After Arkansas left the SWC, it became a dead league walking. With three teams of national prominence and large fan bases in Texas, Arkansas and Texas A&M, the growing problems of the league could be overlooked and glossed over. But with only the two big state schools remaining, the fact that TCU, Rice, Baylor and SMU were small private schools with small alumni bases and almost no television presence was magnified. The fact that the University of Houston played most of its games in a mostly-empty Astrodome despite a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback in Andre Ware and the excitement of the record-setting run-and-shoot offense didn't help. A&M and Texas were subsidizing the rest of the league's athletic budgets with large and loyal fan bases. SWC commissioner Fred Jacoby, after insisting Arkansas would never leave, began mentioning schools like Louisville, Tulsa or Tulane as potential additions to the league. To try and keep the league viable, A&M made overtures to LSU, which quickly said "Thanks, but no thanks." Likewise, Texas inquired if Oklahoma would consider joining the SWC. Here, things get interesting. Oklahoma was unhappy with revenue sharing in the Big 8 at the time, and felt that too many of the weak sisters--Kansas State, Iowa State, etc.--were padding their athletic budgets with disproportionate shares of money from Oklahoma's television appearances. A "keep what you kill" arrangement similar to what had been put in place in the SWC--in that home schools kept larger portions of home gate revenue, television appearance fees and bowl payouts--appealed to the Sooners' athletic director and president. And they said so. Publicly. Make note of this, because it becomes important. For maybe a week in 1994, it suddenly looked like Oklahoma was thinking about leaving the Big 8 to join the ailing SWC.
Except, that's not what happened, at all. Oklahoma wanted more favorable revenue distribution, but they weren't about to hitch their star to the foundering SWC. A&M and Texas were already looking for a way out. Texas looked westward, wanting to join the academically prestigious Pac 10 and all the member schools there that were part of the American Association of Universities. They also flirted with the Big 10 as well. Sound familiar? Texas A&M, for its part, looked eastward, wanting to follow Arkansas to the SEC and play LSU, Alabama and the rest in that football mad circuit. Texas objected to the SEC because of low academic standards. A&M objected to the Big 10 and Pac 10 because of distance and culture. All of these issue would come into play once again in 2010-2011. In the end, joining the Big 8 was something of a compromise between the two, the only way they'd both be able to get out of the SWC.
Once word got out in Austin that the two flagship institutions were bailing on the SWC, political forces lined up against them. Governor Ann Richards, Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock and powerful State Senator David Sibley were all Baylor alums, and Texas Tech had State Senate President Pro Tempore John Montford and Speaker of the House Pete Laney in its corner. The message was clear--take Texas Tech and Baylor along with you, or don't go at all. If A&M would give up its aspirations of playing in the SEC, legislative opposition to A&M's long-delayed Reed Arena would magically vanish. And thus, the Big 12 came into being.
By all rights, it should've been the perfect athletic conference. The southern division made up of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor were close to the original lineup of the Southwest Conference from 1914. Many of the regional rivalries stayed in place, and the schools were rewarded with a whopping $100 million, five-year deal (a huge contract for the time). It should've been one big happy family, but it wasn't. Almost immediately, Texas and Nebraska started butting heads. Nebraska viewed the Big 12 as an expansion of the old Big 8, while the new Texas schools viewed the league as an entirely new entity--at worst, it was a merger. Nebraska wanted the Big 12 offices to stay in Kansas City, where the Big 8 had been headquartered. The Texas schools wanted them in Dallas, where the SWC had been headquartered. The Texas schools, led by Texas AD Deloss Dodds and supported by the Oklahoma schools, won out. Nebraska supported one candidate for first Big 12 commissioner (whose name escapes me) whereas the Texas schools supported Steve Hatchell, a former administrator from the University of Colorado who'd joined the SWC front office just prior to the league's dissolution. Again, Texas won out. When the league split into two divisions, north and south, Nebraska protested that its annual rivalry game with Oklahoma would end. Nebraska lost that fight, too. The Big 8's more equitable revenue sharing was abandoned in favor of an unbalanced, SWC-style financial arrangement. The bitterest fight came when Texas moved to impose SWC academic standards limiting the participation of partial qualifiers into the Big 12 rule book. Nebraska, which had built a decades-long championship streak on the muscle of unlimited partial qualifiers in the academically lax Big 8 fought the new standards tooth and nail. And lost again. I believe it is no coincidence that Nebraska's on-field dominance waned quickly from that point on, and head football coach Tom Osborne retired shortly thereafter to enter politics.
