Report: Gonzaga is ‘expected to be a Pac-12 target’ for men’s basketball

Pac-12 is expected to want a strong basketball league featuring Gonzaga and San Diego State

Despite football being the priority, the new look Pac-12 isn’t making basketball an afterthought as the league considers its options from coast to coast.

According to a report from Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, Gonzaga is ‘expected to be a Pac-12 target,’ along with Memphis out of the American Athletic Conference, to create a formidable league in hoops that also includes 2023 national runner-up San Diego State.

The Pac-12 needs to add at least two more football schools by July 1, 2026 to be considered an FBS conference and meet College Football Playoff requirements. Memphis and Tulane are among the schools the conference is reportedly targeting, though no formal invitations have been made since Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State signed on for the 2026-27 season last week.

Per Dellenger, the Pac-12 is projecting a per-school distribution of $12-15 million annually if the league can acquire the top two AAC schools. Additionally, new members would have to sign a five-year grant-of-rights agreement through 2030-31.

It’s unclear how the Pac-12 would share its revenue with a non-football school if it did land Gonzaga, though the league’s plan does present a distribution model that includes a performance-based element to it. 

While most conferences opt to split NCAA Tournament units equally among its members, including those who didn’t make the tournament, the West Coast Conference rewards its most successful teams with a larger slice of the pie — an equal opportunity system that former Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth helped establish a few years ago when the Bulldogs were being courted by the Mountain West.

If the new Pac-12’s performance-based distribution model works in a similar fashion, then perhaps Gonzaga has a reason to at least consider what the school might benefit from if it decided to move to the Pac-12. The level of competition in January and February would certainly be a step-up, as the Bulldogs would have multiple games against the Aztecs, Tigers, Broncos and Rams to look forward to on the league calendar. Mark Few and company have scheduled aggressively in nonconference play to build Gonzaga’s postseason resume over the years; in a league featuring three to four bonafide tournament teams, there wouldn’t be as much pressure to load up with top 25 opponents in the first few weeks of the season (not saying Few and the staff wouldn’t do that anyway). 

On the other hand, the Bulldogs haven’t missed the postseason and have appeared in two national championship games in the Few-era as WCC members. The league also expanded to include Grand Canyon and Seattle U as full-time members starting in the 2025-26 campaign, a move Gonzaga athletic director Chris Standiford called “very stabilizing” for the conference amid so much uncertainty in college athletics.

Even if the Zags decide not to mess with happy, that might not stop the Pac-12 from at least inquiring about the school’s interest.

“I refuse to believe that there's just no way to make Gonzaga a compelling offer to join your conference as the premier men's basketball member without it being a net negative on the conference,” CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish said on a podcast earlier this week. “I would check that there has to be a way to make it work. I bet [Big 12 commissioner] Brett Yormark would believe there's a way to make it work. And if I were the Pac-12, I would be trying to figure out a way to make it work. And if I were Gonzaga, I would be interested in it, because I know that they have a nice setup at the WCC, but at some point you you should be using your success to better your place in the college athletics world.”