SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - A new chapter in UC Santa Barbara was officially announced as campus leader and conference discussed the future move to the West Coast Conference. Set against a backdrop of shared values and rising ambition, it reflected a commitment to elevated competition, expanded visibility, and deeper connections across the West Coast. To view the full press conference, click here.

Opening Statements…

Chancellor Dennis Assanis: "Hey, good morning, Gauchos. What a day. A dream has come true. We're basically going back to our roots, commissioner. I want to thank everyone for joining us today for this very monumental occasion, that we'll actually cherish, I think, for a very long time, and I want to thank sincerely from my heart and I know I speak for my wife Eleni as well, all the student athletes, the coaches, the staff, obviously a great athletics director Kelly Barsky. We are obviously especially grateful to all of you who have come this morning to witness this moment. UC Santa Barbara is thrilled to become the 12th member of the West Coast Conference. That's a record number. I know you know that. At UC Santa Barbara, we're committed to excellence, and excellence is in everything we do. Excellence for our students, excellence for our student athletes, and our student-athletes are students first. I always say that. We believe it. We're one of the nation's premier public research universities. As a matter of fact, we were recently ranked the number one public university for our science and engineering impact. And number three across all national universities. Number seven in the world. Those are pretty big accolades. We have eight Nobel Prize winners. Two since Eleni and I have arrived on campus. We have a story that we have not shared with the world yet, and we want to share that story, and that's what this is all about. Being at the highest level, creating the best memories, the spirit, the pride for our Gaucho community, and I know athletics, under Kelly's leadership, are going to take us to the level we all aspire to be. I want to say that this move is part of a strategic vision that we have to elevate our athletics, our brand, our spirit, the experiences for all our students, for the fans, for the alumni, you know, everybody around the world who is a Gaucho. And so this will enhance our brand, identity, and community engagement. It would create all those experiences, and I keep saying, it is very important to share our story. Our story of excellence with people around the world. We have amazing students. We have world-class faculty members, terrific staff, and dedicated people. People need to hear about all that. And I know that being now part of the platform with so many media impressions on ESPN and CBS will help us get there. It's no accident that the people who are in charge of this. So, you know, we said yes, this is the moment to join the West Coast Conference, our student athletes can travel faster. They will not miss any more class time than they used to. A bus ride now will become a quick plane ride, and I hope the fans will be there cheering for us, as we have all these fantastic experiences. I think it's an important level for us to share our story with students in all these growing areas. We can reach many diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged students. We can provide them access to excellence, and that's why I want to be able to share our story with the national media. I do believe this is going to be a story of excellence in our education, in our research, in our discovery, in our community engagement, and obviously, this alignment of academics and athletics is all we're after. I want to thank our commissioner, Stu Jackson. He's a very good basketball player, in case you don't know. The president of University of the Pacific, Chris Callahan, who is the chair of the board of presidents for the West Coast Conference and all the presidents for the confidence and trust. We love being here. I feel that's where we belong, and we're going to take the conference to the next level. Thank you."

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "You said it all, very exciting. I want to thank Chancellor Assanis here for that introduction for your leadership and your vision. What a special moment for UCSB and UCSB Athletics. I wanna highlight for UCSB as you shared, there's a story to continue to tell, to grow, to expand, to share. We're excited to be ambassadors and part of sharing that wonderful campus story. Our success has always been defined by exceptional people, that's our student athletes, that's our coaches, our staff, our faculty, our alumni, our Santa Barbara community, the greater community of fans and supporters. I want to thank Stu Jackson, WCC commissioner. You'll hear from him soon. He's here with us today, as you may know, he's part of the men's basketball committee. We're inspired by what you do, what the WCC does, and are really excited and humbled to join. A mission alignment of academics and athletics competitiveness. We're thrilled to broaden our footprint from Seattle to San Diego and everywhere between. This is a really special conference with really great members. I hope that Gauchos will show up everywhere and travel. We look forward to sharing our story throughout the West Coast as well as national exposure."

