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Explain to me what killed the SWC?

Laxtonto

By Laxtonto
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Laxtonto

Laxtonto 13328

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Posted

I was a wee tyke back then when the SWC went away and the Big 8 merged with the rest to form the Big 12. 
 

I was always told the SWC died because there was no $$ in the tv deal (especially after SMU and A&M NCAA issues) and everyone knew the writing was on the wall.

Now all I see is aggy claiming Texas killed the SWC and now the Big 12.

So what was the story? The real story, not the Arky version, or the aggy version, or the   Big 8 version. 
 

We are all adult enough here for the full fledged adult version.

Explain to me what killed the SWC?

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Pato del Muerto

Pato del Muerto 53589

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It was a super regional conference. Big 8 was regional and had issues, but even with Arkansas the swc was almost all Texas schools. Arkansas leaving just made it worse, but they left for that reason. Just didn’t work anymore. Both regionality issues got solved by creating the big 12, though some swc teams had to be sacrificed to keep the state of Texas imbalance from being too severe.  So it got halved.  
politics then helped decide who got the axe. 

Edited by Pato del Muerto
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TexArcher

TexArcher 39077

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2 minutes ago, Shaddie said:

Aggy and SMU got caught red handed paying players. Not the odd booster here or there. Institutional cheating. 

Yep, they were racing for the death penalty and SMU won.

And my understanding is that the only reason aggy didn't get the death penalty when they were caught cheating again under Slocum in the early 90s is that the NCAA vowed to never use the death penalty again after seeing what it did to SMU.

It's also my understanding that to this day, aggy is still the only school that has received the Lack of Institutional Control violation twice.  

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Armybrat

Armybrat 41443

Posted
Posted (edited)
10 minutes ago, Shaddie said:

Aggy and SMU got caught red handed paying players. Not the odd booster here or there. Institutional cheating. 

Governor Bill Clements (on the SMU BoR) was in on the player payment  plan.

After they were busted, he even asked the other regents if they should continue to pay the players. You know.... to “honor” their contracts. (True story).

Edited by Armybrat
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Armybrat

Armybrat 41443

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3 minutes ago, Tex Pete said:

Right. TV, but SMU and aggy started the ball rolling. They blame us because they were cheating their asses off and got caught. 

aggy was hit with two separate bowl bans in the period. Shameless, dirty cheating sumbitches with a fake school motto that means diddlyshit. 

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Beantown Express 2.0

Beantown Express 2.0 6598

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Posted (edited)

Cheating didn’t kill it.  It didn’t help but it wasn’t the reason the SWC ended.  It was the TV money plain and simple.  Once Arky left it was just a TX conference.  Not a lot of money in that for the TV networks.  Plus schools like TCU, SMU, Rice and Houston were a drag on the conference as far as being small schools with limited resources.  Texas and A&M could carry the state of Texas for the tv networks on their own so there was no need for the conference really.  Merging with the Big 8 made sense at the time just like joining the SEC makes sense now.  Sadly I still have a SWC championship ring from when I was in school.  Doesn’t fit my fat fingers anymore so it sits on a shelf in the closet.  In Philadelphia it’s probably worth fifty bucks.

Edited by Beantown Express 2.0
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Laxtonto

Laxtonto 13328

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So how many big bagman groups were happening all at once? SMU vs A&M I know about to an extent, but what is this about TCU? How dirty was the old SWC? My memories as a kid are all about things on the field. I didn’t get into the business side of sports until well into college…

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Tex Pete

Tex Pete 21514

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3 minutes ago, Shaddie said:

Not sure if I remember this right but didn’t ATM also get tv ban and we had to play somebody else on Thanksgiving one time? Or maybe the game just wasn’t on tv that year?

We had to play Baylor on TV because of those cheating sons of bitches. 

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Huckleberry

Huckleberry 34749

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3 minutes ago, Shaddie said:

Not sure if I remember this right but didn’t ATM also get tv ban and we had to play somebody else on Thanksgiving one time? Or maybe the game just wasn’t on tv that year?

