The SWC reached national prominence in 1927 with heralded players such as Rags Matthews, Joel Hunt, Gordy Brown, and Gerald Mann, but even with this SWC climb to national prominence, a cliff to demise was in the future.

The history of the SWC is at the link below.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19h9tdUzmN/

The SWC – death by suicide by Billy Dale, with a notable assist from some great authors

This is a long article, so a table of contents is completed from top to bottom to assist you in scrolling to the area of interest.

Let’s just say that if the NIL had been legalized in the 1970s instead of in 2021, the SWC schools and administrators who suffered the consequences for rule infractions would be celebrated in collegiate sports circles for their foresight in buying the services of 18 to 22-year-old boys using a legal facade.

THE POWER OF MONEY in THE SWC was always king

Backstabbing, cheating, and open pocketbooks, starting in the 1970s and climaxing in the 1990s, destroyed the SWC. Other factors were also responsible for the demise of the SWC, including:

• Arkansas’s joining the Southeastern Conference;

• Private schools were no longer able to compete financially with state schools;

• too many Division I teams in one state to support a solid fan base for all Texas Universities;

• the SWC was too regional in scope for national exposure;

• The Cotton Bowl’s contractual obligation to feature the SWC winner against another ranked team became an anchor around the Bowl committee’s neck. At best, the SWC teams’ play was mediocre.

  Southwest Conference survived from (1914 to 1996, although its dissolution began in 1991 when the Arkansas Razorbacks left for the SEC). Texas won 25 conference championships.

Billy Dale says, “When I was a boy, I was young and impressionable, with dreams of wearing the Longhorn helmet and playing in the SWC. For many, it became a nightmare.

The Southwest Conference trophy room was full of burnt orange

Texas, from the inception of the SWC in 1915 until 1976, racked up many SWC trophies.

1. Out of 58 football titles, the Longhorns won outright or shared 20 of them;

2. Of the 60 SWC championships in baseball, Texas had 49;

3. 15 of the 61 basketball titles;

4. 30 of 50 golf championships ;

5. 14 of 30 team titles in tennis;

6. won 36 track championships.

Dissolution

In the early years, the problem with the SWC was not talent; it was geography. Other than Arkansas, every school was in the state of Texas. Consequently, the SWC got very little national exposure. The weak sisters in the conference made the situation even worse.

Blake Brockermeyer’s story is symptomatic of the SWC’s poor reputation with high school athletes who were leaving the SWC to play for more exciting conferences.

Blake Brockermeyer -the Reluctant Longhorn.

Blake’s father, Kay, was an offensive lineman for Texas, but his son never intended to sign with Texas. Blake had other visions for his future in college football. UCLA, Florida State, Washington, and…… were his dream schools. As with many high school players in the late 1980s and 1990s, Blake was not impressed with the SWC. A conference composed of Texas schools and Arkansas. He says in the book “The Road to Texas” by Mike Roach, “You know, TCU wasn’t very good, and I didn’t want to stay at home anyway. Texas had not been very good the last few years, and so really, I thought if I wanted to get to play somewhere” else….. It took the influence of strength coach Dana LeDuc, Coach David McWilliams’s charisma, and his parents to convince him to play in the SWC.

B.J. Johnson “ I never grew up wanting to go to Texas.”

B.J. Johnson is another example of a Texas athlete who wanted to leave the state to attend a more exciting conference. B.J. says, “Texas was never a school I watched that often.” “Florida State was the school that I wanted to go to naturally.” “ I didn’t start loving Texas until I had to go down to a football camp.” When I met Darryl Drake, “That’s kind of what made me start liking Texas and having some interest.”

Roy Miller

Roy Miller’s road to Texas was a tough one. Like many high school athletes, the SWC and Big 12 were not on his radar screen in his early years. His favorite team was Mack Brown’s North Carolina team. , but when his dad moved to Killeen, TX., and he saw all the Longhorn support groups, it impressed him. His story of the recruiting trail, starting at 15 years of age with Baylor and Oklahoma until he signed with Texas in 2005, is one that should be read by all high school athletes and their parents.

