Why the SWC folded and how the Big 12 came to be

Craig Way goes on a deep dive into why the Southwestern Conference broke up and how the Big 12 conference came about in this history lesson!

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
And we're back to the Craig WayShow. Have a message for Craig,
share it by using the talk backfeature on the Ihearts Radio. As we
roll on on this Thursday afternoon,I'll look back once more. Checking in

(00:33):
on the text line. Our manCB says, now that Texas is officially
a member of the SEC, couldyou refresh my memory of how and why
the Southwest Conference went away and whythe Big Twelve was formed. It's a
very valid question. It does havea few layers to it. But the

(01:00):
I guess, the best reader's digestversion of it that I could give you
is that it happened basically on threefronts. There was the interest in greener
pastors. There was a lot oftackling schools on one another, with recruiting

(01:22):
wars going on, and television moneylike it invariably does, became a factor.
So here's how this worked. Zipof water here because this may take
a couple of minutes. Okay,The Southwest Conference and the Big Eight,

(01:47):
clearly it had their moments down throughthe decades. The Big Eight clearly,
with Oklahoma and Nebraska winning national championshipsin the sixties and seventies. The Southwest
conference, with Texas winning three nationaltitles in a seven year span from sixty
three to seventy, so they haddone well. Arkansas won a national title

(02:13):
in sixty four as well, sothey had represented well enough. As the
seventies is the decade of the seventiesworld on, by and large, the
Big Eight became a more powerful league. Now that's because the Southwest Conference was

(02:35):
pretty top heavy. Texas went tothe Cotton Bowl was a seven straight years
with the Southwest Conference champion went tothat. They were there sixty eight,
sixty nine, seventy, seventy one, seventy two, seventy three, that's
six straight years. Baylor went withseventy four miracle on the brass season.

(02:58):
Texas A and M started at alittle bit rises a program, as did
Arkansas, and then Houston came inthe league. And Houston made waves and
won a couple of conference titles,but other than Earl Campbell's Heisman Trophy campaign
of seventy seven, and when theLong Warns at the start of the decade
won the nineteen seventy national championship thatwas a UPI Coaches National title was awarded

(03:23):
before the Bowl game, and thenthey were beating They were pretty banged up
and lost to Notre Dame in arematch from the prior year, but they
had already been crowned UPI National championswhich was the Coaches Bowl, and Nebraska
ended up after beating LSU and theOrange Bowl that year January of seventy one,

(03:46):
the nineteen seventy season, Nebraska hoppedinto the number one AP spot to
win that national title. Nebraska,following the national championship the next year,
blew out Alabama in in the OrangeBowl, and then Alabama, of course
had all those great years under BearBryant, and Notre dameen had its moments
as well, but other than whenTexas won the national title in the nineteen

(04:10):
seventies season, they share of it, and then in seventy seven, Earl
Campbell's Heisman year, Texas was numberone going into the Cotton Bowl, but
they lost to Joe Montana Notre Dame, and Notre Dame ended up winning the
national title. There was not aserious, serious national championship contender for the
rest of that decade, and theBig Eight made big strides there went into

(04:33):
the early eighties. Texas had anopportunity because of what would be that night
Miami's upset of Nebraska and earlier upsetsthat Texas could have won the national championship
at the fumble punt by Greig Currylate in the game against Georgia and the
cotton boll and Georgia beat them tennine. That happened then. But the

(05:00):
eighties went on and SMU had itsrise. A lot of what had SMU.
We know about the obviously the recruitingviolations that in SMU that ultimately led
to the death penalty, but virtuallyevery school in the Southwest Conference at least
got a letter of reprimand or somethingat some point, if not probationary status

(05:23):
itself for recruiting violation. Same thinghappened in Oklahoma. They were in the
seventies ineligible for the AP national title. I believe in seventy four they got
the coaches, or for the coaches, they won the AP title. They
had another deal like that in theeighties. Texas, A and m D
recruiting issues in the eighties as wellvirtually all the Southwest Conference, and they

(05:46):
really kind of turned on one another. I do think that if you ever
get a chance to see the ESPNthirty for thirty pointy excess on SMU and
what happened that it would it wouldexplain it really well how tense they were
and hel and I was young anda reporter working at KRLD with Bradsham as
my boss and Jock Cooperstein working alongsideof me, and we covered that SMU

