The Mountain West has 11 men’s basketball programs. It probably won’t have a 12th next season.

Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson confirmed to the Union-Tribune on Saturday what numerous coaches and administrators were saying privately this week at the Final Four in San Antonio: That Gonzaga likely will not leave the West Coast Conference after months of negotiations with the Mountain West.

“For next season, it doesn’t look promising,” Thompson said shortly before Loyola Chicago and Michigan tipped off in the first semifinal at the Alamodome. “I’d put it like this: Today is today, none of us can predict tomorrow.

“We’re going to continue to grow our league. We’ll keep improving ourselves and see what happens.”


Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth told the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash., that, while they were leaning toward remaining in the WCC, negotiations were still ongoing and there had been tentative plans for another meeting early next week.

“We collectively have not made a final commitment,” Roth said Saturday. “We have not told the WCC we’ve made a final decision.”

Earlier in the week, the WCC announced several significant scheduling changes to appease Gonzaga. Most notably, the regular-season schedule in the 10-school league will be reduced from a double round robin to 16 games, and the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds will receive double byes to the semifinals of the conference tournament.

That allows Gonzaga to play fewer of the WCC’s lower-rung teams that drag down its RPI and other computer metrics used to determine selection and seeding in the NCAA Tournament. Instead, the Zags – which have reached 20 straight NCAA Tournaments and played in the national championship game a year ago – have more flexibility to schedule tougher nonconference games to compensate.


Another issue was the distribution of NCAA Tournament monetary shares, the bulk of which Gonzaga was earning for the conference but were being split evenly among the membership. The WCC release mentioned an adjusted distribution of shares, which increase each round of the tournament and are accumulated for six years, but did not provide details.

One source said Gonzaga would receive roughly $1 million per year in back shares, and that it would keep a larger percentage of payouts the farther it advances in the tournament.

The Mountain West currently gives a $100,000 bonus to schools that reach the NCAA Tournament, and that is expected to double to $200,000 in future years. But the remainder is split equitably among the membership.

“You look at what the West Coast Conference did to accommodate them,” Thompson said. “Congratulations, that’s a good deal for them. There are just some things in there that I don’t think our membership would have accepted.


“They’re offering some things that probably don’t make sense for our league. Most conferences are adding games. They’re going to fewer games. We’ve increased our (NCAA Tournament) unit bonus, but what I’m hearing they’re doing, we’re not going to do that.”

In addition, Gonzaga is believed to receive a big chuck of the WCC’s TV contract with ESPN. Coming to the Mountain West would have meant more games on CBS Sports Network, which isn’t as widely available as ESPN and which Zags coach Mark Few privately told people concerned him.

“They’re much more favorable to ESPN,” Thompson said of Gonzaga. “They can carve out a portion of their own (TV) package. People in our conference are still questioning why Boise State has a carve-out in football (with ESPN), so I know that doesn’t fly.”

The one thing the WCC can’t offer Gonzaga, however, is higher-quality games in an era when power conferences are increasingly reluctant to schedule mid-majors in November and December.


The Mountain West ranked ninth nationally this season in RPI, and the WCC was 13th. But add Gonzaga to the Mountain West and its conference RPI would have climbed to eighth. Subtract Gonzaga from the WCC, and it falls to 15th, below the Western Athletic Conference. Four WCC teams finished with individual RPIs of 250 or worse (out of 351 Division I schools).

“Bigger stage, brighter lights, it’s always going to be there,” Thompson said of the Mountain West. “The best thing we can do is to compete against them when we play them and show them who we are, and continue to grow our league. We’ll see where we are down the road.”


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mark.zeigler@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutzeigler