PROGRESS – Or Lack Of It – REPORT

  From The Old SWC

by Larry Carlson for https:// texaslsn.org

It was an ugly breakup, as all breakups are.  No love lost. None found.

Hurt feelings, hard feelings.  

Splitsville.

It followed the 1995 season.  

Arkansas had jumped ship four years earlier.  But nobody in Texas really cared.

The Hogs had always been outliers.  And they lived off recruiting the Lone Star State.  Parasites.

Now, in the divorce settlement, UT, A&M, Tech and Baylor were moving on to the newly formed Big XII with midwestern teams including OU and Nebraska, the two-time defending national champs.

The private schools – TCU, SMU and Rice – would go west to join ranks with BYU, Utah  and even Hawaii, in a two-division, 16-team league.  The redheaded stepchild, Houston, entered Conference USA to face “city” schools such as Memphis, Cincinnati and Louisville, among others.  And the Coogs would win the C-USA championship on their first try.

Plenty of conference alignments were in store for the 21st century.  Now, as the 2024 football season slowly emerges on the far horizon, the landscape and geography of college football is a new planet.

The Longhorns, of course, are set to join the SEC and renew rivalries with the Aggies and Razorbacks. Meanwhile, TCU, Baylor, Tech and Houston remain in the reconstructed Big XII that spreads from Utah to Florida.  The SMU Mustangs are raring to go for their Atlantic Coast Conference debut along with other unlikely members that include Cal and Stanford.  Rice will stick with Conference USA.

So that’s the future, at least for a season.  Let’s take a Cliff’s Notes retrospective look back at the almost three decades since we all read the sad obituary for the once-esteemed Southwest Conference that kicked the bucket after surviving live support for several seasons following the outlaw days starring antiheroes known as SMU’s Pony Express and Cheatin’ Jackie Sherrill of A&M.

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TEXAS

Record:  243-113

HIGH:  National champs, 13-0, in 2005

And the Horns cashed in nine straight seasons (2001-2009) with ten wins or more.

LOW:  The Charlie Strong era (2014-2016) dumped three butt-ugly consecutive losing seasons onto the record book.  And UT had its longest conference championship drought (2010-2022) in program history.   If you’re looking for a one-game rock bottom, it’s “Rout 66,” the 66-3 home loss to UCLA that spurred John Mackovic’s exile from Austin in ’97.

NOTABLE:  Ricky Williams won the Heisman in 1998 when he became college football’s all-time leading rusher.  Vince Young finished second to landslide winner Reggie Bush for the ’05 Heisman.  Colt McCoy was twice a finalist, placing second in ’08 and third in ’09.  The Longhorns boasted of five Doak Walker Award winners.  Williams won it in ’97 and ’98, Cedric Benson earned the trophy in 2004, D’Onta Foreman hoisted the hardware in 2016 and Bijan Robinson won in 2022.

STOCK:  It’s strictly a blue-chip commodity now.  After a 12-win season and a near-miss in the Sugar Bowl, Texas is primed to join the SEC and immediately contend for a national title this fall, in spite of a daunting schedule highlighted by back-to-back matchups against OU and Georgia.  

Recruiting is white-hot and Lamborghinis and Aston Martins are not uncommon on The Drag.

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TCU

Record: 231-117

HIGH:  The Cinderella Frogs of ’22 advanced to the national championship game.

The 2010 season was terrific, too, as the Horned Frogs topped off a perfect season (13-0) with a Rose Bowl triumph over Wisconsin.

LOW:  Pat Sullivan’s teams went 5-17 in the first two years of Western Athletic Conference competition, immediately following the SWC dissolution.

Last season, the Frogs followed up their 13-2 title game season with a losing record, the first college team to post a sub-.500 year after a championship appearance since Texas in 2010.

NOTABLE:  Gary Patterson coached up his Purple People-Eaters to an amazing six seasons of 11 wins or more in a seven-year span.  And TCU teams won conference titles in the Mountain West (with Dennis Franchione in charge), Conference USA and a share of the 2014 Big XII pie.

