Long Beach State Athletics!: It's all about MBB

The "new" WCC doesn't have great programs, but they have some money to pay players (more than the CSU schools in the Big West) for men's hoops. In the Big West, at least half of the teams struggle to pay their players anything. In this new world, not having money to buy players means your team will struggle, maybe suck. Too many of those type teams drags down the RPI for the conference and limits the numbers who get into the NCAA's. The WCC has been getting 3, multiple times even during the Gonzaga and St. Mary's era. Once UCSD left for the WCC, the writing was on the wall. It was obvious UCSB, then UCI, will leave for the WCC. In fact, I think the WCC is staggering these announcements, so they don't look like they are decimating the Big West.

As long as the Big West stays alive, we'll have an automatic berth to the NCAA. But, with all these departures by the best performing MBB programs, the Big West will be the bottom of the barrel.

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I do not see why the WCC is able to poach all these teams. There were solid with BYU and Gonzaga aboard. Talk of Saint Mary's going to the new Pac 12 really makes that conference no better than the Big West.

If you play football and want to move up a level going to a football conference like the MWC makes sense but leaving the BW to move into the WCC without Gonzaga, BYU and Saint Marys does not look like an upgrade to me.

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That makes 7 if Cal Poly sticks around. They can't be happy about the UCSB move, so let's call it 50/50 that they stick around the Big West till 2031.

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Here are the current members, not counting those announced to leave:

Bakersfield
Sacramento (Possibly gone by 2032, joining the MWC in all sports)
Northridge
Long Beach
Fullerton
Riverside
Irvine (Most likely, next addition to the WCC)
Cal Baptist (Desires to get into the WCC)
Utah Valley (Move to the Summit league)

With projected moves because of the next round of media rights deals in 2031, the BWC may only have 6 members (LB, Northridge, Fullerton, Bakersfield, Riverside, and maybe Cal Baptist). You need 8 or 9 teams for a basketball conference. I would be surprised if there were any California based D2 schools who would move up by then. We may have to take Southern Utah and Utah Tech from the WAC just to stay alive, which assumes they would want to move.