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "Good morning to all of you. Thank you for those kind remarks about our conference, Chancellor Assanis and Kelly, you as well. When you enter a place like this today, you get a little bit of a sense of the energy and the excitement for what this day brings. But I will say this to you that today is an exciting day for the West Coast Conference as well. I'm honored to officially announce that UC Santa Barbara has accepted our invitation to join the WCC. This moment reflects a clear priority established by our president's council to thoughtfully add a 12th member by identifying a valued institution that aligns with the WCC's expansion vision. From the outset, our focus has been on the Western region and on universities that share what has always defined this conference, that is academic achievement, competitive success, and an unwavering commitment to the student-athlete experience and welfare. UC Santa Barbara embodies those values. UC Santa Barbara is nationally respected for its academic excellence and research profile, and it brings a strong tradition of athletic accomplishment and competitive ambition. Just as important, UCSB shares the WCC's belief that athletics should elevate the student-athletes supporting their health, well-being, and success in the classroom and beyond. I want to recognize the leadership that has made this achievement possible. Under Chancellor Assanis, the university has demonstrated a clear vision and sustained commitment to investing in athletics and expanding UCSB's national visibility. As he likes to say, athletics can be the front porch of a university. I want commend Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky. Her thoughtful strategic leadership, one grounded in elevating UCSB Athletics serve better student-athletes and the Santa Barbara community. For all these reasons, UC Santa Barbara is a perfect fit for the West Coast Conference. Their values align with ours. Their aspirations match our trajectory, their addition strengthens the WCC competitively, academically and geographically. We are thrilled welcome the Gauchos to the WCC and we look forward to building an exciting future together. We rise in the West."   
 

Quesion One: UC San Diego received a hefty sum of money to join the conference. Is it fair to say that UCSB is getting that same amount?

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "I'm really not privileged to disclose that. Certainly you will at some point have the ability to identify that yourself, but for today's purposes, I'm not at liberty to disclose."

Quesion Two: I know you've been on board at UCSB a relatively short period of time. Can you talk about how quickly you identified this as a potential destination for the Gauchos, what attracted you to the conference, and who began the conversation? How did that happen? Did they come to you or did you approach the WCC?

Chancellor Dennis Assanis: "We have been at places both, me and my wife Eleni where athletics is indeed the front porch of the university. When we arrived, the first event we had with students was at our Thunderdome. We basically said, look, we have everything here. It's brewing. It's ready to ignite. Let's give them the opportunity. Yes, that was an active objective from day one. Again, we believe it's such a catalyst for other wonderful things that can happen for the university, the ability to tell our story and share it with audiences nationally. I was looking very quickly, talking with our athletics director. How can we relay this story to other audiences and can we do it right now in the conference. Where we are, which we obviously value, but it does have some geographic limitation that doesn't quite fit the vision we had. We really want to expand and compete at the highest levels, and give others the opportunity to do that. We're attracted to the fact that the WCC gets multiple bids to get in the big dance. Those were factors, but as to how the dancing happens, we were not the ones who danced first. I know the WCC has expressed interest in Santa Barbara before, so the rest is history."

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "I would just add to that, Chancellor Assanis is correct. We first reached out to UC Santa Barbara well over a year ago with no success, and when the change in leadership happened we decided to take a shot again. We found an enthusiastic caller on the other end of the phone this time, certainly it's been a process to get to this day, but it's one that was done with like minds in terms of coming together as partner to this day."
 
Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "I can just add a few comments. I've always enjoyed talking with Stu and enjoyed talking with colleagues and partners at the West Coast Conference. I'll tell you they were engaging and happy to get together for any questions we had. Initially there was great excitement and there's a lot of work to be done along the way. The chancellor would ask questions. For those of you that know me know that brevity is not my strength, so I would provide lots of documents and lots of thought and lots of positions, but ultimately getting to the same place what a really special historic moment, to broaden the markets in which we can participate. We can go to the homes of Gauchos all over the West Coast to share our story as a campus, not just athletics, with the world and with the nation, and what a great partner to do it with in Stu and his staff and also all of the great institutions, the presidents, the athletic directors, staff, student athletes for the West Coast Conference programs."
 

