Whatever Happened to This Conference?? - The Southwest Conference

Conference realignment is seemingly never going away in college football and it has become a topic of constant conversation. We currently have conferences seemingly on the brink of either ceasing operations completely or becoming realigned in a way that doesn’t make geographical sense (or some already have). We’re talking about a Major Power Five conference potentially being broadcast on random networks or potentially being put behind a streaming service paywall. Due to this uncertainty, we started to wonder what happened to conferences in college football’s past and how they fell out of the picture. We will take a brief tour of some defunct conferences, explore their members, give a brief summary on how the conference fell apart and where everyone wound up after the conference disbanded.  

The Southwest Conference

The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma and Arkansas. For most of its history, the core members of the conference were Texas-based schools plus one in Arkansas: Baylor University, Rice University, Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M University, Texas Christian University, Texas Tech University, the University of Arkansas and the University of Texas at Austin.

We beveled the old SWC Conference Logo

Southwest Conference Timeline

In 1914, the sitting Athletic Director of the University of Texas, At Austin, L. Theo Bellmont sent letters to many schools in the Lone Star State seeking to create a conference that would cover the state and neighboring states' large programs. With the letters sent by March 1, 1914, all the recipients responded favorably, and the meeting was set for them to meet and hash out the details. However, this did not go as planned, as the conference was waiting for several schools outside of the state to respond. The SWC originally wanted Louisiana State University (LSU) and the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) to join the conference as well, but they declined to do so. Eventually, eight teams signed on to be in the emerging conference: Texas, Texas A&M, Rice, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma A&M (Now Oklahoma State), Arkansas, and Southwestern University.

Not long after the start of the conference, there was attrition. After the inaugural two seasons, Southwestern University left the conference in 1916 and then eventually disbanded their football program after 1951. (They have since been reinstated in the early 2000s and currently play in the NAIA)

The Southwestern Pirates in NAIA Football based out of Georgetown, TX (beveled of course)

Rice University left the conference in 1916, only to rejoin in 1918.

In 1918, SMU joined the SWC at the same time as Rice rejoined.

Oklahoma left in 1919 to join the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (eventally later known as the Big Eight Conference after futher shuffling). They joined (at the time of conference entry) Drake, Grinnell, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska & Washington University in St. Louis.

In 1920, Phillips University (Enid, Oklahoma) joined for one season but then left. The university closed in 1998.

We found this logo of Phillips Univerisity below but cannot verify what their mascot was but we thought it was funny it says PU and it’s a skunk.

Texas Christian University (TCU) joined in 1923.

In 1925, Oklahoma A&M (now known as Oklahoma State) left the SWC to rejoin Oklahoma in the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (eventually later known as the Big Eight Conference).

The SWC Operated with 7 teams from 1923-1956 until they added an 8th team in 1956 with Texas Tech. The Red Raiders left the Border Conference that year to join the SWC as it’s 8th member.

In 1972, the final member to join was the University of Houston raising the SWC to it’s high water mark of 9 teams.

One big happy SWC Mascot family, beveled of course.

The Cougars joined for Olympic Sports first and then in 1976 for Football.

We found this graphic to be really strange that it included Houston in 1971. The Cougars remained Independent until 1976 when they joined the SWC. We found it on Pinterest and it looked cool to bevel so there is our explanation.

Total Southwest Conference Championships

• Texas - 27 (19 outright)

• Texas A&M - 17 (15)

• Arkansas - 14 (7)

• SMU - 11 (9)

• TCU - 9 (7)

• Baylor - 7 (5)

• Rice - 7 (4)

• Houston - 4 (1)

• Texas Tech - 2 (0)

• Oklahoma - 1 (0) 1915*

The Southwest Conference Breaks Up

Throughout the 1980’s all of the programs in SWC were subject to NCAA sanctions except Rice, Arkansas, and Baylor. The SWC in the 1980’s were a culture of excess but that led to each one of the NCAA sanctions becoming progressively more severe. This culminated in the NCAA issuing a complete ban on the SMU Mustangs Football program and barring them from play in the 1987 season, the so-called “Death Penalty”. This action prevented the Mustangs from having a season in 1987, allowing only conditioning drills. The knock-on effect was that all home games in 1988 were canceled and SMU chose to cancel their away games as well. The team was banned from all live Television games and bowl games until 1989 and could not have on-site visits until 1988. This decimated the Mustangs program and had a profound effect on the rest of the SWC. The conference's market share in television coverage dwindled. SMU remained on probation through 1990.

We’re not blaming this conference breakup on only SMU, as the SWC had many other problems. The SWC's performance in football declined precipitously and was hampered by the NCAA probation and sanctions. The last SWC football champion to win a bowl game was Texas A&M, who beat Notre Dame in the 1988 Cotton Bowl Classic. The final eight SWC champions lost in their bowl games. After SMU's second-place finish in most polls in 1982, SWC programs usually were not serious contenders for the national title. Texas, Arkansas and Texas A&M had strong teams periodically throughout the 1980s and early 1990s but by the end of their respective seasons, none of these football teams were able to remain in the national championship hunt.

In 1990, Arkansas announced its departure for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) marking the beginning of the end for the Southwest Conference. Arkansas left in 1992 for the Southeastern Conference.

In 1994, Baylor, Texas Tech, Texas, and Texas A&M agreed to join the in Big Eight (another separate conference) to create the Big XII Conference starting in 1996.

SMU, TCU, and Rice all joined the Western Athletic Conference.

Houston became a founding member of Conference USA.

After the 1996 track and field season, the SWC conference officially dissolved.

All told, 82 years of athletics were ended, and the teams went their separate ways. There were many teams that joined and left the Southwest Conference, but its legacy is complicated. It gave us many aspects of the modern state of college football today, with several of its former teams now in the “Power Five” all but Rice and SMU playing in a major conference (as of now). Several of these teams have played for major bowl games since leaving and the Cotton Bowl Classic, which hosted the SWC champion for many years, is still played to this day. 

If you’ve got any more old conferences you want us to explore, sound off in the comments. Thank y’all for reading!