Dave Rose talks Gonzaga and WCC/MWC, and starts some nice offseason gossip

BYUtv Sports did a nice long interview with BYU Cougars head coach Dave Rose. That in itself is not news. What is news, especially in this offseason where merely mentioning Gonzaga is front page news, are a few of the tidbits that came out of the long interview.

Luckily, Jarom Jordan highlighted a bunch of what we are going to talk about here, much of it related to the Mountain West Conference talks with Gonzaga and how the WCC reacted.

For a while there, it seemed like the momentum was building for Gonzaga to make the leap to the MWC. Then suddenly, the WCC came out with a bunch of scheduling changes, and some behind the scene changes as well. It looks like those behind the scene changes were money, and as it turns out, money talks louder than most.

Again, this is pure speculation on everyone’s part, but it makes sense as well. The Zags were primed to lose nearly $7 million in back pay on NCAA Tournament appearances if they left, and the WCC also changed how the NCAA Tournament distributions were doled out.

The WCC approved measures allowing teams that advance deeper in the NCAA Tournament to keep a larger portion of the revenue. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Gonzaga also will receive $1 million per year in NCAA Tournament back shares.

The NCAA recommends that conferences distribute NCAA money shares evenly throughout the conferences. For most conferences, this works out quite well. The WCC does not need to disclose this information because it is a private school, but investigations by Bloomberg, among others, revealed it was not an even split, especially considering how much money Gonzaga brings in.

According to Bloomberg, from 1991-2015, Gonzaga was responsible for nearly half of the NCAA Tournament units earned, roughly $34 million, but only received $6.82 million back. Considering the Zags have made three deep runs since 2015, you have to imagine that split only got greater.

The other interesting tidbit comes where Rose points out that most teams wanted to keep Gonzaga in the WCC. The key point is most.

Care to take a guess who didn’t want Gonzaga to stick around? I can think of one person...