Question Three: This is for the Chancellor or Kelly, talking about dreams moving to the next level winning. Can you give us an update on a swimming pool for the water polo teams, they're playing their home games at high school.

Chancellor Dennis Assanis: "Thank you for the question. Those who know me, both me and my wife, we're from Greece. We grew up swimming and we love swimming. We love water polo, Greece has amazing water polo teams in men's and women's. One of the things we identified immediately here is where's the swimming pool, and then we'll say, well, it's another story. That's on the radar screen and we'd like to raise the money. I hope those of you who are in the back are listening, so that we can upgrade swimming. By the way, that was part of our decision to join the WCC, the commitment to some of the sports that we feel are key to us. I'd love to say that with that addition would strengthen some of those sports."

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "I can probably add a little bit too. Sometimes when I hear we have no, pool, we absolutely are working on, as you said, the bigger vision to grow and to, to be able to provide additional pool space on campus a facility, an aquatics facility, but in the meantime, I think we've really grown. We've been committed to all 20 of our programs and all 20 of our programs thriving. We are committed to all of those programs I would say we do have space. I'm really incredibly thankful to our campus partners. We train on campus over a recreation, I wanna highlight that because it's a really great aquatic center. We work closely with community who, you have to shift around some times make some changes here. For our programs to be competing training at the highest level. We also hosted our first, home swim meet on campus this year at the recreation center  pool. We are working on continuing to grow. Make sure the training space is provided for our elite athletes to train. Make sure that, we're working on opportunities for some competition on campus then also. I'm thankful to all of our community partners, particularly Santa Barbara High, Dos Pueblos High School, that have opened up their facilities to us. We host amazing high performing elite water polo, both men's women's water polo games men's women's swimming meets. It's important. It's not just a narrative of you don't have, but what we do have the community that supported us it's really special."

Chancellor Dennis Assanis: "If I may add, we're really committed to the Olympic sports, you know, as much as we love men's and women's basketball, we are absolutely committed to swimming and track and field, tennis and many of the others. I mean, these are amazing opportunities for us. My point is it's all a question of balance. It's no accident that actually last year we're ranked the number one program in NCAA Division 1 across all sports for schools that don't have football."
 

Question Four: Speaking as part of the student experience, I know that the Blue-Green rivalry is pretty core to what brings a lot of students out to some of our soccer matches and a lot of our matches in general. Kelly and also Chancellor Assanis, do you have any plans to continue that rivalry.

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "Thanks for asking that. Yes, I sure hope. As you know, we'll have a one year transition period and we'll be working with lots of our partners, institutional partners, rivals, and peers. Absolutely we hope, we have to work with them closely. We already schedule in particular, for our soccer programs and non-conference game as well as conference, but across the board we certainly again love Cal Poly and many of our conference partners, we'll look to host those, we'll have to talk with them, but we will look to host those rivalries for sure and the Blue-Green rivalry being something exceptionally special as we know both here on our campus and on their campus."

Question Five: Chancellor or Kelly, could you expand on the opportunities to increase revenues for sports across the board going forward because obviously we're gonna need more revenue, I want to know what your vision is on this.    

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "I think the reality is we're living in an environment an NCAA landscape really a campus landscape for all of us that you continue to look at how do you generate increased revenue what is the budget going to be going forward. We've just done some pretty significant pro formas looking at our transition to the WCC but it's going to take some time in transition we're going to be looking for support from a number of different areas. I'd say, conference move is one step into a number of different prongs that would help in increasing generating revenue also supporting our programs at the level that can really, support our elite student-athletes, support our coaches programs, also bring community, students, everyone together."

Chancellor Dennis Assanis: "I might add, this is an excellent question. It is actually part of our thinking as university's resources are being squeezed all the time. Obviously what to protect and invest and continue to invest in academic programs, first, everything needs to be balanced. We do think that the move to the WCC will help us increase the external revenue generation by a factor of five or six from today's levels, hence make the programs much more sustainable and successful and less reliant on the university quote unquote subsidy if you like to think about that. The other thing we believe is it's going to draw our students to participate and engage with the games much more than today. Obviously people vote to do things they love and pay for them. We do hope that we have an opportunity to increase the revenue coming from student fees in athletics. Right now our program is the lowest probably in the nation in terms of student investment in athletics, I don't blame them, again, if you elevate your product and your performances, then people like to invest in it. I do hope that this will come with time."
 

