Talks between the Big 12 Conference and Gonzaga have reportedly resumed
According to multiple reports Monday morning, the Big 12 Conference and Gonzaga have resumed talks regarding the Bulldogs potentially joining the conference as early as next year (2024-25).
Seth Davis — the college basketball reporter for CBS Sports and senior writer for The Messenger who first broke the news — has said Gonzaga would join the Big 12 in all sports (the Bulldogs haven’t had a football program since 1941). But Action Network’s Brett McMurphy later reported that Gonzaga would only join in men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, women’s soccer, volleyball and men’s and women’s tennis.
As of right now, Gonzaga would be the only further addition to the conference, as talks with UConn and the Big 12 have not continued, per Davis. The conference is also not interested in adding Washington State or Oregon State, the final Pac-12 schools without a new home, sources told McMurphy.
Related
The addition of Gonzaga to the Big 12 has been pushed by conference commissioner Brett Yormark, whose interest in the move reportedly caught much of the conference’s membership by surprise, Davis said. The conference just added four Pac-12 schools in Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
“Right now, we’re done,” Yormark said in August, following the addition of the four Pac-12 schools. “We had a strategy and effectively we’ve been able to execute it. Initially, I wasn’t sure if we’d grow to 14 or 16 (schools). I think 16 was kind of a dream scenario.”
A decision on whether to add Gonzaga could come quickly, within two weeks even, McMurphy reported.
McMurphy also reported that an important negotiating point at this juncture is whether Gonzaga would be willing to accept less revenue during its first few years in the Big 12 — similar to what SMU did in order to join the ACC. The Bulldogs would eventually receive full basketball revenue shares, McMurphy reported.
Sources told Davis and The Messenger that Yormark would like Gonzaga to join the Big 12 for the 2024-25 season, but that “that timetable would be a best-case scenario.”