Yes. That's why we played Baylor on Thanksgiving in back to back years.

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hookem48

hookem48 4857

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1 minute ago, Laxtonto said:

So how many big bagman groups were happening all at once? SMU vs A&M I know about to an extent, but what is this about TCU? How dirty was the old SWC? My memories as a kid are all about things on the field. I didn’t get into the business side of sports until well into college…

I remember seeing an interview years and years ago with a defensive end (don't remember the name) that played at Houston and the interviewer saying he was told some players got $100,000 in the SWC days.  The player answered if all you got was that you sucked.  Could have been talking shit, I don't know.

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hookem48

hookem48 4857

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25 minutes ago, Shaddie said:

Aggy and SMU got caught red handed paying players. Not the odd booster here or there. Institutional cheating. 

wasn't it an olineman at SMU that snitched on the whole thing because he wasn't starting or some shit?

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Pato del Muerto

Pato del Muerto 53589

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4 minutes ago, hookem48 said:

I remember seeing an interview years and years ago with a defensive end (don't remember the name) that played at Houston and the interviewer saying he was told some players got $100,000 in the SWC days.  The player answered if all you got was that you sucked.  Could have been talking shit, I don't know.

There was also the line about John concack having to take a pay cut when he got drafted into the nba. 

Edited by Pato del Muerto
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Surly Bevo

Surly Bevo 25778

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5 minutes ago, hookem48 said:

wasn't it an olineman at SMU that snitched on the whole thing because he wasn't starting or some shit?

David Stanley yes...he was injured, developed substance abuse problem, got cut from team then substance abuse problem found out and lost his ride all the way....found his way to Dale Hansen.

It should be noted that SMU had already gotten in trouble with the NCAA over paying players, what Stanley helped Dale expose was that they had not stopped...even after they said they did.  

Edited by Surly Bevo
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TrashMaster G

TrashMaster G 18134

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1 minute ago, hornmpa96 said:

Also close to 50% of the conference being small private schools isn’t a recipe for success.

Yes. This along with the Texas-only footprint and the breakup of the CFA. Once the CFA became history, tv became much more important as more and more game were televised.  The SWC and the Big8 both had the same lack of tv sets problem. 

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KaiserSoze

KaiserSoze 1018

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40 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

So how many big bagman groups were happening all at once? SMU vs A&M I know about to an extent, but what is this about TCU? How dirty was the old SWC? My memories as a kid are all about things on the field. I didn’t get into the business side of sports until well into college…

I spent a year working on a SMU death penalty documentary (Pony Excess- the series finale of the original ESPN 30 for 30) and was present for most interviews we did for the film + countless discussions with people who were involved during that era from all SWC conference schools.

It became very clear that all schools had substantial "big bagman" groups, except maybe Rice. 

Edited by KaiserSoze
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Laxtonto

Laxtonto 13328

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Just now, KaiserSoze said:

I spent a year working on a SMU death penalty documentary (Pony Excess- the series finale of the original ESPN 30 for 30) and was present for most interviews we did for the film + countless discussions with people who were involved during that area from all SWC conference schools.

It became very clear that all schools had substantial "big bagman" groups, except maybe Rice. 

I would love to hear your first hand views, especially regarding what didn’t make the documentary 

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 32106

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17 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

David Stanley yes...he was injured, developed substance abuse problem, got cut from team then substance abuse problem found out and lost his ride all the way....found his way to Dale Hansen.

It should be noted that SMU had already gotten in trouble with the NCAA over paying players, what Stanley helped Dale expose was that they had not stopped...even after they said they did.  

Stanley was an LB, fwiw.

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hpslugga

hpslugga 4097

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41 minutes ago, Tex Pete said:

Right. TV, but SMU and aggy started the ball rolling. They blame us because they were cheating their asses off and got caught. 

