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The Gonzaga Bulldogs men's basketball team has made the NCAA Tournament every year since the 1998-99 season, except for the 2019-20 tournament that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mark Few has been the head coach since the 1999-2000 season, so he's been responsible for 27 NCAA Tournament appearances.
But the Bulldogs just exited the NCAA Tournament in the second round for the second straight year. This time, No. 3 Gonzaga was ousted by No. 11 Texas, which needed to win in the First Four to even make the official 64-team bracket. Texas won 74-68 to advance to the West region's Sweet 16.
After the upset, FanDuel took to X (formerly Twitter) to point out that Few has "zero national championships in 27 seasons at Gonzaga." The post featured a photo with the graphic. "Should Gonzaga fire Mark Few?"
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Gonzaga fans, and basketball fans at large, were having none of it.
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T3 Bracketology replied, "This is embarrassing."
An account called West Coast College Sports Guy posted a meme reading, "Absolute ragebait." Another basketball-centric account posted, "Just say you don't know ball, Admin... Dang this is bad. National college basketball writer Brian Rauf wrote, "I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the dumbest post in the history of posts."
Several fans shared the opinion that Few doesn't have the same NIL funds to compete with other traditional men's college basketball powerhouses.
Oddly, the official FanDuel Sportsbook account replied to the official FanDuel account, saying, "Delete this now." The FanDuel Sportsbook account posted its own Few post, which listed all of his career accomplishments before punctuating it with, "ZERO National Championships [grimacing emoji]."
Few has a 773-156 all-time record at Gonzaga and has led the Zags to 22 West Coast Conference Tournament titles, including this year's. (Gonzaga will begin competing in the Pac-12 next season.) Few is a two-time Naismith Coach of the Year and a 14-time WCC Coach of the Year.
Gonzaga has won 17 consecutive first-round NCAA Tournament games, but two consecutive second-round exits loom large. The closest Few and Gonzaga came to a national championship was losing 86-70 to Baylor in the 2021 national final. The Bulldogs were undefeated entering that game.
Last October, Few told CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein that he doesn't "spend a ton of thinking about" when he'll retire. Few acknowledged the difficulties of keeping up in the NIL era, but he said emphasized his "total focus" to keep the Zags "nationally relevant."
"If we can't do that anymore, then I'm out of here," Few said. "You'll catch me on a river somewhere."
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