Conference Realignment Talk

[TideEngineer08]

Word around here is the Big 12 is talking to Gonzaga about taking them in basketball only.

I had heard this bandied about back in the summer. It will be a blow to the West Coast Conference in basketball, which will be losing BYU as well.

 

[Bodhisattva]

Word around here is the Big 12 is talking to Gonzaga about taking them in basketball only.

That's a nice pull for the Big 12.

 

[wishbonesooner]

Having Kansas and Gonzaga would be good, except no one gives a flip about basketball. All this realignment talk is about football.

 

[KrAzY3]

Word around here is the Big 12 is talking to Gonzaga about taking them in basketball only.

There are two interesting things about that.

One is that this signals a Big 12 intention to move further west and they said as much. They want to be in that time zone, and it seems unlikely they just want Gonzaga by themselves.

The other is that I felt like a basketball super-conference could emerge in all of this, especially since there's a few schools that don't have much of a football program to speak of but have an elite basketball program (and basketball brings in more revenue than some realize). The thing is I always thought this would be a difference conference, to potentially pick up the Wake Forests of the world.

The expanded playoffs were a bit of a lifeline to the Pac-12, as the promise of an easy and undeserved trip to the playoff seemingly was enough to keep things together. But, the Big 12 is about to get overpaid on their TV deal (somehow making more than when they had Texas and Oklahoma) and I guess that's a bit of a deliberate lifeline to insure the longevity of the conference. That coupled with adding Gonzaga means they (and their TV partners) might still be looking at picking up the Pac-12 schools they were looking at.