Question Six: Congratulations on joining the WCC. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the Gauchos compete in the conference. You touched on a lot of these points already. What Because there are some that might actually kind of have the perception that with the departure of Gonzaga that there isn't a ton of difference between the Big West and the WCC, what, what was kind of some of the attractive components that made the WCC a good move for Santa Barbara, and then how much did the UC San Diego decision kind of help, make that decision or at least kind of put pieces in place to make it a little bit more attractive?

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "We're excited regardless of who's leaving or changing or adjusting. I mean, it's the landscape we've been navigating in Division I athletics for a number of years now. I said, under Stu's leadership, his staff in working with the institutions in the WCC, they're aligned commitment and investment, that's really important that they have aligned commitment and investment to. Continuing to grow the programs and create this wonderful West Coast dominance, let's say in terms of the markets in which they're in. We think that hopefully, Santa Barbara strengthens the conference, but we're humbled to be in with some really great institutions that are investing and aligning around competitive excellence, athletics excellence and really creating excitement that we know Division I athletics can bring to communities."
 
Chancellor Dennis Assanis: I might add that. We respect Gonzaga, but in 5 years we could be the next Gonzaga, I think we have all the elements, think about the funds. Would they rather go to Spokane or would they rather go to Santa Barbara to spend the weekend?

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "What makes the West Coast Conference a bit unique than other conferences or the one that you mentioned. Has come true, as a conference, we historically at the WCC have had pretty darn good performance in men's and women's basketball. I mean we've been a multi-bid conference for 10 of the last 12 years. Five times on the women's side as well. But I've always felt that what made this conference unique is the following. The West Coast Conference historically has had great success in Olympic sports as well, the combination of being successful in the basketballs and Olympic sports truly makes this conference special, unlike any around the country. Having 12 members now by adding the likes of UC San Diego and now especially with UC Santa Barbara, the depth and breadth of the strength of our conference has become very strong. What that means to recruiting student-athletes, what that means metrically to performance throughout all of your season, what that means in terms of your ability to access NCAA championships. I would match against anyone. Now, listen, we are who we are. We're a mid-major conference. We're not the Power 4. But that doesn't mean that we can't have opportunities the same as they do with access to championships. It takes resources. I would just encourage all of you, whether you're a student, a student-athlete, an alumnus of UC Santa Barbara, a current donor or past donor, pool your resources. The summation of all those parts will help elevate programs in this great institution to get access to more revenue. I would just encourage all of you to do that."

Question Seven: Kelly, when did you know that it was time to leave The Big West? Because, Hawaii was leaving, UC Davis was leaving. Was there a moment where you were saying. I'd like to get to a different conference.

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "That's a great question, a very specific question. We've been going through a national landscape for a couple of years now of change and adjustment. Our focus has always been around how do we support the student athletes, the coaches, the programs, the people, the community of UCSB and ensure that we're positioned strategically and appropriately. In terms of when is the moment, there's been an open evaluation for a number of years as we continue to look at what UCSB needs, what do we bring, and how do we continue to grow, and then a moment all aligned. A moment aligned with, I mentioned the great leadership of Chancellor Assanis, it aligned in working with Stu. It aligned in working with some of the WCC, presidents, colleagues. There, that is we looked at for all the reasons we talked about the markets being able to share our story, the alignment in investment academics, athletically. We have a long history and legacy in the Big West Conference. As we started off saying they're very valuable and we are very thankful to everyone in the Big West, both staff and all the institutions. We love our peers at those institutions, this is about an opportunity for UCSB and us positioning ourselves where we think UCSB needs to be right now, but not anything disparaging or difficult about a Big West Conference. It's been a really great home for us for a very long time."

Question Eight: I have a couple if that's OK for Commissioner Jackson. Stu, can you talk about in this continuing change of the landscape in college athletics, is 12 where you want to be, or could you envision expanding further at some point?