Table of Contents

1. Article written by Madeline Coleman about the NIL.

2. NOVEMBER 16, 1992

   “SORRY STATE- FOOTBALL IN THE SOUTHWEST CONFERENCE ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE, AND TEXAS AND TEXAS A&M ARE LOOKING TO BAILOUT”-  BY SALLY JENKINS

3. All the King’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. After 81 years, the outstanding offensive and defensive minds of the coaches and exceptional athletes who played in the SWC were finally destroyed by self-interest, politics,  T.V. rights, greed, oil, and petty hearts. Distrust, win at all cost, and economic tensions led to changes in SWC recruiting protocols, resulting in many NCAA recruiting violations. Wealthy donors were more than happy to assist in recruiting high school athletes, but as businessmen, they demanded a return on investment known as winning.

4. The SWC and Infractions galore

5. On December 2, 1995, the lights to the SWC went dark

6. Why Arkansas left the SWC

7. Transition to the Big 12 format.

8. The history of the Texas vs. Arkansas series- (it is not what you think)

9. Frank Erwin

10. More reasons for the death by suicide of the SWC.

11. Royal, Akers, McWilliams, Mackovic, and Moffett.

12. The lONGHORN SWC history

#1 Madeline Coleman

MADELINE COLEMAN about the NIL For Sports Illustrated.

Nick Saban Says NIL Rules Creates System Where ‘You Can Buy Players.

The name, image, and likeness (NIL) era has altered college sports for good, and it is still split on whether the change is for the best.

Alabama coach Nick Saban shared his thoughts on the matter in a recent interview with the Associated Press, highlighting his concern about the state of the NCAA. 

“I don’t think what we’re doing right now is a sustainable model,” Saban said. “The concept of name, image, and likeness was for players to use their name, image, and likeness to create opportunities for themselves. That’s what it was. So last year on our team, our guys probably made as much or more than anybody in the country.

“But that creates a situation where you can buy players. You can do it in recruiting. I mean, if that’s what we want college football to be, I don’t know. And you can also get players to use the transfer portal to see if they can get more somewhere else than they can get at your place.”

We now have an NFL model with no contracts, but everybody has free agency,” Saban added. It’s okay for players to get money. I’m all for that. I’m not against that. But there also has to be some responsibility on both ends, which you could call a contract to develop people in a way that will help them succeed.”

Prominent college football coaches have echoed similar sentiments, including Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, USC’s Lincoln Riley, and Ole Miss’s Lane Kiffin. Swinney has discussed the matter at length, saying the transfer portal created “chaos” and referred to it as “tampering galore.” Swinney also noted he believes the NIL era will bring a decline in graduation rates.

“Kids are being manipulated,” Swinney said in December. “Grass is greener and all that stuff as opposed to putting the work in and graduating. There are no consequences. So now you’ve got agents and NIL, tampering, and you have no consequences. …

Education is like the last thing now.

“We’re going to have a lot of young people who aren’t going to graduate. … There are many kids whose identity is wrapped up in football, and all this does is further that.” 

Kiffin has also been an outspoken critic of NIL rules.

“We don’t have the funding resources as some schools with the NIL deals. It’s like dealing with salary caps. I joked I didn’t know if Texas A&M incurred a luxury tax with how much they paid for their signing class,” Kiffin said in February,

Paying a player to attend a school still violates NCAA rules, though Riley recently told reporters the NIL landscape has “completely changed” recruiting. 

#2 Journalist Sally Jenkins

NOVEMBER 16, 1992

SORRY STATE

FOOTBALL IN THE SOUTHWEST CONFERENCE ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE, AND TEXAS AND TEXAS A&M ARE LOOKING TO BAILOUT

 BY SALLY JENKINS

The cheating that ran through the Southwest Conference in the 1970s and early ’80s was masterminded by some of the richest and most powerful men in the state. The payoffs and recruiting scams began as an attempt to correct a disparity in the conference that dates way back to 1923. In May of that year, oil was discovered in a west-Texas grape field that belonged to the University of Texas system. The oil and natural gas royalties from that find were placed into an existing account called the Permanent University Fund. The fund is now worth more than $3.7 billion. The state legislature decreed that two-thirds of the annual interest go to the University of Texas, and one-third to its next of kin, Texas A&M. None of the other schools in the conference receive so much as a dime from the fund.