Exactly. Anyone who seriously believes Texas had anything to do whatsoever for the SWC’s demise is using circular reasoning to argue backwards to an assumed conclusion. It’s a form of self-deception, if you think about it. 

There was an article on ESPN not long ago about this and it also spelled out the TV share in this way: elite conferences can deal with having 1 or 2 private schools. That’s fine. When the SWC broke up:

The PAC 10 had 2 private schools (Stanford, USC)

The SEC had 1 (Vandy)

The Big 10 had 2 (Purdue and Northwestern)

The ACC had 2 (Duke and Wake Forest)

The Big East had 2 (Miami and BC)

The SWC had 4 public (Texas, A&M, Tech and Houston) and 4 private (Baylor, Rice, SMU, TCU). That’s an unsustainable model, and it’s one of the big reasons it died. The series of probations levied by the NCAA against several SWC schools in the 80’s didn’t help, the death penalty of SMU even less so, etc. 

When you make a conference’s existence almost entirely dependent on two of its members, you’ve got yourself a shit conference. 

Would the PAC 12 survive if USC and UCLA left? Probably 

Would the SEC survive if Alabama and LSU left? Maybe but that would be devastating 

Would the B1G survive if Ohio State and Michigan left? I really don’t think so, but they’ve been far more proactive in expanding the conference to mitigate that reality in the past decade than the fucking Big 12 has (and let’s face it, those two aren’t going anywhere).

Would the ACC survive if Clemson and Florida State left? See SEC

Some are arguable, but the SWC and Big 12 were not arguable. The SWC needed Texas and A&M to survive. The Big 12 needed Texas and Oklahoma to survive. When that happens, you don’t blame half of the teams in he conference depends on for survival; you blame the conference for depending on them in the first place. 

 

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clapclapclap

clapclapclap 9000

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Posted (edited)

Tangent:  Was listening to SiriusXM's college sports channel on Friday, and they were interviewing 'The voice of Ohio State.'  He sounded exactly like a young Dale Hansen.

(No idea if his sidekick sounds like a young Brad Sham, but that would be cool.)

Edited by clapclapclap
For our whippersnappers, Dale Hansen was a Dallas TV sports reporter/anchor that broke the SMU story.
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Hate

Hate 20259

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Laxtonto said:

So how many big bagman groups were happening all at once? SMU vs A&M I know about to an extent, but what is this about TCU? How dirty was the old SWC? My memories as a kid are all about things on the field. I didn’t get into the business side of sports until well into college…

TCU was #1 in the country under Jim Wacker. They had a great running back named Kenneth Davis who would have been the Heisman front runner in 1985 (I think) when he was suspended for the rest of the season and his career as it came to light TCU had been paying him.  IIRC.

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DougO

DougO 5268

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The Big 8 was a shit conference. OU and Nebraska at their peak and a bunch of doormats, most of the time. it should have been the other way around, SWC absorbing part of the 8. But the cheating scandals by so many schools doomed them.

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DeadArmadillo

DeadArmadillo 907

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18 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

Exactly. Anyone who seriously believes Texas had anything to do whatsoever for the SWC’s demise is using circular reasoning to argue backwards to an assumed conclusion. It’s a form of self-deception, if you think about it. 

There was an article on ESPN not long ago about this and it also spelled out the TV share in this way: elite conferences can deal with having 1 or 2 private schools. That’s fine. When the SWC broke up:

The PAC 10 had 2 private schools (Stanford, USC)

The SEC had 1 (Vandy)

The Big 10 had 2 (Purdue and Northwestern)

The ACC had 2 (Duke and Wake Forest)

The Big East had 2 (Miami and BC)

The SWC had 4 public (Texas, A&M, Tech and Houston) and 4 private (Baylor, Rice, SMU, TCU). That’s an unsustainable model, and it’s one of the big reasons it died. The series of probations levied by the NCAA against several SWC schools in the 80’s didn’t help, the death penalty of SMU even less so, etc. 

