Friday Flashback: Remembering the Southwest Conference

Should Texas A&M bolt the Big 12 for the greener (in more ways than one) pastures of the SEC, it will feel like watching a couple with whom one is great friends break up non-amicably. A&M and Texas continued their partnership for nearly two decades after the split of the Southwest Conference. Yet off-field tensions between the two have grown to the point the marriage looks more like one held together solely for the sake of the kids — e.g., the conference.

A&M led the charge against the Longhorn Network’s intrinsic recruiting edge and perhaps not coincidentally is the first of the 10-team Big 12 to seek divorce. It wasn’t always this way. There were happier times, times when the rivalry was fought on football fields and not in board rooms.

In the days of the Southwest Conference, A&M-UT shone as bright as any pairing in the nation.

Something about the SWC still today seems right. In it, there existed a conference comprised solely of Texas programs; Texas, the land where football is king. The SWC was a family, and like any family had its black sheep: the one non-Texas based university, Arkansas.

UA felt particularly out of place in my youth, because in what now feels like an ironic twist, the Razorbacks just weren’t up to snuff with their Lone Star counterparts the final years of the partnership. Arkansas won just a single SWC game in 1990 despite being just a year removed from winning two league titles. That campaign, UA took advantage of SMU in its anemic, Death Penalty state for the sole victory. The next year, the Hogs were exactly .500 and subsequently wooed to be South Carolina’s western counterpart in joining a restructured SEC.

Parallels between Arkansas then and A&M now jump out immediately, largely because of the SEC factor. But UA going to the SEC then was more similar to Colorado or Nebraska leaving the Big 12 now. It was a partner lost, sure, and signaled plenty trouble to come. But in terms of diminishing the brand? The SWC held its head high and championed on.

And why not? Yes, it had lost a member. But it was just a few years removed from producing the Heisman Trophy winner, Houston’s Andre Ware. Those Cougar teams were among the best and most exciting of the era. The conference also boasted a program that through the 1980s maintained a high level of performance that carried into the early ’90s. That program? Texas A&M.

A&M was SWC champion from 1985 through 1987, remained near the top the following three campaigns, then rattled off another title trifecta from 1992 through 1994. The second run of Aggie championships would have been four straight were it not for a single point in the 1990 rivalry game vs. Texas.

The Aggies would recover from the loss by burying Heisman winner Ty Detmer’s BYU Cougars in the Holiday Bowl, while UT got embarrassed by Randall “The Thrill” Hill and Miami in the Cotton Bowl.

That 1990 season exemplifies the spark of the old SWC that never quite existed when members of that conference joined the Big 8. The need for bigger television contracts and fewer hangers-on forced the schools’ hands. Houston, Rice, and SMU were not going to aid any long-term plans. UH had joined SMU as a cellar dweller by the conference’s end, and Rice was never much more than a middling nuisance; by no means on level with the Aggies and Longhorns.

It’s fitting the final SWC game ever played in 1995 featured A&M and UT.

However, lipping through SWC record books and reminiscing on the times that once were, it’s fair to question what A&M-UT ever had.

The connection that was once there with the Longhorns is seemingly extinguished, and perhaps was never burned that brightly in the first place. In Arkansas, A&M can rekindle an old flame. The A&M powerhouses of the ’80s were jockeying for position with the Razorbacks, not the Longhorns.

Earlier today, this blog lamented the likely transformation of football conferences into mammoth monstrosities of up to 16 teams. Long gone are the days of conference membership entailing an odd combination of bitter rivalry and respectful camaraderie. Now, conference membership is about one thing: money.

The SWC died because of money. The UHs, Rices and SMUs were incapable of pulling their share of revenue, and ironically the same is now true of the SWC refugees’ refuge. Any hope Texas would ever reunite is gone, and the idea clung to that UT-A&M was a meaningful partnership has vanished.

To be fair, conference alignment was actually always about money. In years past, regionally drawn leagues were drawn with the goal of saving money though as opposed to making it by the truck full. Indeed, it has always been a financially motivated endeavor, but something about the former feels more noble in retrospect. Such is nostalgia, which increasingly becomes the only bridge between progress and the ideal of days gone by.