All that lucre created a glaring imbalance of resources among the Texas-based schools in the SWC, and that was gradually reflected on the football field. A&M and Texas either won or shared the league title 18 times from 1940 to ’70. By law, the oil riches belonged to the big two, but as the ’70s approached, Longhorn and Aggie rivals decided that they were loath to let them have all the football riches too. TCU and SMU had power in the ’30s and ’40s, and their alumni—many of them oilmen riding the petroleum boom—wanted their gridiron glory back.

In 1967 William Clements, a successful oilman and SMU trustee, who would twice be elected governor of Texas, became chairman of the board of governors of SMU. Clements and his fellow Dallas businessmen on the board didn’t like to lose to anybody—not if money could prevent it. From 1970 to ’86, SMU’s endowment jumped from $26.7 million to $282.1 million, and the Mustangs climbed to national football prominence, an ascension that culminated in a record of 41-5-1 from 1981 to ’84, thanks to players like Craig James and Eric Dickerson. It was during this era of football success that payoffs to Mustang athletes and recruits became a virulent disease.

Wealthy SMU alumni, not content with having ruined their own program, proceeded to spend their time and money trying to get the other SWC schools in trouble: A fund was reportedly devoted to investigating rivals and turning them in, and by the end of the ’80s, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Houston—which hadn’t even joined the league until ’76—had all been punished to varying degrees by the NCAA. Only Arkansas, Baylor, and Rice emerged unscathed.

By the mid-1980s the conference was so tainted that homebred football talent, considered to be among the best in the country, began fleeing to other states, an exodus that has not stopped. In 1986 the state of Texas had 12 recruits ranked among the top 100 nationally, and seven of them left the state to play their college ball. Last year four of the top 10 chose to leave the state.

The Aggies and the Orangebloods get misty-eyed when they contemplate this sorry end to a storied alliance, but after decades of politicking and bickering, they have mainly themselves to blame.

 But on the eve of 1993, oil prices are dismal; a woman, Ann Richards, is governor; the Longhorns have had losing records in three of the last four seasons; and the Southwest Conference, which hasn’t had a national champion since 1970, is on the verge of collapse under the weight of weak football and bad business practices.

Arkansas left for the SEC last year. The payoff scandals deplete the eight remaining teams of the 1980s. Texas and Texas A&M, the wealthy standard-bearers of the conference, would love to bolt, except that they would face bruising resistance on the state legislature floor and the potential loss of millions of dollars in state funds if they tried it.

You can’t discuss the rise and fall of football in Texas without discussing the state’s business and politics, and specifically the business and politics of its most venerable institution, the University of Texas. Longhorn football has long been a training ground for the state’s leaders. James R. (Jim Bob) Moffett, for instance, a poor kid and a rather ordinary player under Royal in the 1960s, is now the school’s most influential alumnus. “As the state university’s football team goes, so goes the state and the favorite sons of the state,” he says.

As Royal’s teams won national championships in 1963, ’69, and ’70, politics and football in the state became ever more entwined. They twined together most tightly at Cisco’s, a back-room joint that has been the favorite breakfasting and deal-making spot in Austin, the site of both the state’s capital and its main university, for 42 years. On any given morning, you can still see the vestiges of the old days. In one corner sits George Christian, a former LBJ aide. In another is Mike Campbell, a former assistant coach under Royal and the man Royal wanted to be his successor. Royal used to have breakfast at Cisco’s most Sunday mornings. It was there that the power brokers of Texas met to get the work of the state done—and that surely included football. The proprietor of Cisco’s, Rudy Cisneros, says, “I’ve seen more big deals than you can imagine going down in this room right here.”

The two links below are the unedited full stories of the demise of the SWC, as told by ESPN and the Texas Almanac.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/30424417/i-wishof-well-demise-southwest-conference-25-years-later

https://texasalmanac.com/topics/sports/look-back-southwest-conference

#3 AND ALL THE SWC MEN

Round Robin’s SWC play started in 1934, and through 1959, it only won all the games in the conference seven times.

