Southwest Conference Remembered for Its Glory, Demise

Actually, if you look last football season, arguable, the Southwest Conference would have been coming off of a pretty impressive season. Six of the nine old SWC teams reached bowl games, going 3-3. That's if you count the Texas Bowl, where Texas Christian beat Houston, giving the conference a win and a losing.

It would have had a Heisman Trophy runner-up in Arkansas' Darren McFadden. Two years ago, it would have even had a national champion with Texas.

But looking at several of the preseason football polls, particularly from Scout.com, the SWC would have probably been looking at a down year, with only Texas Tech and Texas receiving any attention in the Top 25 polls, with courtesy consideration given to Texas A&M and Arkansas.

Houston, though, is expected to be one of the top teams again in Conference USA while Texas Christian is viewed as one of the challengers for the Mountain West title again.

For those who have forgotten (or would like to forget) the Southwest Conference, let me take you down memory lane. The SWC was one of the oldest conferences in the country, starting in 1914 and charter members included Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Southwestern University (Texas) and Rice.

Oklahoma and Oklahoma State left shortly after the conference was formed and the bulk of those schools histories are connected to the old Big 8 (now Big 12) Conference. Southwestern proved too small to compete and dropped out shortly as well.

Southern Methodist joined in 1914, Texas Christian in 1923 and Texas Tech in 1958, forming the conference lineup in his heyday of football glory that included nine national championships. Houston joined in the 1970s, bringing its long successful basketball history to the conference, but ironically, the Cougars won the coveted football title during the first year it was eligible to compete for the crown in 1976.

Probably the most fabled football game in Southwest Conference history, according to the Orange County Register, and one of the most memorable in the nation, came on Dec. 6, 1969 when No. 1 Texas went to Fayetteville to battle No. 2 Arkansas to take the top ranking into the bowl season. Both teams were undefeated at 9-0 and the game was attended by President Richard Nixon and future president George H.W. Bush, who was U.S. Representative in Texas at the time.

The Longhorns scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns and a two-point conversion for a come-from-behind 15-14 victory. Texas then beat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl to claim the national championship.

The Southwest Conference, like all major football conferences in the South during that era, did not allow blacks on the football team. That decision came back to haunt the conference as schools from the Big 10 and Pac 10 established pipelines for the state's best African-American talent. Many of those pipelines continued after the Southwest Conference schools and teams were desegregated.

Jerry Levias, from Beaumont, Texas, was the first black to play in the Southwest Conference when he accepted a scholarship to Southern Methodist in 1965. He played wide receiver was became an All-American by his senior year in 1968. He went on to play for the Houston Oilers and San Diego Chargers and in 2003 was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, some people will remember the Southwest Conference's ugly demise. The Texas schools were finding it ever more difficult to hold on to the state's best natural resource since oil -- it's high school football talent.

In 1987, Southern Methodist's was hit with the rarely used NCAA "Death Penalty" for repeated violation of association rules and the football team was disbanded for one year, according to the Dallas Morning News. That along with dwindling attendance figures across the conference began the decline. By the time the conference disbanded, more than half of the members suffered various penalties from the NCAA for recruiting violations.

When Arkansas bolted to the Southeastern Conference in 1990, most experts saw it as the eventual end of the conference, according to the New York Times. Three years later, Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech announced that it would join the Big 8 in 1996, effectively killing the conference. Those moves started a chain reaction of realignments in Division I conferences that continues to this day.

Houston, Rice and SMU are now members of Conference USA while TCU went west to the Western Athletic Conference and then the Mountain West.

For fans, the Southwest Conference was truly a great ride and the fans still see the teams as one, even though they are now spread over four difference conferences.

Old SWC bowl appearances in 2007:
*Pacific Life Holiday Bowl -- Texas 52, Arizona State 34.
*Texas Bowl -- Texas Christian 20, Houston 13.
*Valero Bowl -- Penn State 24, Texas A&M 17.
*Cotton Bowl -- Missouri 38, Arkansas 7.
*Konica Minolta Gator Bowl -- Texas Tech 31, Virginia 38.