(06:12):
story pretty extensively back then. Butat that point the bad feelings continued throughout
the rest of the decade of theeighties. In Arkansas made up its mind
who was going to leave? Theyhad a lucrative offer to go, you
know, it made sense for themto go into the Southeastern Conference in nineteen
ninety one, so they did that. And meanwhile, up north, several

(06:35):
schools and the Big Eight weren't exactlyholding up their end of the bargain,
and with the television contracts being whatthey were, they were about to be
left standing by the side of theroad. So it looked like the Southwest
Conference was in dire trouble. Sorepresentatives on both sides got together the Southwest

(06:59):
Conference close shop. Following the nineteenninety five season. The final Southwest Conference
championship game was basically Texas beating TexasA and M in College Station to win
that one sixteen to six to winthat final Southwest Conference title. But then
the eight schools from the Big Eightjoined with those four from the Southwest Conference

(07:24):
Texas Texas A and M Baylor inTexas Tech. And there was a lot
of political daring, do you mightsay, part of it on the behalf
of the governor and richards On makingsure Baylor got in, And there was
other politics that kept TCU out,and SMU had really not recovered from the

(07:51):
death penalty, And there would bethose who would tell you maybe today that
even today they might not have fullyrecovered, at least not in terms of
national championship contending status. But theynow have what they did winning the American
Athletic Conference title last year. Movinginto the ACC, it looks the outlook

(08:11):
looks a lot brighter on the hilltopfor SMU going forward. So for nineteen
ninety six they started, the BigTwelve got together and King was formed with
the eight members of the Big Eightand those four from the Big Twelve conference.
If memory serves, and I rememberit all very pretty clearly, during

(08:33):
that time, there were a lotof real uneasy feelings, hard feelings between
the Big eight schools who felt likethey were a life boat to Texas,
Texas A and M, and Baylorin Texas Tech, whereas the power brokers

(08:54):
in the Southwest Conference who were stillalive and well Texas and Texas A and
M pretty much had the attitude ofyour conference was about to go into complete
irrelevance because you wouldn't have gotten anykind of a contract television contract had Texas
and Texas A and M not gonein. So make of that argument,
which you will, but there wasa lot of tension and a lot of

(09:15):
uneasy feelings for several seasons. Eventuallythat kind of melted away, but there
has always been that that looking ascant view depending on where you are in
the Big twelve, and especially onceTexas announced it was leaving. First Texas

(09:39):
A and M leaving Nebraska left,Colorado left, and then Nebraska had a
lot of Nebraska officials had been reallyup set with Texas, leading the charge
by other schools to demand that thecounty scholarship thing be banned so that Nebraska

(10:03):
couldn't shortcut its way having about onehundred and thirty scholarships, in other words,
having all those walk ons where theirscholarship was paid for by the county
when it basically it was skirting therules. So you had that Colorado was
in dire need of money and leftfor that. That's the same reason why
they're coming back to the Big Twelve, dire need of money, Missouri to

(10:30):
be as strong an academic school asit is, and it is. Everybody
thought for sure that Missouri was probablygoing to be bound for the Big Ten,
but the Big Ten didn't want them, and so they ended up going
to the SEC. And then TexasA and M. We know all the
history of the rank or between Texasand Texas A and M, and how
the rivalry is going to be reborn. So that's kind of a shortened version.

(10:52):
Believe me, it's much longer,many more layers, and much involved,
much more involved than that with regardto why the Southwest Conference went away
and why the Big Twelve Conference formed. And it's a new time. It's
a new era, not only forTexas obviously and Oklahoma going into the SEC,

(11:13):
but for the Big Twelve, addingUtah, adding Colorado, or Colorado
returning and adding Arizona and Arizona Stateand having brought in Cincinnati and West Virginia
and UCF having brought those schools inback a few years ago. So that's
why it's going to be interesting tosee where how the Big Twelve does going

(11:33):
forward. They're very optimistic that they'llcontinue to be big. There was a
there was also a story today fromoh it was a Colorado fans site,
but it came from some speculation onthe radio in still Water, Oklahoma,

(11:56):
that the Big Twelve was poised toadd add Florida State and Clemson and at
least four other schools and maybe more. Was the way it was described.
Nothing really to substantiate the claim,but it made for more conversations for sure.
Okay, I promise we'll get tosome of those quarterback numbers, ratings.
I wanted to answer Cbe's question.Heed add it up for a bit,

(12:18):
so I wanted to get to that. But we'll continue right here on
Sports Radio AM thirteen under the Zoneand the iHeartRadio app