
Oh, also, it’s enormous. 25,000 students, plus another 90,000 online students. A giant, not great, for-profit university with almost a hundred thousand online students. What could go wrong?
The university tried, and failed, to have it’s status changed from for-profit to non-profit. It didn’t happen, and now it’s suing the U.S. Department of Education.
As of press time, the company is currently trading up on the day. Yep, you can buy shares in Grand Canyon on the Nasdaq.
Conclusion on Grand Canyon:
BYU is also a massive university that is part of an organization that also owns for-profit enterprises. But BYU itself is not for-profit. And while it is massive compared to the rest of the WCC, and didn’t fit in with the league as a result, it was a net benefit to the league. It made sense to add BYU, despite the differences, because it made the league as a whole better.
Adding a team that is historically on the level of the fourth, fifth or sixth best team in the WCC in any given year doesn’t make the league better.
Now, of course, there aren’t really any options out there to make the league better. None of the programs the WCC could add will be remotely close to the program it’s losing. Grand Canyon is clearly the best basketball program potentially available, but overall it is a terrible fit for the WCC.
Don’t add Grand Canyon. Actually, don’t add anyone.
So, what should the WCC do?
The WCC should be content to sit at nine teams for the foreseeable future.
I know realignment is a series of dominoes falling, and most leagues around the country take their hits in realignment and then turn to raid another league thinking they have to do it to stay alive. But that’s not the case. The WCC’s relationship with BYU was never meant to be permanent. Everyone involved knew that someday football would come calling and the Cougars would be gone.
It was a unique situation in the world of realignment. And now it’s coming to an end. It’s okay to accept that reality and move on.
But also, there’s no way to make the league better through addition right now. There is no program out there that can do anything but match the middle of the pack and, as a result, damage Gonzaga.
And, frankly, protecting and keeping Gonzaga needs to be priority number one for the West Coast Conference.
The Zags wanted fewer conference games, so the league moved to a 16 game slate a few seasons back. Now you’re looking at 9 teams and guess what a true, double round robin is with 9 teams. It’s 16 games! Perfect.
What the league needs to do is not worry about realignment — besides worrying about keeping Gonzaga — but rather worry about what it can do to elevate the programs already here.
I’m talking about things like maintaining some kind of relationship with BYU. Get the top teams in the league to schedule the Cougars. One game against them would be better than two against Grand Canyon or Seattle. Work to establish a mid-season conference challenge with a quality league to get another good, non-conference game on the slate for everybody in January or February.
The league needs to keep doing what it has been doing and it will be just fine. The WCC’s been very smart about realignment, as I wrote in the first two parts of this story. There’s no reason to change that now, especially considering the best option on the table involves being smart and staying put.