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "It's been a mandate of our president's council, dating back to a year and a half ago, understanding two things: the landscape of collegiate athletics with realignment nationally and the constant change for many conferences and institutions. Secondly, knowing that, we potentially at the time, we were nine members. Being a nine-member conference leaves a conference vulnerable and susceptible to not only financial disadvantages but also instability. It became the aggressive mandate of our presidents to grow our conference to 12 members. We are here today at our 12th member and we feel comfortable where we are now. Everything's on the table, but I can tell you confidently in the foreseeable future, I don't see us going beyond 12 members. We have UCSB coming into the conference in 2027. Let's stabilize and see who we are gonna be going forward and then make some decisions."  

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "First of all, the programs have been incredibly successful across the board the reason they're successful is because they're great people. We have great coaches, staff, student athletes, community around them, that bought in to really develop. We focus here on serving and developing our student athletes. You've seen some of those outcomes you mentioned it last year. We won the DI-AAA All-Sport Trophy which is the highest honor for all of Division I non-football. We've seen student athletes go on to be drafted certainly in Ajay Mitchell in NBA right now, Tyler Bremner No. 2 in Major League Baseball Manu Duah No. 1 in Major League Soccer just over a year ago. We have Amelia Honer in tennis who's off playing professionally in US Open qualifiers. You're just seeing student athletes develop they truly are student athletes going to class all around campus, living in Isla Vista being part of our community. The answer is I'm thankful for the great people our goal is to going to be to continue to recruit really outstanding student athletes to retain, recruit and keep outstanding coaches. Staff people that serve and connect our community. Our expectation is gonna be to win, be successful, but that's in all areas that's doing it the right way. So that's academically, that's athletically, we also recognize there's a time for development. So when we fall down we're gonna get back up we're gonna expect to win again that's how the great great people great Gauchos here at UCSB do it."
 

Question Nine: I saw you guys mentioned earlier about the student experience both as athletes and as viewers. I just wanna know what do you think this move will elevate the overall student experience, whether that be for athletes or just students ourselves? What do you think that this will benefit as opposed to before?

Arnhold Director of Athletics, Kelly Barsky: "I will say that we have a vision of growing and bringing in great teams from the WCC, great rivalries for non-conference games, meets, matches, events, and we're looking to do a lot of elevation. Around how we engage students and I'm going to need your help and I'm gonna need a lot of student help. Chancellor's going to need some help from, from AS students to different student groups on campus, but we know there's a way. Number one, to build connection and school spirit, that could be things like tailgates outside of games. That's us getting into Isla Vista, celebrating and then walking into The Thunderdome for a game, our baseball team wears Isla Vista jerseys on Tuesdays. It's a City Connect jersey that highlights the community. Opportunities where students live and so I think we're just at the start. I'm really excited about it, but just at the start, we need your help. We need your engagement. We need you to help us know what students want and then get you into these amazing, elite athlete high performing teams that are competing at the highest level. We need you to be loud, some great chants, traditions, band, cheer, dance, everyone else out there, but we're going to be actively looking for opportunities, not just in our facilities, throughout campus, in Isla Vista, downtown We want to create a destination for our students, for our parents, for our alumni, to come together, share in our school spirit and athletics can be a true ambassador for that."

Chancellor Dennis Assanis: "The branding and signage across campus and beyond. Downtown Santa Barbara, even nationally can be enhanced greatly. We're really looking at this opportunity. We're going to do it anyway, so we may as well design everything for WCC. This is going to be a massive exercise, but we do want people to wear the spirit and the athletic gear everywhere they go. We could have merchandise in downtown Santa Barbara, right now you can't find any. We envision a lot of things with that expansion on State Street, the destination campus that Kelly was talking about downtown. We could certainly feature athletic things, performances, watch parties. There can be a lot of things we can do."
 

Question 10: A question here for the university chancellor. Dr. Assanis, when I wrote about and when my peers were covering national realignment with Cal and UCLA, there was a discussion afterwards about what kind of autonomy a UC system school should have about changing conferences if it might potentially impact other UC system institutions and obviously we're not talking about the same kind of scale here, but I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about whether the decision to move UCSB to the WCC was something that happened just at the campus level, or did this have to get, you know, run up the flagpole at the UC system in general?

