Dan Dickau, Adam Morrison discuss Gonzaga potential joining the Big 12
Former Gonzaga All-Americans Dan Dickau and Adam Morrison react to the latest Gonzaga to the Big 12 rumors
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Last kind of big picture topic
00:09 that's been talked about over and over
00:11 because we live on the West Coast,
00:13 the Pac-12 is no longer.
00:15 You got like 10 months left before USC, UCLA,
00:18 Oregon, Oregon and Washington are big 10
00:22 and you obviously got the schools going to the big 12.
00:24 But I wanna give you my take
00:27 and then you can give your take
00:28 and I'm sure this is gonna be a topic
00:29 that we chat about throughout the year
00:31 just 'cause it's in the news constantly.
00:33 It came out just today,
00:35 Gonzaga's flirting again with the big 12.
00:37 We thought that was dead six weeks ago.
00:39 - So did I.
00:40 - Yeah, I mean, I personally love the WCC.
00:43 I think it's done everything that it needs to do
00:45 to get Gonzaga ready for an NCAA tournament
00:48 because Gonzaga's schedule's so difficult
00:51 in the non-conference.
00:52 - Yeah.
00:53 - Maybe they ease their way at times
00:55 into the NCAA tournament,
00:56 but Coach Few's gotten creative,
00:58 the league's gotten better
00:59 and he's gotten creative in regards to scheduling Kentucky
01:01 late in February this year.
01:03 So there's ways around peaking
01:05 that Coach Few's done a good job.
01:07 I think the league's gotten better,
01:09 but in a perfect world,
01:10 I would love to see the Big East expand
01:14 'cause the Big East has always been a basketball-centric
01:16 league.
01:18 If the Big East could figure out a way
01:20 to get a WCC kind of centric section on the West Coast,
01:25 Gonzaga, I'm throwing out USF,
01:27 maybe a Seattle U 'cause it's a market.
01:29 - Denver.
01:30 - Grand Canyon, Denver.
01:31 Then you have your Midwest with St. Louis, Marquette,
01:34 Creighton, who are all really good.
01:36 Then you got your East Powers, traditionally,
01:38 Georgetown, UConn, St. John's, Providence.
01:42 You could start challenging and rivaling
01:45 being considered a Power Five conference.
01:47 - Yeah.
01:48 - I think that would be the ultimate.
01:49 It's gonna take somebody with a lot of creative juices
01:53 and a lot of guts behind it to pull it off.
01:56 But for this time, I think the WCC is still good.
01:59 And I don't know, as good as the Big 12 is,
02:02 that's a difficult task.
02:03 - Yeah, I think it's multi-layered,
02:06 you know, the positives and the negatives
02:08 of potentially going to the Big 12.
02:11 Obviously, television exposure is gonna be better.
02:15 We have a great brand.
02:16 We're on television.
02:17 There's a WCC network.
02:18 That's not a great television network, no offense,
02:20 but it's just not.
02:22 But we are on national television enough.
02:25 But if you're in the Big 12,
02:26 you're gonna get that national exposure, obviously.
02:29 Will fans be happy?
02:31 And when I say this, it has to be taken the right way.
02:35 But if there's a year that we go 22 and eight,
02:38 because the Big 12 is really hard.
02:40 - Yeah.
02:41 - And that's just the truth.
02:42 - No, you're 100% right.
02:43 - Doesn't mean we can't compete and all those things.
02:46 It's just such a difficult time
02:49 to be in like the West Coast Conference.
02:51 I think you're 100% right.
02:53 They've done an excellent job of kind of
02:56 adhering to our wants and needs.
03:00 Remember, we were flirting with the Mountain West
03:01 a few years ago,
03:02 and we kind of were thrown out the ace in the hole,
03:04 and they kind of had to change the units
03:06 when they measured out at the end of the year
03:10 for the payments for the NCAA tournament.
03:11 They changed that,
03:12 and then they went back to two games instead of three
03:14 for the West Coast Conference,
03:15 'cause Phoebes like that first game doesn't help us.
03:17 We have nothing to lose.
03:19 So they gave us some of the stuff that we complained about.
03:22 But in all reality,
03:24 the upside money-wise is just not compared to the Big 12
03:31 with the WCC.
03:34 And I know everybody's like,
03:35 "Well, it's not all about money."
03:36 It is.
03:37 It's all about money
03:38 as far as floating your athletic departments.
03:40 If you have national brands that create the buzz that we do
03:44 that is non-football, you have to capitalize on it.
03:48 So I'm curious to see how that looks.
03:51 - I think the WCC is great.
03:52 It's a great travel schedule for me personally.
03:54 I think the schools are fantastic,
03:57 but it's just not like a power athletic conference.
04:00 Has it been better the last five, six, seven years?
04:03 The numbers will, it's not just us saying it.
04:05 The numbers will tell you.
04:06 We've had three teams in the NCAA tournament.
04:08 We've had multiple bid leagues.
04:09 So it's a good league,
04:11 but it's just top-heavy now with BYU leaving.
04:13 Even though BYU didn't win the league,
04:15 that is a huge market.
04:17 Salt Lake area, Denver market
04:19 is a huge market that left.
04:22 And so I'm just really curious to see how this plays out.
04:25 I'm for it now.
04:27 I wasn't earlier 'cause I don't wanna have a strain
04:31 on the program where there's a year where we go 20 and 10.
04:34 Knock on wood, that doesn't happen,
04:35 but the Big 12 is really good.
04:38 But we have to, whenever all this realignment happened,
04:42 we have to get into the right conference.
04:44 - Well, I think, you know,
04:46 Coach Few is going to be a sounding board
04:49 for Chris Standifird and vice versa
04:50 to make the right decision.
04:52 I mean, they made the right decision
04:53 not going to the Mountain West a few years back.
04:55 I think they're doing their due diligence.
04:58 At some point, because of all the changes that have happened,
05:02 a decision is gonna have to be made.
05:04 And it's gonna be a difficult one
05:05 and you're gonna find some really happy people
05:07 and you're gonna find some really unhappy people.
05:10 But I think that at the end of the day,
05:11 you just got, when a decision is made one way or the other,
05:14 you gotta embrace it and attack the next challenge 100%.
05:17 - Yeah, I totally agree.
05:18 I think, you know, you're not gonna please everybody.
05:20 Obviously that goes without saying,
05:23 but also you have to realize
05:25 if you're on the outside looking in,
05:28 it's not gonna be very much fun.
05:30 You know, in three to five years
05:32 for a lot of these universities,
05:33 when, you know, these conferences start to get bigger
05:36 and more powerful.
05:37 Without football, you have to,
05:40 if somebody's inviting you in,
05:41 you gotta kind of take the invitation.
05:43 So that's just my opinion.
05:45 It may not be the right one,
05:47 but athletic departments run on money, man.
05:50 It's as simple as that.
05:52 And you have to float the other sports.
05:53 That's not a knock on the other sports.
05:55 Title IX's there for a reason.
05:57 But if you can't pay for all of it, then they go away.
06:01 So it boils down to that.
06:04 - Yeah, well, it's been fascinating to watch
06:08 and some of these were slow in the making
06:10 and some of them were overnight.
06:11 - Just overnight.
06:12 - Yeah, and I think it's gonna be a topic
06:14 we'll talk about throughout the year.
06:16 (upbeat music)
06:18 (upbeat music)