STOCK:  Strong, in spite of last year’s 5-7 drop.  Sonny Dykes can coach and TCU looks like it should rock steady as a title contender in the newfangled Big XII.  Buy.

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A&M

Record:  210-140

HIGH:  The Aggies got their first top five national finish since 1939 when they won nine out of ten in the Covid-asterisk season of 2020.   A&M had a bona fide big year (11-2) in 2012, with Heisman-winning redshirt freshman Johnny Manziel leading the way in the Ags’ second SEC season.

LOW:  It’s a judgment call but the 2022 season (5-7) was a reality referendum on Jimbo Fisher.  Immediately following what was heralded as THE best recruiting class in college history, the Farmers finished seventh, dead last, in the SEC West.

Otherwise, the worst trend showed four losing seasons in a seven-year itch from 2003-2009.  The single-game nadir was a 77-0 loss to OU on national television in ’03.  To put a sour cherry – or something much worse – on top, Aggie D-lineman Johnny Jolly did a celebratory boogie in the closing seconds when he thought he made a tackle in the shadow of the worn-out A&M end zone.  But the Sooners were just falling down, courteously avoiding the 80-point mark.  The smirk on Bob Stoops’ face when he saw the “sack dance” with the Aggies down 77 was priceless.

NOTABLE:  The Aggies won their lone conference title in 28 seasons, back in ’98.  They took down Kansas State in the championship game after losing to UT on Ricky Williams’ record-setting day.

Jimbo Fisher was college football’s highest paid coach during his tenure in College Station, hauled in the highest-rated recruiting class in the record books, then agreed to take the biggest buyout (close to $76 million) in sports history.

One other note:  Regardless of his off-the-field antics and his NFL shortcomings, “Johnny Football” was a singular and electric football presence for two years, a shooting star while he played.

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TEXAS TECH

Record:  188-151

HIGH:  ESPN Gameday made its way to Lubbock on Halloween weekend 2008 and Mike Leach’s sixth-ranked Red Raiders generated lasting highlights of a rousing victorious finale to “the Crabtree Game,” a takedown of top-ranked Texas.  The Raiders won eleven games for only the second

time and tied with OU and Texas for first in the Big XII South.

LOW:  Given the opportunity and expectations, ebb tide in arid country came just three weeks later when the Raiders, ranked second in the country, fell flatter than the South Plains on a visit to Norman.  They got embarrassed, 65-21, by the Sooners.

Maybe the real below-sea level moment came when Texas Tech University fired Leach in wake of the “he said/he said” Adam (son of ESPN’s Craig) James concussion protocol dust-up.  Leach refused to apologize for what he said was not out of bounds and TTU Chancellor Kent Hance guillotined the winningest, most popular football figure in Raiderland until Patrick Mahomes became a Super Bowl folk hero.  Bottom line:  Leach guided Tech to five seasons of nine victories or more, and led the Red Raiders to bowl games in all ten years at the Caprock.  In the ensuing 14 years, Tech has never reached nine wins and endured seven losing seasons.

NOTABLE:  Well, Patrick Mahomes played for the red and black.  And before he arrived, Leach’s Air Raid attack put Tech on the football map and inspired a zillion imitations.  The coach’s zany, one-of-a-kind interviews and post-game remarks became the stuff of legends.  He is missed.

STOCK:  The West Texas market is bullish.  No, the Big XII road to the championship did not run through Lubbock on Highway 84 last season.  But Coach Joey McGuire has cured many of the management and coaching problems that ailed Tech under overrated Kliff Kingsbury (35-40) and Matt Wells (15-20).  Both of McGuire’s years have resulted in winning seasons culminating in bowl triumphs.  The school’s backers have been innovative with NIL actions and the Raiders just delivered the highest-rated recruiting crop among next fall’s Big XII teams.