Chancellor Dennis Assanis: "Yes, that's an interesting question. We did consult as extensive as we could have given the confidential nature of those procedures. Leaks start quickly the more people you reach out to. We've talked internally, as well as with the system with the office of the president. I know the president has consulted with the regents who are part of that athletics board. We have obviously a concern always about our decisions, the repercussions that may have on others, impacts on budget and everything else that we do internally. We reached out to the budget working group that we have with Senate members as well administrators, faculty of athletics, representative, and a newly instituted board in athletics with faculty members. We've talked about it with provost, I mean, as much as we can, we consult, but you understand the window that you have is narrow. To answer your question, we did have a more coordinated effort with the system as well."

Question 11: Stu, you talked a bit about the financial benefits of getting back to 12 schools where you were at 9 just feels not that long ago, and we talked a bit about the TV deal that was in the works at the WCC tournament. How much does the number of institutions impact the negotiations, and how much does that help, and then additionally, for the conference tourney location, we know we're gonna be at the rollings, at least through next year. How much does getting back to 12 help the negotiation for the conference?

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "No, it's a fair question. I would say the current landscape, in terms of broadcast, there's been a shift in the industry in this regard that even as recently as five years ago, the networks like ESPN CBS, and others, there was a real effort to try to get volume of events. In other words, get as many events as you could. For your streaming platform, get as many events as you could to fill windows that you currently have. That has shifted. It shifted to a place where the networks are now interested in what I would term as premium content. Put another way, matchups, high-level matchups. So when you add schools to your conference, that has to be one consideration. Who are you adding? What do they bring? What's their brand? Because at the end of the day, if we can pit a UC Santa Barbara against a Santa Clara, that's potentially a premium matchup in any sport, that's what they care about. So while we may not necessarily in our new agreement get the volume that we've had previously with all of our Olympic sports, we are hoping that what we do bring is a level of premium matchups that is attractive to them. So it's not necessarily the size of the conference. Size of the conference really speaks to scheduling, as many of the coaches in the room would say. It's just easier with 12. It's easier with an even number, but with our broadcast partners, it's the brands that you bring to them that they're most interested in."
 

Question 12: The second part was kind of how that impacts negotiations for the conference tournament, thinking about Las Vegas or even baseball and some of the others and just the venues that you can potentially get knowing you're at 12 as opposed to obviously 11, 10, or 9 where we were a couple of years ago.

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "Well, it depends what sport. Recently we've added three new championships to the WCC that will begin playing next year. I was having a conversation with Jo Evans before this event and, by way of example, we're gonna have a softball championship, right? We're gonna have a soccer championships which we've never had. With respect to the basketball in Orleans, we will be at the Orleans for next year. We extended our option. We had an option with the Orleans Arena for our basketball tournament. We will be playing there in 2027. After that, we don't know yet. It could be we remain at the Orleans in Vegas. I will tell you that our fans enjoy the experience of going to Las Vegas for that five-day period to watch men's and women's basketball. It will be difficult to leave, but we are exploring all of our options for a new venue."
 

Question 13: Commissioner, in basketball, will they play? Will we play all 11 teams twice, 22 games in the Big West? We played everybody twice. Is that your vision in the basketball arena?

WCC Commissioner Stu Jackson: "That's on the table but doubtful. We currently play an eighteen-game unbalanced schedule, and the reason for this, that is the following, is that by giving our basketball coaches the flexibility to schedule games outside of the conference that can strengthen their resume, we want to give them that opportunity. Again, we are a basketball-centric conference, and I say that and we've all gotten comfortable in the WCC with that notion. Because our financial model is such, our ability to perform in the basketballs fuels the operations for the other sports. It's vital that we gain access to the NCAA tournament by having multiple bids. And in an effort to try to get those bids, we want to give our men's and women's basketball coaches the flexibility. To go out and schedule higher level games that they may get anywhere else. I don't anticipate we would go to a 22 conference schedule. Perhaps our membership might resonate with a 20 game conference schedule, but I don't see that today."