Gonzaga’s 27-year stranglehold on the West Coast Conference is ending with its move to the Pac-12, but the reaction from rival schools is bittersweet grief, not joy, because the Bulldogs’ dynasty funded their entire league.
In the early 1990s, within the walls of Gonzaga’s basketball offices, a belief was forged: the Bulldogs had the worst job in the West Coast Conference. Coach Dan Fitzgerald laid it out for assistants Dan Monson and Mark Few. Recruiting to remote Spokane? Nearly impossible against rivals in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The weather? Freezing. The tradition? Virtually nonexistent beyond alumnus John Stockton.
That notion is now a sacred text of college basketball absurdity.
Under Few, Gonzaga authored perhaps the most dominant conference run in the sport’s history. The Bulldogs are in their 27th consecutive NCAA Tournament—a streak behind only Kansas and Michigan State—and won their 17th straight first-round game. They’ve played for two national championships and gone a staggering 56-6 in the WCC tournament over 27 years.
Such supremacy created a strange, pervasive dependency. Gonzaga became the WCC’s entire basketball identity. Commissioner Stu Jackson, who has coached in college and the NBA, calls it “a journey unlike any college program in the country.” The league’s biggest brand was a tiny, Jesuit university from eastern Washington.
The Financial Dynasty
The dominance translated directly into revenue. Each NCAA Tournament win earns a “unit,” a share of the massive March Madness payout that goes to the team’s conference. Gonzaga’s 47 March Madness wins generated a windfall.
An analysis by The Associated Press in 2018 estimated Gonzaga had produced more than $51 million for the WCC since 1999. When the Mountain West courted Gonzaga in 2018, the WCC changed its revenue-sharing rules to reward deep tournament runs—a change designed to keep its star happy, but which in practice funneled almost all the extra money back to Gonzaga itself.
“The amount of money and recognition that Gonzaga brought that league is uncharted, unmatched,” said Monson, who left in 1999 to coach at Minnesota, moments after leading Gonzaga to the Elite Eight. He believed at the time that WCC success was fleeting.
The Bitter Sweetness of Departure
So when Gonzaga announced its move to the reconstituted Pac-12, one might expect a party from WCC administrators and coaches starved for their own NCAA bids. Think again.
“Being a competitor, no, I’m not happy they’re leaving,” said Gyno Pomare, a star at San Diego from 2005-09 whose 2008 team, coached by Bill Grier, is one of just two non-Gonzaga/ Saint Mary’s WCC teams to reach the NCAA Tournament since 1998.
The reason is a tangled web of pragmatism and loss. On one hand, the competitive ceiling instantly drops for everyone. For a generation, players like Pomare knew the reality: “one of those [NCAA Tournament] bids are going to go to Gonzaga… the only other way to get there is winning the tournament.” Since 1998, Gonzaga won the WCC tournament 22 times; Saint Mary’s won it four times. Everyone else was fighting for second.
“We had some excellent coaches in that league… and it was a fight for second place,” said Phil Matthews, who led San Francisco to its 1998 tournament berth.
On the other hand, that very dominance was a financial lifeline. The regular season games against a top-10 Gonzaga provided marquee matchups that bolstered the entire conference’s strength of schedule—a key metric for the NCAA Tournament selection committee. The annual guarantee of deep NCAA runs and the associated “units” funded conference-wide budgets.
The Path Forward: Opportunity Amidst the Void
Jackson acknowledged the sadness. “Every member in the conference, both financially and from a brand standpoint… has benefited,” he said. The league’s tournament was often a foregone conclusion, but the Zags’ national presence was a credential.
Now, that credential vanishes. The Pac-12’s revival will be buoyed by Gonzaga’s brand; the WCC must rebuild its own.
The opportunity, Jackson stressed, is real. “Now comes opportunity,” he said. “And I have gotten a sense… that schools are trying to position themselves to take advantage of that opportunity.”
The proof is in infrastructure. Pepperdine is building an on-campus arena. San Francisco and San Diego have each built new practice facilities. Loyola Marymount has renovated its longtime arena. These are not reactions to Gonzaga’s departure; they are part of a years-long arms race to capture the vacuum.
Jackson believes the WCC can still be a multi-bid league. “There’s some good signs with having new members coupled with the increased level of investment commitment,” he said. The conference added Seattle University and others recently, aiming to bolster depth.
For coaches, the emotion is simpler. Monson’s phone used to ring constantly with one question: “How can we be the next Gonzaga?” Now, the question is unasked. The blueprint is gone, and with it, the most压迫ing competitor any of them ever knew.
“For coaches, they had to be ecstatic — because the opportunity to go to the tournament was just never there,” Monson said. The playing field, for the first time in three decades, is theoretically level. The celebration, however, is tempered by the haunting silence of a departed giant whose shadow paid the bills.
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