After 81 years, the outstanding offensive and defensive minds of the coaches and exceptional athletes who played in the SWC were finally destroyed by self-interest, politics,  T.V. rights, greed, oil, and petty hearts. Distrust, win at all cost, and economic tensions led to changes in SWC recruiting protocols, resulting in many NCAA recruiting violations. Wealthy donors were more than happy to assist in recruiting high school athletes, but as businessmen, they demanded a return on investment known as winning.

SMU was the worst polluter of the NCAA recruiting guidelines. When SMU started beating Texas and A&M consistently, red flags increased throughout the SWC. Why and how was SMU able to compile a 45-5 record? For everyone not blinded by money, the answer was obvious. With a bit of squealing to the NCAA from member SWC Universities, the question was finally answered. SMU was filling their coffers with death penalty amounts of cash from the donor class to purchase players. SMU got caught, but the University and their Coach, Ron Meyer, struck back at those who reported SMU to the NCAA—accusing other SWC teams of recruiting irregularities. The NCAA listened, and except for Baylor and Rice, all SWC teams received some form of punishment for breaking NCAA rules. The win-at-all-cost mantra led the SWC off the cliff. Public opinion of the SWC ethics reached new lows, losing the state of Texas high school recruits to the Southeast and beyond.

Mike Glazier, NCAA enforcement 1979-86, said, “There was a lot of money/benefits provided to athletes to attend certain schools. SMU got caught up in that then, and other schools tried to compete with SMU, Texas, and Texas A&M. Mike says, “Who knows? It’s a chicken-and-egg deal. But then, I think many would have considered football recruiting in the Southwest Conference to be — I don’t know what the right term is … but almost [with] no limits.”

The boys who played against each other in high school did the same when they joined the SWC. Even the coaches were intertwined. Spike Dykes coached at Texas and Texas Tech and for Emory Bellard at San Angelo Central. Emory worked for Darrell and took his wishbone creation to Texas A&M. It was not unusual for the competing coaches on Friday night to have dinner together before the game on Saturday.

#4 The SWC -Infractions galore

Many people believe that there were two reasons for the demise of the Southwest Conference. They were starting with ESPN’s entry into the sports cable market. ESPN offered teams a long-term marriage with national exposure. However, no money was involved for a while, and the Southwest Conference rejected ESPN’s offer, saying it wanted money upfront. Others felt that recruiting infractions in the 1980s were the evil culprit leading to death by suicide of the SWC. SMU, TCU, Texas A and M, and Houston all experienced NCAA probation for recruiting excesses.

The Southwest conference leaders felt like they were being picked on, referring to two Florida and Miami infractions that started each game with a burglar alarm going off. But the fact is, the SWC teams got caught because they were sloppy in illegal recruiting and were stupid enough to confess to the infractions.

The Texas teams’ immense state pride and egos played against the conference. Everyone wanted to be the king of football in Texas, and in the 1980s, a war raged to claim the crown.

In 1985, the NCAA banned SMU from bowl games for two seasons and stripped the Mustangs of 45 scholarships over two years. It was one of the strongest punishments in NCAA history. It stemmed from a payroll system for players involving wealthy boosters. The same year, oilman Dick Lowe, a TCU trustee, confessed to helping the Horned Frogs with their slush fund and personally paying players, including star running back Kenneth Davis. The scheme “was born out of total frustration, from getting our butts beat by people we knew were buying players,” Lowe told The New York Times. “I think there are 91 Division 1-A schools, and my assessment is that 80 are buying football players.” The SWC could not keep its members from pointing fingers at each other at the NCAA.

In 1987, the NCAA gave SMU the “death penalty. It was the first and only college football program to receive this punishment.

Nothing scarred the league more than the NCAA’s “death penalty” handed down to SMU in 1987 after being designated a repeat offender for continuing the payroll to honor its promise to some players. The Mustangs were forced to cancel their 1987 and ’88 seasons. After going 41-5 in the pre-probation years from 1981 to ’84, the Mustangs had only one winning season from 1989 to 2005 and would not win ten games again until 2019.