When you make a conference’s existence almost entirely dependent on two of its members, you’ve got yourself a shit conference. 

Would the PAC 12 survive if USC and UCLA left? Probably 

Would the SEC survive if Alabama and LSU left? Maybe but that would be devastating 

Would the B1G survive if Ohio State and Michigan left? I really don’t think so, but they’ve been far more proactive in expanding the conference to mitigate that reality in the past decade than the fucking Big 12 has (and let’s face it, those two aren’t going anywhere).

Would the ACC survive if Clemson and Florida State left? See SEC

Some are arguable, but the SWC and Big 12 were not arguable. The SWC needed Texas and A&M to survive. The Big 12 needed Texas and Oklahoma to survive. When that happens, you don’t blame half of the teams in he conference depends on for survival; you blame the conference for depending on them in the first place. 

 

fwiw, Purdue is public.  A land grant school.  The ag school of Indiana

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Valmy77

Valmy77 13626

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Lack of TV. Both the Big 8 and the SWC were lagging behind with limited markets. The SWC had a ridiculous amount of small private schools: TCU, Rice, SMU, and Baylor that is half the conference. None of the other major conferences at the time had more than maybe one or two. You had three big state schools: A&M, UT, and Tech.

Then you had the oddball that is UH, a big state school with zero interest from Houston. It would get pretty embarrassing how few fucks Houston gave about them even when they were really good. I seem to recall a Yates playoff game in the Astrodome outdrawing them when they were a exciting nationally ranked run-n-shoot team. It was ridiculous.

So you had this situation where the big state schools were having their resources drained to support five schools with not very many fans, and thus were falling farther and farther behind everybody else.

The Big 8 had zero private schools, only big state schools but also was falling behind because they had few major markets.

So naturally we both had a problem and forming some kind of alliance made sense. I think the initial plan was to form some kind of two conference league with the Arkansas-less SWC basically remaining intact but I think eventually it was decided that was too much of a drain on everybody.

It was just a casualty of the cut-throat business of College Football. Even if nobody cheated I think its days were numbered. As I guess the Big 12 itself soon will be.

Edited by Valmy77
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Paul Wesley

Paul Wesley 3313

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1 hour ago, Laxtonto said:

Now all I see is aggy claiming Texas killed the SWC and now the Big 12.

 

I've seen that too.  It's silly. 

Lots of good answers on this thread already.  I think we were just starting to see TV money start to wag the dog (dictate everything that happens in college football).  And Texas was stuck in a tiny little 1-state footprint with a lot of schools that commanded zero television sets.  It became an undeniable factor in watching Texas high school talent leave the state. 

It didn't help that, at the time (mid- and late-80's) we were not only competing with bigger, better network deals, we were also competing with some of the most flagrant cheaters in the history of college sports (Switzer's Sooners, Sherill and Slocum's aggies, the fucking governor's SMU Mustangs). 

If you were to make a list of the top 100 things that killed the SWC, "Texas" wouldn't be on it.

 

edit:  stuck in a 2-state conference until Arkansas bailed... then a 1-state conference with no hope of generating TV money like the Big 10, SEC, and PAC10. 

Edited by Paul Wesley
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Tex Pete

Tex Pete 21514

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4 minutes ago, Moby Ric said:

Everybody was cheating like mad, ever team was pretty good.  SMU got the death penalty, every team stopped the cheating and the product started to get stale.  Merger needed.

If Texas was cheating, we were doing a terrible job of it. 

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Valmy77

Valmy77 13626

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I do recall asking a Houston sports fan why he didn't care at all about UH or Rice during the SWC days and his response was "well do people in Austin care about Huston Tillotson or Concordia Lutheran games?"

I mean nevermind the fact that neither school even had a football team, but that is a pretty damning comparison to what were supposed to be major conference big time athletic programs. I was also kind of impressed he had even heard of those two schools.

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