Gonzaga set to join the reformed Pac-12

W ell... it finally happened.

After years of speculation, Gonzaga athletics has decided to take the leap from the West Coast Conference to a bigger conference. In July 2026, the Bulldogs will join the remodeled Pac-12 Conference in all sports. Considering the crazy collegiate athletics conference realignment across the country has been pretty much entirely football-driven, bringing in GU signals the redux conference's clear desire to make a splash in college basketball.

The move to bring in Gonzaga is the latest puzzle piece to the Pac-12's quickly developing reformation plan. After everyone but Washington State and Oregon State bolted the Pac-12 for supposedly greener gridiron pastures, the remaining two universities have done a pretty good job of picking up the pieces. In September, the Pac-12 poached five Mountain West schools to help solidify the conference's football future: Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State, Fresno State and Utah State.

There are sure to be more schools joining the Pac-12 in the not too distant future, as the conference needs one more football school (8 total) to be recognized as a football conference per NCAA rules, and must have 12 football-playing teams in order to play a conference championship game. (Which also means, after Gonzaga's addition, that the Pac-12 will almost certainly have more than 12 teams. While that is, of course, extremely dumb linguistics, the Big 10 conference currently has 18 teams. Nothing really matters.)

For Gonzaga, the move to the Pac-12 carries more national prestige than sticking around the West Coast Conference. For decades, the perception that the WCC was a joke as a basketball conference hung like a rain cloud over casuals' conversations about Zags hoops. While these conversations were mostly overblown, bad-faith arguments — the WCC has been a Top 10 basketball conference by metrics like RPI for years, often above the more-heralded Mountain West and some years ranked above the Pac-12 and Big East — it's clear that GU didn't love being viewed in that lens (though if anyone think people will suddenly stop nitpicking Gonzaga's conference foes in the Pac-12, then you have never heard the rest of the country talk about Pac-12 football).

While there's surely some financial incentive for GU to make the switch to a bigger conference, there's also some inherent risk in the move. Moving from the WCC — a conference where GU sort of got to run the show while still having a national TV contract for basketball — to a conference where the focus will be on football could end up putting Gonzaga somewhat on the back-burner. There's a difference between being the school with the team that's the crown jewel of the conference to a school where you don't even play the conference's main sport.

There's also the not-to-be-spoken factor of Gonzaga's men's team essentially having a free pass to the NCAA Tournament every year because their program talent and resources dwarfed other WCC schools. Even in Gonzaga's down years, the WCC schedule allowed the team to find its groove in a way that showdowns against San Diego State, WSU, Boise State, might not afford. Basically, joining the WCC lessens the Zags hoops' margin for in-season error without greatly improving their title chances (remember: the team still got 1-seeds, landed 5-star prospects and made National Title Games while playing in the WCC).

All that said, there's plenty of reasons to be excited about the Pac-12 move too. Locking in a nearby rivalry with Wazzu across all sports should be a blast. Gonzaga and San Diego State turned out some classic games when the teams met in men's hoops in 2010 and 2017. A GU coaching tilt will be in the rotation, as former Mark Few assistant Leon Rice has built a nationally relevant basketball program at Boise State.

There's still a ton to shake out with the Pac-12's future, but Gonzaga is now entrenched as part of that rebuild.