The Pac-12 lost the nar­ra­tive last week after its attempt to add Mem­phis, South Flori­da and Tulane from the Amer­i­can Ath­let­ic Con­fer­ence was rebuffed in extreme­ly pub­lic fashion.

The optics turned for the worse two days lat­er, when UNLV decid­ed to remain in the Moun­tain West — a move that looked bad at the time and appears even worse now.

But the news Tues­day of Gonzaga’s loom­ing arrival — the Zags will begin com­pe­ti­tion in 2026–27 — dra­mat­i­cal­ly changes the per­cep­tion of the recon­sti­tut­ed Pac-12.

Dur­ing an era in which con­fer­ence strength is based on the val­ue of its brands, the Pac-12 land­ed the biggest bas­ket­ball brand avail­able dur­ing its cur­rent expan­sion phase.

Our thoughts on the news:

— The Zags instant­ly make the con­fer­ence more attrac­tive to poten­tial media part­ners and to oth­er schools — those that play both foot­ball and bas­ket­ball, and those that don’t.

With Gon­za­ga and San Diego State, which reached the NCAA cham­pi­onship two sea­sons ago, the Pac-12 has tent­pole bas­ket­ball pro­grams that could, accord­ing to an indus­try source, lead to sched­ul­ing part­ner­ships with the Big 12 or ACC.

Also pos­si­ble, the source said: An arrange­ment with Con­necti­cut to become a foot­ball-play­ing mem­ber that sched­ules bas­ket­ball games for its pow­er­house teams each year in Pac-12 arenas.

— This isn’t the first time Gon­za­ga has appeared on the Pac-12’s expan­sion radar.

In the sum­mer of 2022, after USC and UCLA announced they were join­ing the Big Ten, the Pac-12’s strate­gic advis­ers sug­gest­ed the con­fer­ence imme­di­ate­ly add Gon­za­ga and San Diego State, accord­ing to a source.

In tan­dem, the moves would cre­ate sta­bil­i­ty, help off­set the loss of UCLA’s bas­ket­ball pro­gram and pro­vide a con­tin­ued pres­ence in the greater South­ern Cal­i­for­nia region.

The con­fer­ence would then take its reformed struc­ture to the mar­ket to iden­ti­fy the frame­work for a media rights deal, then dan­gle that deal in front of a select num­ber of Big 12 schools.

But the conference’s pres­i­dents and ath­let­ic direc­tors reject­ed the idea for a vari­ety of rea­sons, the source said.

— The finan­cial details of Gonzaga’s move into the Pac-12 have not been dis­closed, but we’re curi­ous about the rev­enue share head­ed to Spokane.

In the media rights world, foot­ball typ­i­cal­ly accounts for 80 cents of every dol­lar spent by the net­works on programming.

As an exam­ple, let’s assume the recon­sti­tut­ed Pac-12 could sign a media rights deal that spins off $10 mil­lion per cam­pus annu­al­ly. The 20 per­cent rule sug­gests each school’s bas­ket­ball pro­gram would car­ry a val­u­a­tion of rough­ly $2 million.

But Gonzaga’s antic­i­pat­ed rev­enue from NCAA Tour­na­ment units, com­bined with the audi­ence it gen­er­ates on TV — against Pow­er Five oppo­nents over a five-sea­son span (2018–23), the Zags aver­aged 900,000 view­ers, accord­ing to data pro­vid­ed to the Hot­line by a media indus­try source — push­es the school’s val­ue far beyond $2 million.

Will the Zags receive a full share? Could they get an equal split of all rev­enue except what the Pac-12 gen­er­ates from the Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off? Those details will be fascinating.

— On the day Gon­za­ga joined the Pac-12, the Moun­tain West added UTEP from Con­fer­ence USA, a con­trast that one source said point­ed to the dis­parate sit­u­a­tion between the two leagues.

The for­mer is attempt­ing to focus on qual­i­ty; the lat­ter, on survival.

— Where does the West Coast Con­fer­ence turn to replace its top bas­ket­ball program?

Inward, poten­tial­ly.

The addi­tion of Grand Canyon in the sum­mer of 2025 — the move was announced ear­li­er this year — was based, in part, on the pre­sumed need to even­tu­al­ly replace Gonzaga.

The Lopes reached the sec­ond round of the NCAAs and have the resources to become a tent­pole pro­gram for the WCC.

— Gon­za­ga has attempt­ed to gain entry into the Big 12 in recent years.

With that option blocked, the Pac-12 made the most sense for the school’s long-haul aspirations.

Put anoth­er way: The Pac-12 pro­vides the best avail­able path for Gon­za­ga into the pow­er con­fer­ences in the 2030s.

It’s not an audi­tion, per se. The Zags have no need to prove their com­pet­i­tive val­ue to any­one. Instead, it’s a jump to a larg­er plat­form with greater resources that could posi­tion the school for the next step.

— The Pac-12 isn’t the only con­fer­ence plac­ing a pre­mi­um on basketball.

The move echoes the strat­e­gy deployed by Big 12 com­mis­sion­er Brett Yor­mark, who believes col­lege bas­ket­ball is  under­val­ued in the media ecosys­tem and has pur­sued not only the Zags but Con­necti­cut in recent years.

In Yormark’s vision, qual­i­ty bas­ket­ball even­tu­al­ly will fill the pro­gram­ming ton­nage needs of media com­pa­nies, espe­cial­ly streamers.

— With Wash­ing­ton State and Ore­gon State, plus the five schools from the Moun­tain West and Gon­za­ga, the Pac-12 has enough sta­bil­i­ty to take its media rights to mar­ket and gauge inter­est from net­works and stream­ers alike for the con­tract cycle begin­ning in the sum­mer of 2026.

On this mat­ter, it’s worth not­ing that ESPN and Gon­za­ga have had a long, mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial history.

“I would think ESPN would be inter­est­ed in the Pac-12 if Gonzaga’s part of the pack­age,” a source said.

— Gon­za­ga will be con­sid­ered a par­tial mem­ber of the Pac-12 under NCAA rules because it does not spon­sor foot­ball, leav­ing the con­fer­ence in need of an eighth full-time mem­ber by the sum­mer of 2026.

Unless, of course, the NCAA stan­dards for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion change.

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