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SWC refugees embrace exile in C-USA, MWC
By JOHN McFARLAND
Associated Press Writer
DALLAS � For former Southern Methodist star
Craig James, one night best typifies the passion and tradition of the
Southwest Conference.
The unbeaten Mustangs took national
championship hopes into their last conference game of 1982 against an 8-1
Arkansas team coached by Lou Holtz. The game drew 65,000 fans to Texas
Stadium � more than the Dallas Cowboys attracted for any game that season �
and many were wearing Razorbacks colors.
``It was very intense,'' James said of the
17-17 tie, the only blemish on SMU's 11-0-1 season. ``My brother was walking
out of the tunnel and his shirt was all ripped up. I asked him what happened
and he said, 'I got in a fight with some Arkansas fans.' ''
No conference game since has meant so much for
SMU. The same is true for Texas Christian, Houston and Rice, which were also
left on the fringes of big-time football after the SWC's 81st and final
season a decade ago. The conference dissolved when Texas, Texas A&M, Texas
Tech and Baylor jumped to the Big 12.
Since then, the SWC's Forgotten Four have
fallen from a stable, elite league into the vast midsection of Division I-A
football, missing out on millions of dollars in bowl and television revenue
while playing before smaller crowds in ever-changing conferences against
faraway foes.
But all four have new hope this season.
TCU, by far the most successful of the group,
is now in the Mountain West Conference. The Horned Frogs think their third
conference in five years moves them closer to the high end of I-A and the
lucrative Bowl Championship Series.
Houston, Rice and SMU have been reunited in
the latest incarnation of Conference USA, hoping a strong national presence
and renewed regional rivalries can boost attendance, TV coverage and
recruiting.
Still, none of the schools has fully recovered
from the SWC breakup, which came amid a 1990's realignment frenzy that
preceded formation of the BCS.
The biggest hit has been financial. It's tough
to say exactly how much money the schools have lost since being snubbed by
the Big 12 and other major conferences. School officials declined to release
football income figures, but losses are easily in the millions.
``You're talking about money at the gate,
television money, bowl money,'' Houston athletic director Dave Maggard said.
``You're talking millions of dollars annually.''
The most obvious difference is income from the
BCS, the system designed to line up the best teams from the biggest
conferences for the highest-paying bowls. Last year, for example, the Big 12
was guaranteed more than $14 million to split between its members. C-USA and
the Mountain West were each guaranteed about $1 million.
The breakup hasn't hurt as much on the field.
Each of the castoffs except SMU has benefited from no longer being fodder
for Texas and Texas A&M.
TCU, which just left C-USA, had just one
co-championship and five winning seasons in the SWC's final 30 years. Now
the Frogs have played in a bowl six of the past seven years.
Some even credit the SWC's fall for the
school's rise. Former athletic director Eric Hyman recalled a prominent TCU
official praising the breakup as the only way for the private Fort Worth
school to build its program.
``I looked at him like he had three eyes,''
said Hyman, now South Carolina's AD. ``Ultimately though, if you look at the
program now, he was right on target.''
The Frogs jumped to a 10-0 start in 2003, rose
to No. 6 in the BCS rankings and sparked a national debate about whether a
smaller-conference team should play in a BCS bowl. They ended up losing
their 11th game, and new MWC rival Utah went on to become the first BCS
buster in 2004.
That gives new AD Danny Morrison reason to
believe TCU picked the right league. The BCS plans to re-evaluate automatic
berths starting in 2008, and Morrison says the Mountain West could be a
logical choice.
``All I'm saying is the conference is
well-positioned to have an opportunity to move into that select company at
some point,'' he said.
The timetable is shorter for Houston.
``Our goal is to be right back as a national
program � today,'' Maggard said.
It might sound too optimistic, but consider
Houston's history. The Cougars were the last to join the SWC, arriving in
1976 and promptly winning a share of the title and the Cotton Bowl. After
the SWC folded, Houston tied for first in C-USA's first season and went to
the Liberty Bowl.
It's been up and down since for the Cougars,
who were last in the national spotlight when Andre Ware and David Klingler
were racking up ridiculous passing statistics in the late 1980's and early
'90's.
Houston is in the same C-USA division with
Rice, SMU, Texas-El Paso, Tulane and Tulsa.
Rice coach Ken Hatfield, who won two SWC
titles as Arkansas' coach, said regional rivalries will draw fans and
recruits.
``Texas players naturally get fired up to play
other Texas players,'' he said. ``The Boises, the Fresnos, Hawaii � they
didn't even know where Texas is.''
The Owls had three winning years in nine WAC
seasons, a major improvement over their 28 straight losing seasons in the
SWC's later years.
SMU was a power of the early Southwest
Conference and won league titles in the 1980's with James and Eric
Dickerson. But the Mustangs were hit with the only death penalty ever handed
out by the NCAA in 1987, and the end of the SWC made a bad situation even
worse.
The Mustangs have had one winning record since
'87, and they lost a school-worst 15 straight games from 2002-03.
Coach Phil Bennett, an SWC player and coach
who is 6-29 at SMU, said the breakup was more of a concern when he was hired
than the death penalty. It's a view shared by others.
``The death penalty is something you can
overcome in a couple years,'' James said, ``but you can't overcome being
left out of the Big 12.''
Copyright 2005 The Associated
Press. All rights rights reserved.
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02/23/2007 10:42:57 AM
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