SWC goes out with a bang and a whimper

Sporting News, The, March 7, 1994 by Ivan Maisel

Although it's true that the demise of the College Football Association television package accelerated the demise of the Southwest Conference, it hardly is insightful. The cause of death of a 79-year-old may be listed as heart failure, when, in fact, the whole body plumb gave out.

The SWC, which will turn 80 in May, won't take its last breath in its current form until 1996, when the CFA TV contract expires. However, Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech accepted invitations last week to join the Big Eight Conference.

Houston, Rice, Texas Christian and Southern Methodist are discussing options with the Western Athletic Conference and with some regional independents. The three private schools accepted their fate with understanding and remarkable equanimity. They can count empty seats.

Houston, however, threw tantrums throughout last week. By the weekend, Athletic Director Bill Carr said he wouldn't participate in talks with the other three left-behind about their future. He didn't elaborate, although SWC Commissioner Steve Hatchell says Houston hopes to be absorbed by the Southeastern Conference or the expanded Big Eight.

Self-delusion is never pretty. The Cougars' graduation rates rank at the bottom of Division I-A. Their average attendance in football last season didn't reach 20,000. The NCAA is investigating possible rules violations in football dating to the John Jenkins era.

But, hey, Houston, go ahead. Check out your options. The private schools will wait for you. Examples of why the SWC will perish appeared everywhere last week. The Dallas Morning News published a poll Sunday that illustrated the problems facing the four schools left behind.

When asked, "Which one of the SWC teams do you root for the most?" 1 percent of the state's residents chose SMU. Rice got 1 percent, Houston got 4 percent and TCU 5 percent. The four schools leaving had fan bases ranging from 9 percent (Baylor) to 36 percent (Texas A&M).

The SWC's biggest problem took root 34 years ago, when professional football came to Dallas and Houston. Rice plays in a stadium built with 70,000 seats in 1950 because the Owls needed them then. In the last 10 seasons, the Owls have averaged crowds of 30,000 once.

SMU, TCU and Houston have suffered at the gate and in general fan interest, as have most urban universities across the nation. For every Miami, which was support based largely in winning, there are the Tulanes and Cincinnatis and the four SWC schools left behind.

SMU still is recovering from the probation and "death penalty" it received from the NCAA in 1987. The school's "legacy of wrongdoing," as the NCAA said then, continues to haunt the Mustangs, who cleaned up their act remarkably well.

Baylor Athletic Director Dick Ellis says SMU's death penalty effectively killed the conference. But the Mustangs didn't cheat in a vacuum. Former SWC commissioner Fred Jacoby, who took the job in November 1982, says, "I wasn't here two weeks before I knew we had a problem."

Five of the other eight SWC schools -- Texas, TCU, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Houston -- also earned NCAA probation for rules violations in football in the 1989s. In fact, SMU and Texas A&M are tied for the NCAA lead in most probations received (seven).

"My best estimate is that it started right around World War II," Jacoby says. "That was so ingrained in the conference.... (The '80s) was an agonizing period. When I left (in 1993), we were through most of that."

The bad publicity engendered by the probations took its greatest toll on the athletic product. High school recruits took their talents elsewhere; 40 percent of the state's best football players leave annually.

Texans played prominent roles in national championships at Miami (Jessie Armstead, Kevin Williams) and Florida State (Clifton Abraham, Ken Alexander and Toddrick McIntosh). Tim Brown of Dallas won the 1987 Heisman Trophy at Dame. Ty Detmer of Mission, Tex., won the 1990 Heisman at Brigham Young.

Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles saw the events of the last two weeks coming some time ago. In 1990, after a yearlong campaign, he succeeded in wangling an invitation for Arkansas to join the Southeastern Conference.

"I spent 38 years of my adult life involved with the Southwest Conference" Broyles says. "I am distraught that there will be no Southwest Conference of reference to the great rivalries, history, games and athletes. I though it would always survive -- if it made some changes."

Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor rode the changes north to the Big Eight. Texas and Texas A&M showed interest in leaving the SWC when Arkansas left but didn't have time to lay the appropriate political groundwork. Loyalists of Baylor and Texas Tech appealed to their legislators, who in turn twisted arms in Austin and College Station.

The Pac-10 stood by ready to take Texas and Texas A&M. A senior University of Texas official says Texas would have had an invitation to go west "in two hours, in 20 minutes, as fast as a fax machine works." But interest stopped there. Politically, the two big schools had to take Baylor and Tech with them.