The final indignity came in the very first Big 12 championship game, where a John Mackovic-coached Texas team stunned the heavily favored Nebraska Cornhuskers for the first league title. At this point, I have to wonder if this was all clever strategy by Oklahoma to undercut Nebraska by using Texas as a proxy. Certainly, Oklahoma's interests paralleled Texas' in most cases, and the Sooners benefited indirectly from the Longhorns' off-field victories over the Cornhuskers. In any event, the Texas-Nebraska antagonist relationship was cemented, with Texas AD Deloss Dodds outmaneuvering his counterparts at every turn. The rot from within had taken hold, and it would be only a matter of time before it made it to the surface.
As the conference turns, pt. 1
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Showing posts with label SWC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SWC. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
As the conference turns, pt. 1
One year ago, I pegged the Big 12 athletic conference's life at five years, tops. Turns out I was being way too optimistic. With Texas A&M's whirlwind courtship of the Southeastern Conference these past couple of weeks, it's obvious that when things fall apart, they fall apart quickly.
This all began, really, back in 1995 when the old SWC went belly-up. That particular death sentence was put in motion several years earlier when Frank Broyles, the athletic director at Arkansas who ran off several coaches--including Ken Hatfield--because of incessant meddling, decided the Razorbacks would profit immensely by joining the SEC and forming a 12-team super conference with a lucrative championship game. Up until that point, such and animal had never existed at the DI-A level of college football. Yes, the NCAA had a rule provision allowing 12-member leagues to split into divisions and hold and extra championship game, but it was originally written for lower-level competition. Trouble is, the NCAA never actually wrote that intention into the rule. The SEC seized the opportunity and soon became the best football conference in the land. Arkansas crashed and burned. Several things worked against Arkansas in the move: Firstly, Broyles refused to admit that more money was the reason behind the conference switch, instead making the duplicitous claim that the Razorbacks needed "better competition" after winning back-to-back SWC titles. You can imagine the embarrassment when the entire SWC--even post-death penalty SMU--pounded the Piggies in their final two seasons of competition before joining the SEC. Secondly, Arkansas had no existing rivals in the SEC, and suffered through an awkward, new-kid-at-school phase where they didn't know anyone and were picked on mercilessly. Third--and this is the biggest issue--Arkansas stocked its football roster with Texas players via its century-long association with the SWC. With A&M, Baylor, Texas and the rest refusing to schedule them after their departure from the SWC, that recruiting dried up quickly. Arkansas made more money in the SEC than it could in the SWC, yes, but the other setbacks took the Razorbacks a decade to overcome to the point where they're only now, 20 years later, consistently competitive in their new league.
Many people point to Arkansas' experience in the SEC as a cautionary tale for A&M as it looks to jump ship. The fact that A&M has lost two games against Arkansas and one to LSU, both SEC powerhouses, in recent years adds to the perception that a move to the SEC is a bad one for the Aggies. The Arkansas experience isn't necessarily relevant for A&M though. Firstly, the A&M recruiting base in Texas won't evaporate as it did for Arkansas, because the Aggies will always play at least half of their games in College Station--a short drive for mamma and daddy to come see junior play. Some argue it will actually help A&M, that in-state blue chippers who want to play against such legendary SEC teams as Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Georgia will now have an in-state option. Others argue it will open up Texas recruiting to those same SEC programs and hurt all the Texas schools. That's debatable. I see it as a wash, more or less. A second reason the A&M move wouldn't be like Arkansas' is that A&M already has long-standing relationships with several of the schools they'd be playing. Familiarity with Arkansas exists from the SWC days and the recent renewal of that series at the neutral site of JerryWorld up in DFW. LSU is a long-standing rivalry that stirs the passions on both sides. LSU's abrupt cancellation of a long-term contract in the early 90s after A&M had won five games in a row (coupled with a similar break in the series under similar circumstances back in the 70s) merely adds fuel to the fire. And anyone who knows anything about college football knows A&M's ties to Alabama via Paul "Bear" Bryant and Gene Stallings. Finally, A&M isn't pretending the reasons for this potential move are for anything other than what they are: A chance for more money, more stability, and a chance to get out from under the oppressive thumb of the Texas Longhorns--or, more specifically, Texas Athletic Director Deloss Dodds.
