I would not say it is not worth rendering the conference standings less meaningful. Especially in light of how important those standings are in the conference tournament bracket.
But Gonzaga doesn’t care because they only care about themselves and they’re always going to be first. Whatever else happens, they don’t care as long as they’re protected.
I have some hope for you that this condition won’t last forever. The men’s basketball tradition of universities run by the Society of Jesus winning titles seems to run in an unrepeated sequence: Holy Cross in 1947, San Francisco in 1955 and 1956, Loyola Chicago in 1963, Marquette in 1977, Georgetown in 1984, and now maybe Gonzaga.
The Society seems to use support for men’s basketball to increase enrollment where needed, and other uses unrelated to the sport, and then gives another school a turn. Maybe SCU is next.
I think the problem with thinking that is that at that time the game was very regionalized, TV coverage at any time was minimal, let alone nationwide broadcasts and other non-game coverage on sports-only media outlets.
The first program to basically be a media-fueled monster was another smallish school by major D1 standards and that is Duke. Neither them nor Gonzaga show any signs of losing that status.
The media did have an impact on Georgetown’s development as a program at about the same time as Duke, but that was not a positive association. I’ll let folks guess why that was.