I Miss the Southwest Conference

Several thousand miles separate me from the land of my birth, so obviously I am not on the scene. My feel for what’s happening in the USA in the summer of 2016 is a bit shaky. That applies to numerous issues—Donald Trump winning the Republican presidential nomination, cops killing citizens, citizens killing cops, the rising number of homeless people and five years of El Nino‒sponsored drought in the West, for example—but I speak here of something less weighty, intercollegiate athletics.

I no longer attend football games at Memorial Stadium or basketball games at the Erwin Center, and I don’t read the Austin American-Statesman sports page as I did in the old days. However, I am not completely out of the loop. I keep up with things via the online versions of the New York Times, Sports Illustrated and ESPN. I have a general idea of what’s going on with the UT Longhorns and their various competitors.

Nothing stays the same

Change is a constant, but stability has its place. These, I admit, are the words of a man in his seventh decade. More and more, the fast-evolving world of big-time college sports alienates me. I have said before that I am irked by teams abjuring their school colors. The money involved is obscene, with head football coaches’ salaries dwarfing those of the presidents of the universities. Games are more frequently held off campus; Alabama and Wisconsin played at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium in 2015, for instance. The facilities, built or enhanced by tax-deductible donations, are on a scale inconceivable not so long ago. The players (were they ever really “student-athletes”?) are mercenaries with only the flimsiest involvement with the schools they purportedly attend. During Johnny Manziel‘s sophomore year at Texas A&M, his education consisted of online classes. Kentucky’s basketball program has taken the one-and-done concept to the extreme. Former Texas coach Rick Barnes, now at Tennessee, really yanked my chain a few years ago with a statement meant to woo recruits: “I’m not trying to win a national championship at UT so much as prepare my players for the NBA.”

College jocks having trouble with the law is surely not a new phenomenon, but it seems to have gotten out of hand as the schools and local police departments are in cahoots to cover up for these bad boys. One can hardly find a better example than Baylor University, where over a five-year period numerous football players committed rapes or other forms of sexual abuse but remained eligible to play on Saturday afternoon. God-fearing Baptists, indeed.

It started with the Hogs leaving

Perhaps too sentimental for my own good, I find that I miss the Southwest Conference (1914‒1996, although its dissolution began in 1991 when the Arkansas Razorbacks left for the SEC). I’m not saying I want to return to the old days when black athletes were excluded and black coaches were inconceivable. Not in the least. I have contempt for cowardly coaches like Bear Bryant of Texas A&M, Jess Neely of Rice, Darrell Royal of Texas and Frank Broyles of Arkansas who were happy to go on season after season with Jim Crow football. Maintaining the racial status quo was more important to them than winning games and championships. And let’s not even talk about social justice.

When I was a boy growing up in east Dallas, we knew only the SWC. What players would be all-conference, and who would win the league title and play in the Cotton Bowl? Such questions had our undivided attention, although of course we were aware of the Big 8, the Big 10, the Pacific Coast Conference, the SEC and the ACC, not to mention Notre Dame, the ultimate media darling. There was a Humble filling station near our house, and it gave out small pennants for each of the SWC schools with that year’s schedule printed on the back. I had one of each—the SMU Mustangs in blue and red, the TCU Horned Frogs in purple and white, the Texas Tech Red Raiders in red and black, and so forth. Being young and impressionable, I was thrilled. Add to that Bill McClanahan’s witty cartoons in the Dallas Morning News and Kern Tips’ golden-throated announcing of conference games on TV and radio; we had a good thing going in the SWC.

Dissolution

I suppose it was a bit insular. Other than Arkansas, every school was in the state of Texas. Then again, Texas was—and still is, to some extent—different. Football culture was deeply embedded in the Lone Star State. I have no wish to delve into the various and painful factors that led to the conference breaking up in the mid-1990s. But I was offended that only four schools (Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech) joined the Big 8 to form the Big 12. Oh, we had some weak sisters? What conference does not? Since when are Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State, long-time members of the Big 8, football powerhouses? Nobody told them to hit the road.

I had become reconciled to the idea of this conference merger and wanted it to succeed until 2011 when Texas A&M left for the Southeastern Conference (Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska also left of their own accord, to the Pac-10, SEC and Big 10, respectively). If any two schools have ever had a stronger love-hate relationship than UT and A&M, go ahead and name them. The Horns and Aggies would stay together, regardless of conference affiliation. So I assumed, and then the unthinkable happened. For reasons of their own—and one possibility is that they wanted to declare their independence from UT—the Ags departed. Although I could never have spent my student days in College Station, I respect and admire the Aggies. On Thanksgiving Day in even-numbered years, I used to go to Congress Avenue and watch them march up to the Capitol and then on to the stadium. It was a majestic scene.

No need to get all teary-eyed

The world is in flux, I know that. Some things that once seemed carved in stone have been tossed aside. We can adjust or we can perish, or at least become irrelevant. I have no idea who is favored to win the Big 12 football championship this year, although it’s unlikely to be the Longhorns who have been in an extended swoon. As for hoops, I am completely uninformed. Living abroad has afforded me a perspective I sure did not have back in the States. Even so, please cut me a little slack if I get wistful about the old Southwest Conference.