Will the Aggies dominate SEC play and rack up a bunch of national championships right away? Not likely. That's not what this is about. There's a huge shakeup coming in college athletics, and for once, A&M wants to make its own destiny for good or ill, rather than tag along on someone else's coattails.
Next: The birth and untimely death of the Big 12.
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This all began, really, back in 1995 when the old SWC went belly-up. That particular death sentence was put in motion several years earlier when Frank Broyles, the athletic director at Arkansas who ran off several coaches--including Ken Hatfield--because of incessant meddling, decided the Razorbacks would profit immensely by joining the SEC and forming a 12-team super conference with a lucrative championship game. Up until that point, such and animal had never existed at the DI-A level of college football. Yes, the NCAA had a rule provision allowing 12-member leagues to split into divisions and hold and extra championship game, but it was originally written for lower-level competition. Trouble is, the NCAA never actually wrote that intention into the rule. The SEC seized the opportunity and soon became the best football conference in the land. Arkansas crashed and burned. Several things worked against Arkansas in the move: Firstly, Broyles refused to admit that more money was the reason behind the conference switch, instead making the duplicitous claim that the Razorbacks needed "better competition" after winning back-to-back SWC titles. You can imagine the embarrassment when the entire SWC--even post-death penalty SMU--pounded the Piggies in their final two seasons of competition before joining the SEC. Secondly, Arkansas had no existing rivals in the SEC, and suffered through an awkward, new-kid-at-school phase where they didn't know anyone and were picked on mercilessly. Third--and this is the biggest issue--Arkansas stocked its football roster with Texas players via its century-long association with the SWC. With A&M, Baylor, Texas and the rest refusing to schedule them after their departure from the SWC, that recruiting dried up quickly. Arkansas made more money in the SEC than it could in the SWC, yes, but the other setbacks took the Razorbacks a decade to overcome to the point where they're only now, 20 years later, consistently competitive in their new league.
Many people point to Arkansas' experience in the SEC as a cautionary tale for A&M as it looks to jump ship. The fact that A&M has lost two games against Arkansas and one to LSU, both SEC powerhouses, in recent years adds to the perception that a move to the SEC is a bad one for the Aggies. The Arkansas experience isn't necessarily relevant for A&M though. Firstly, the A&M recruiting base in Texas won't evaporate as it did for Arkansas, because the Aggies will always play at least half of their games in College Station--a short drive for mamma and daddy to come see junior play. Some argue it will actually help A&M, that in-state blue chippers who want to play against such legendary SEC teams as Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Georgia will now have an in-state option. Others argue it will open up Texas recruiting to those same SEC programs and hurt all the Texas schools. That's debatable. I see it as a wash, more or less. A second reason the A&M move wouldn't be like Arkansas' is that A&M already has long-standing relationships with several of the schools they'd be playing. Familiarity with Arkansas exists from the SWC days and the recent renewal of that series at the neutral site of JerryWorld up in DFW. LSU is a long-standing rivalry that stirs the passions on both sides. LSU's abrupt cancellation of a long-term contract in the early 90s after A&M had won five games in a row (coupled with a similar break in the series under similar circumstances back in the 70s) merely adds fuel to the fire. And anyone who knows anything about college football knows A&M's ties to Alabama via Paul "Bear" Bryant and Gene Stallings. Finally, A&M isn't pretending the reasons for this potential move are for anything other than what they are: A chance for more money, more stability, and a chance to get out from under the oppressive thumb of the Texas Longhorns--or, more specifically, Texas Athletic Director Deloss Dodds.
Will the Aggies dominate SEC play and rack up a bunch of national championships right away? Not likely. That's not what this is about. There's a huge shakeup coming in college athletics, and for once, A&M wants to make its own destiny for good or ill, rather than tag along on someone else's coattails.
Next: The birth and untimely death of the Big 12.
Now Playing: Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band Nine Tonight
Chicken Ranch Central
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