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HOUSTON

Record:  183-157

HIGH:  Coach Tom Herman’s 2015 Cougars went 13-1.  At 10-0 in November, the Coogs somehow lost to UConn but then beat three ranked teams to close the year.  That surge included an upset of ninth-ranked Florida State in a New Year’s Eve Peach Bowl.  Houston had its first top ten finish (8th) since QB David Klingler led the 1990 UH squad that lost only to Texas.

LOW:  The Dana Dimel show played to rotten tomato reviews.  Dimel’s three teams went 8-26 with a winless 0-11 stinker in 2001.  

NOTABLE:  Houston had eight head coaches in the 28 years of post-SWC football.  The names look big enough – Art Briles, Kevin Sumlin, Tom Herman, Major Applewhite and Dana Holgorsen — but only Herman had his brightest days in the Bayou City.

STOCK:  Rising, likely.  New boss Willie Fritz can coach, as he proved at Georgia Southern, then Tulane.  Operating out of a recruiting hotbed, Fritz and the Cougars should be able to compete regularly for upper echelon status in the Big XII.

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ARKANSAS

Record: 197-167 (Includes just the 28 years since the SWC broke up.  UA had left for the SEC

four years earlier)

HIGH:   Bobby Petrino was hell on wheels as the Razorbacks’ head coach from 2008-2011.

He went from 5 wins to 8, then to 10-3 and 11-2 seasons, landing in the Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl.

LOW:  Coach Hell on Wheels had a motorcycle accident on April 1, 2012.  It was no joke.   But in spite of injuries to his neck and ribs, the big hurt came when it was discovered that Petrino initially lied and said he was alone.  He was accompanied by a 25-year-old woman he had hired as student-athlete development coordinator for football.  Hmmm. Petrino was soon relieved of coaching duties and the program has been middling to bad – Chad Morris was 4-20 – ever since.

NOTABLE:  The Hogs were competitive in the SEC West snakepit during most of their first two decades there, especially with Houston Nutt as head coach.  His Razorbacks even won the West in 2006.  But times changed quickly when Nick Saban arrived at Alabama.

Two high points in the past decade, at least for fans, were the meetings with the Longhorns.

Arkansas beat UT in the 2014 Texas Bowl and Coach Bret Bielema called beating Texas, “borderline erotic.”  Then in ’21, Sam Pittman’s Hogs took the Horns to the woodshed in Fayetteville for Steve Sarkisian’s first road trip out of Austin.

STOCK:  Is it too cheesy to say that not many are high on the Hogs?  Okay, well, pork belly futures are down, then.   Just two years ago, Arkansas won nine games and woulda/coulda/shoulda pulled the rug from under A&M and Bama.  But it’s a new day, a brave new world in professional college football.  It is safe to say that optimism is not running high in the Ozarks, except in spring for UA baseball.  An Arkansas alumnus I spoke to this week was downright depressed about his alma mater’s place in the pecking order of NIL deals and the transfer portal.  The Razorbacks desperately need Jerry Jones or the Walton (Walmart) family to become SugarDaddy1.

So far, nothin’ doin’.  But Bobby Petrino is the offensive coordinator and if he stays away from

motorcycles, perhaps there is hope.

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BAYLOR

Record: 149-182

HIGH:  Art Briles’ teams won 32 games in his last three seasons (2013-2015), certainly the winningest era in school history.  But there is a lasting stench surrounding Baylor’s suppression of information about allegations of sexual assaults that brought on the dismissal of Briles and the resignation of the university’s president.  So let’s say the 12-2 Big XII/Sugar Bowl champs of ’22, scaled the Everest of BU football peaks.  That Baylor team, coached by Dave Aranda, finished sixth in the final AP poll, highest ever for the Bears.

LOW:  It has to be the scandal.  In a different era, with better investigative media coverage, it might well have landed Baylor in “death penalty” territory.

