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Grand Canyon University will join the Mountain West in 2026, and potentially as early as “the second quarter of 2025,” the school announced Friday. GCU is set to be the first for-profit school competing at the FBS level.
GCU converted from a nonprofit to for-profit university when it was sold in 2004, but it has worked to regain nonprofit status ever since. The school is recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit by the IRS, the same classification as other universities, but it has not been able to convince the U.S. Department of Education to classify it as a nonprofit.
In October 2023, the Department of Education fined the school $37.7 million for misleading students about the costs of its graduate programs. The FTC filed a similar complaint three months later, also alleging illegal telemarketing practices. GCU also faces a class-action suit filed in June by doctoral students alleging that Grand Canyon Education (the company that provides marketing services for GCU) conducted a racketeering scheme. The university said the claims are “without merit.”
Of GCU’s recent legal issues, Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said in a statement to Front Office Sports: “All potential member institutions are vetted. We are confident that GCU, like our other recent additions, aligns with the MW mission and values, and we look forward to the positive contributions they will all make to the league upon joining.”
The move is the latest in a seismic wave of realignment in September that has left multiple FBS conferences looking for new members.
GCU, which currently competes in the Western Athletic Conference for most sports, accepted an invitation in May to join the West Coast Conference beginning in 2025. But the Antelopes have reneged on that offer in favor of an FBS league. Gonzaga also announced it would join the Pac-12 in 2026—a decision that undoubtedly impacted Grand Canyon’s calculus.
“The WCC views GCU’s decision as a missed opportunity to be part of one of the premier conferences in men’s basketball,” commissioner Stu Jackson said in a statement on Friday. “The WCC is a perennial multi-bid league with a rich history that includes multiple national champions, six Final Four appearances and countless deep runs in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.”
For the Mountain West, the addition of Grand Canyon was likely a move to beef up the conference’s men’s basketball slate—the Antelopes have earned three NCAA tournament berths since 2021. “GCU is set to join an elite trio of non-football universities playing in FBS conferences, college athletics’ upper echelon of notoriety and competitiveness,” the school said in its announcement. It counts Wichita State in the AAC and Gonzaga (soon to be in the Pac-12) as the other two.
In a statement, Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez also noted the conference was interested in expanding its “footprint” to the greater Phoenix area for the first time.
The Mountain West has now added three new schools after the Pac-12 poached Utah State, San Diego State, Fresno State, Colorado State, and Boise State. The Mountain West has already satisfied the NCAA’s requirement of having eight full football-playing members to maintain FBS status. Now, with the addition of GCU, the conference is slated to have nine full members in 2026: GCU, Air Force, New Mexico, Nevada, San Jose State, UNLV, Wyoming, Hawai’i, and UTEP. The Pac-12 still needs one more football-playing member.
Up to this point, the Mountain West and Pac-12 have been at the center of this most recent round of realignment, and are even involved in a lawsuit (the Pac-12 is suing the Mountain West to get out of poaching fees laid out in a football scheduling partnership agreement). But now, the West Coast Conference, which lost its most successful member in Gonzaga and the prospect of another men’s powerhouse in GCU, has been dragged into the fray.
