Loyalty in college athletics apparently doesn’t extend to your team’s conference anymore.
Here’s some history.
The Southwest Conference was founded 1914 – 107 years ago. It was dissolved in 1996.
For the bulk of its history, the conference had eight primary members. Seven were from Texas, including Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Rice, Baylor, TCU and SMU and then there was Arkansas.
This was a nice fit geographically and it established some intense rivalries. Oklahoma was actually in the Southwest Conference from 1915-1919 and Oklahoma State was from 1919 to 1925.
A landmark Supreme Court decision in 1984, NCAA v. Board of Regents of The University of Oklahoma, changed college football forever. The court ruled that colleges could sell their media content apart from the NCAA.
This was huge.
It opened up to availability for TV contracts.
Then in 1991, the Southeastern Conference invited Arkansas (and South Carolina) to join and the Razorbacks jumped ship after getting secondary status treatment from the SWC. That ended the SWC pretty much. In 1994, Texas, Baylor, Texas A&M and Texas Tech jumped to the Big Eight Conference, which became the Big 12 Conference.
That left Houston, SMU, TCU and Rice high and dry. Houston became a charter member of Conference USA while SMU, TCU and Rice headed to the Western Athletic Conference.
The Big Eight Conference began in 1907. It actually was the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association with charter members Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Washington University (St. Louis) and Iowa. Iowa had concurrent membership in what now is the Big Ten Conference.
Kansas State joined in 1908. OU and St. Louis University applied for membership but were turned down due to poor management. But OU finally joined in 1920 and Oklahoma A&M (OSU) entered in 1925.
In 1957, the Big Eight had OU, OSU, KU, KSU, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa State and Colorado. Those are the eight teams that took in Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor.
In 2011, Colorado and Nebraska got mad at Texas running things and the Buffaloes left for the Pac-12 Conference while Nebraska headed to the Big Ten. IN 2012, Texas A&M and Missouri – who both despised Texas – bolted to the SEC.
In response to losing four schools, in 2012 the Big 12 added West Virginia and TCU.
This year, Oklahoma and Texas had secret negotiations with the SEC and they are leaving the Big 12 as soon as they can get out of their contracts. That dropped the Big 12 down to eight teams and threatened their status as a Power Five Conference.
Officials at OSU were upset because they were left out of the deal with the SEC. In previous discussions with other leagues, OU and OSU were always seen as a package deal. No more.
Here is where the dominoes began to fall.
Desperate to keep the Big 12 together, they invited BYU, an independent, and Cincinnati, Central Florida and Houston from the American Athletic Conference to join and they accepted.
Cincinnati and Houston had previously expressed an interest in the Big 12 but Houston had been blocked by Texas, who didn’t want another league school in their state. Tulsa apparently wasn’t considered for membership in the Big 12.
That move robbed arguably the three top AAC football programs, leaving a big hole. The American has had some pretty good teams lately, especially this year, and these departures threatened the status of the league.
So, the AAC stole teams from Conference USA.
They invited The University of Alabama at Birmingham – Birmingham, Alabama; Florida Atlantic University – Boca Raton, Florida; The University of North Carolina at Charlotte – Charlotte, North Carolina; The University of North Texas – Denton, Texas; Rice University – Houston, Texas; The University of Texas at San Antonio – San Antonio, Texas.
That is a good lineup. It gives the AAC three teams in Texas, one in Florida, one in North Carolina and one in Alabama.
They join existing members East Carolina, Memphis, Navy (football only), South Florida, SMU, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa and Wichita State (basketball and Olympic sports only) and gives The American 15 schools. The American will compete as a 14-team league in football and in men’s and women’s basketball, among other sports.
This should create and maintain some natural geographic rivalries, including:
- Tulsa and North Texas
- Tulsa and SMU
- Tulsa and San Antonio
- Tulsa and Rice
- Tulsa and Tulane
- UTSA and Rice
- UTSA and SMU
- North Texas and Rice
- North Texas and Tulane
- Memphis and UAB
- UAB and Tulane
- UAB and South Florida
- UAB and Florida Atlantic
- East Carolina and UNCC
- East Carolina and Temple
- East Carolina and Navy
- UNCC and Navy
- Temple and Navy
Tulsa will probably eventually lose their football games with Houston, Cincinnati and Central Florida.
According to AAC bylaws, those schools’ exit date would be July 1, 2024, though the league would be willing to negotiate an earlier exit fee to accommodate their departures.
And what might be the final domino to fall, their could be a merger between the remaining member of Conference USA with the Sun Belt Conference. The Sun Belt has 10 members and they might take in the final Conference USA members.
If you are confused by this, welcome to the club.
To some fans, OU and Texas moving to the SEC makes sense. It could be all about the bigger TV payouts in the SEC or it could be they want to be in a more prestigious conference.
OU has dominated the Big 12 in football recently and their fortunes in the SEC against Alabama, Auburn, Florida, LSU, Georgia, etc., won’t be as easy.
Will OU fans be satisfied if OU only wins eight or nine games a season?
And it could be really rough sledding for the Longhorns, who haven’t won any league titles for years and who can’t seem to settle on a head coach.
This changes might be a big plus for OSU. The Cowboys could be in the drivers’ seat in Big 12 football with OU out of the way and OSU already has a top tier basketball team.
The downside for the Big 12, if there really is one, is that all the sports teams will now have to travel from Utah to Cincinnati to Florida for games.
Tulsa could be helped by having more league teams in Texas. League divisions are not set but it would be easy to see the Golden Hurricane in a division with North Texas, SMU, UTSA, Rice, UAB and Tulane.
For all these teams, the geographic splits make little sense and they are doing fans to who travel to away games no favors.
But that’s what happens with ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox Sports and ESPN call the shots.