On the field, the program was the “Bad News Bears” for more than a decade after the SWC ended.  Baylor produced nary a winning season for 14 years.  Five head coaches contributed to 118 losses in that brutal span.

NOTABLE:  Who would have dreamed that, after all that football misery, Baylor would cultivate a Heisman Trophy winner?  But Robert Griffin III delivered big-time and was the nation’s top player for the 10-3 Alamo Bowl champs of 2011, a team that shocked OU, whipped UT and scored 45 or more points in eight games.  

Matt Rhule left for the NFL after only three seasons, having extinguished fires smoldering from the Briles mess and the one-year Jim Grobe calm.  But he made his mark in spite of a 1-11 start, winning seven and the Texas Bowl before charting 11 W’s and making a Sugar Bowl appearance.

STOCK:  Is it a Bear market after two straight losing years that followed a conference title in Aranda’s second year?  Baylor will undoubtedly benefit – as will others – from the departure of Texas and Oklahoma.   But Aranda’s BU squads are 11-23 aside from the pixie dust of the

11-2 Sugar Bowl winners.  So was THAT the “off” year?  On the upside, the school has wealthy donors and is not shy about feeding the NIL collective.

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SMU

Record: 144-187

HIGH:  Last year’s Mustangs nailed down 11 victories, won the American Athletic Conference championship and finished in the top 25.  That was the first season-ending ranking  since the “death penalty” stopped SMU from playing in 1987-88.  

LOW:  SMU went eleven long seasons (1998-2008) without more W’s than L’s.  Lower than whale dung, far below sea level, was the 0-12 disaster of 2003.

NOTABLE:  June Jones was the coach who righted the “Good Ship Peruna” after so many futile seasons.  He came in from Hawaii and led the Ponies to four straight bowl games in his SMU prime.

Noted defensive mind Phil Bennett and offensive guru Chad Morris were disasters as head coaches at SMU.  Weird fact:  The Mustangs have been invited to six bowls in the last seven seasons but two were cancelled and SMU is 0-4 in the others.

STOCK:  Trending upward.  In two seasons on Mockingbird Lane, Coach Rhett Lashlee is 18-9.  Excitement is surging as SMU prepares to enter the Atlantic Coast Conference this fall, along with other unlikely new members Stanford and Cal.

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RICE

Record:  134-195

HIGH:  In eleven years (2007-2017) on South Main, David Bailiff’s Owls twice won ten games, a considerable achievement for Rice football.  The Flock regularly played competitive ball during Bailiff’s tenure, landing in three consecutive bowl games at one point.  Bailiff ended his reign second only to College Football Hall of Fame coach Jess Neely in Rice victories.

LOW:  Mike Bloomgren replaced Bailiff and his squads have won just 22 games against 46 losses.

NOTABLE:  Former Arkansas player and head coach Ken Hatfield straddled the late years of the SWC, then took the Owls through their initial decade outside it, first in the WAC, then in C-USA.

His teams were scrappy and posted several winning seasons but never made it to a bowl game.

Rice has actually had less coaching turnover than any of the other members of the old Southwest.

STOCK:  When President John F Kennedy made his famed “Moon Race” speech at Rice Stadium in 1962, he essentially compared the challenges facing Rice football with Americans boldly attempting to someday reach the moon.  “Why does Rice play Texas?” JFK asked, rhetorically.

“Not because it’s easy but because it’s hard.”

It’s a lot harder now, 62 years later.  The Owls had played in the Sugar and the Bluebonnet bowls in the preceding two years.  Then they fluttered to earth and missed 45 bowl seasons in a row.

Face it, it was never easy to win at Rice, which has the second smallest enrollment (just over 3,000 students) among D-I college football programs, and real academic standards.  It is an even bigger challenge in the new age of NIL and the transfer portal.  But know this:  The Owls have played in two consecutive bowl games, though they lost both matchups.  Classify the Owls as pesky, at least when they fight teams in their own basic weight class.  American Athletic Conference is a nice fit.

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