Gonzaga Basketball: Impact of a Potential Move to the Big 12

Impact on the WCC

With BYU already on the way to the Big 12, the WCC might need to bolster its membership. If Gonzaga also exits, the league will be virtually unrecognizable. Saint Mary’s has always been a fantastic program and there have been recent resurgences for teams like San Francisco, but Gonzaga is clearly indescribably important to this conference.

It’s likely that the brass of the WCC has been preparing for post-Gonzaga scenarios, and it’s almost guaranteed that the conference would need to add a few schools. They could very easily raid conferences like the Big Sky, Big West, or WCC, with teams like Grand Canyon and Seattle standing out. Obviously, there isn’t a program that can come anywhere close to matching Gonzaga out there, but Gonzaga wasn’t like this when they joined this league all those decades ago. There’s no guarantee of what could happen in the future, but you never know who could be the next program on the rise.

That’s part of the struggle for the WCC. They really need to nail the future after Gonzaga, or they might risk losing Saint Mary’s and their other successful programs in the near future as well. There are absolutely a few new schools that could come in and be successful in the WCC, but the conference will never be the same. Gonzaga has been a story that will likely never be repeated in college athletics. Gonzaga’s do not grow on trees and the WCC’s profile as a whole will absolutely diminish without them, but it’s not necessarily the end of the world.