Gonzaga played a men’s basketball game at Viejas Arena for the first time this season. It might not be the last.

Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson on Wednesday told the Union-Tribune he has held discussions with Gonzaga about leaving the West Coast Conference for the Mountain West, perhaps as early as next season.

“Since August,” Thompson said, “I have spoken to six university presidents and/or athletic directors that have called inquiring about whether we are going to expand, and the Zags are one of them.

“I guess the adjective I’d use is exploratory. Truthfully, what we’re trying to do here is better ourselves and we’re trying to understand what are your goals and ambitions, and what are the Mountain West’s goals and ambitions. Is there something there? … But obviously, they would enhance our basketball enterprise.”


Gonzaga might not be alone, either. Thompson said BYU was not among the other schools that have contacted him about expansion, but several sources indicated that BYU — which went independent in football in 2011 and plays in the WCC in most other sports — would consider a return to the Mountain West at least in basketball if Gonzaga joins.

The issue is expected to be a topic when WCC athletic directors and presidents gather at the conference basketball tournament later this week in Las Vegas.

“This is not a new thing,” Gonzaga Athletic Director Mike Roth told reporters in Spokane about conference realignment. “This is something that, as an athletic director, is my job to do — to make sure I’m paying attention, to see what’s going on out there.”

It is an open secret that Gonzaga has become increasingly frustrated in the WCC, in a sense subsidizing the rest of the conference with financial shares from its 19 straight trips to the NCAA Tournament (last year’s trip to the Final Four fetched $8.55 million). It is the WCC’s largest source of revenue and typically is split evenly among conference members, meaning bottom-feeders get the same cut as the team that earns them.


That works if there’s a constant churn of different schools reaching the NCAA Tournament, as there are in power conferences. But that hasn’t happened in the WCC outside Saint Mary’s and BYU.

Take this season. Gonzaga is 27-4 and ranked No. 7, but its RPI is only 30th – dragged down by a league loaded with teams in the mid-100s and 200s. Saint Mary’s is 38th and BYU 86th. After that, it drops off to USD at 144th. Four teams are 248th or worse.

The question now becomes whether Roth is merely rattling his saber to cut a better financial deal within the WCC, or whether he’s serious about leaving and forming a West Coast version of the Big East, filled with big arenas and big basketball budgets.

Gonzaga has been linked several times with the Big East, although travel logistics almost certainly preclude that.


“The Mountain West by its very name is in the West,” Roth said. “Geographically, yeah, there are things that make that different than a discussion with a conference that isn’t here.”

Asked whether playing in a conference with more high-level teams is attractive, Roth said: “That’s without a doubt. I don’t think anybody questions that. If travel and geography weren’t an issue, then that would open up all kinds of possibilities for a school like Gonzaga that has such a high basketball profile. Unfortunately, that mode of transportation isn’t quite there yet. We’ll have to get Star Trek to work on that.”

But it’s not just Roth. Several sources said Bulldogs coach Mark Few is involved in the Mountain West discussions and intrigued by the possibility, particularly if BYU follows. Adding those two schools, and assuming San Diego State, UNLV and New Mexico can return to their past levels, could elevate the Mountain West to the premier basketball conference in the western third of the country — at least on par if not ahead of the Pac-12.

“Our league needs to really step back and take notice,” Few told the Spokane Spokesman-Review in 2016. “It’s time for some of these other institutions to start picking it up. They’re really dragging the top three down.”


It wasn’t long ago that the Mountain West put five teams in the NCAA Tournament and was the nation’s No. 1 conference according to RPI. It has been a one-bid league for the past two seasons as SDSU, UNLV and New Mexico have uncharacteristically slipped.

But as mid-major programs have had a harder time scheduling high-level nonconference games and have accordingly received fewer and fewer NCAA at-large berths, there has been a trend nationally for basketball powers that don’t play football to seek a stronger league. Butler, Creighton and Xavier left their conferences for the Big East in 2013, and Wichita State left the Missouri Valley this season for the American Athletic Conference even though the other members play football and the Shockers don’t.

The realignment talk also makes sense from the real driver of collegiate sports: television. The Mountain West’s TV rights contract with CBS and ESPN expires after the 2019-20 season. So does BYU’s deal with ESPN to air its home football games. And ESPN is the primary rights holder for the WCC.

Putting them in the same conference, then, would create more attractive matchups under a single umbrella.


Thompson indicated the WCC is aware of his discussions with Gonzaga but noted they’d have to quickly escalate them for it to happen by next season. The Mountain West usually has its conference schedule completed by early July.

Would landing Gonzaga require a separate slice of TV rights fees, like Boise State gets in football?

“That’s one of the details,” Thompson said. “That’s one of the issues that’s been talked around but not through.”


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mark.zeigler@sduniontribune.com