SMU’s 41-5 record success was built with NCAA flagrant infractions. Once illegal recruiting began, there was no going back, and teams’ cheating forced other members of the SWC to report violations to the NCAA, which angered alumni, who then spent money to go after other schools. Hard feelings pervaded the SWC. Recruiters went to church on Sunday and prayed that they gave recruits enough inducement to attend their fine university.

The SWC earned the tagline “Sure we’re cheating.” SWC had become a distorted mosaic of petty hearts with suicidal conference-destroying tendencies.

Aggie coach Slocum said, “It was so competitive within the state that some people got out of bounds. Once they started, well … “He’s doing it too!”

Slocum: We were our own worst enemies. Everyone in there hated everybody. There never was a “what can we do collectively to uphold our league?” I never saw that. At meetings, it was, “Hooray for me!” and “Screw you.”

Grant Teaff, Baylor coach, 1972-92: Some of us weren’t cheating and were not going to cheat. And so it’s hard to go out on a football field and know that you can have that player and he could be scoring touchdowns for you, except that black bag arrived at the little airport. Everybody knew everything that was going on. You knew when the new cars were delivered. You would get a call from someone in that town: “So-and-so got a new car today.”

What destroyed SMU in the SWC eventually hurt the image of all the teams in the conference. The SMU death penalty was the beginning of the end for the SWC. The conference was tainted in the eyes of High school recruits and their parents, so Texas athletes started leaving the state in droves, headed primarily East toward Miami.

The book “Sports Revolution” by Frank Guridy says that the most crucial reason the SWC disappeared is that sports media money drove the decision-making process of conference opponents. Frank Guridy says:

“ The historic breakup of the NCAA’s regulatory power over television rights of member schools television contracts in 1984 sent universities scrambling to find as much television money as possible. This situation was further complicated by the proliferation proliferation of cable television networks spearheaded by the ascendance of ESPN which accelerated the scrambling for television money. Over the next few decades conferences and individual schools develop their own television networks. “ Choosing to “Maximize television revenues not rivalries or geographic proximity became a primary justification in the organization of athletic conferences.”

While the conference finally tempered its recruiting excess, the old grudges never died. The financial divide between the big state and private schools continued to grow, infighting continued and the conference started to show cracks in the foundation.

#5 December 2, 1995, the lights to the SWC go dark

Dick and Margie Hudson turned out the Rice stadium lights to end the SWC.  The league that began in 1915 with a Rice game ended with a Rice game.

The final game of the SWC was indicative of one of the many reasons the Conference died— lack of attendance from the private school in the SWC. Rice and Houston played a game before 25,000 paying customers. Rice was so determined to have an excellent ending to a lousy conference that the administration decided to open the gates and let people in at half-time. Five thousand more people showed up, many wearing the colors of the other 6 SWC schools. Baylor, Tech, Texas, and A&M fans dominated the color spectrum.

The fans saw an exciting game won by Houston with 1:19 seconds to go.

The SWC exited the stage after winning seven national championships (SMU, 1935; TCU, 1938; Texas A&M, 1939; Arkansas, 1964; and Texas, 1963, 1969, and 1970). he SWC also produced 5 Heisman Trophies- TCU’s Davey O’Brien, 1938; SMU’s Doak Walker, 1948; A&M’s John David Crow, 1957; Texas’ Earl Campbell, 1977; and Houston’s Andre Ware, 1989. The league also produced five winners of the Outland Trophy- Arkansas’ Bud Brooks, 1954; Texas’ Scott Appleton, 1963; Texas’ Tommy Nobis, 1965; Arkansas’ Loyd Phillips, 1966; and Texas’ Brad Shearer, 1977.

The SWC alone boasted over 350 first-team all-America athletes in football, basketball, and baseball. The State of Texas track-and-field stars included three historic Olympians. Baylor’s Michael Johnson scored the rarest of doubles in 1996, winning both the 200 and 400 at the Atlanta Games to cap a career-best year in which he set world records in both races. In 1984, Houston’s Carl Lewis became the first Olympian to win four gold medals in one Game since Jesse Owens in 1936 and added five more golds in the 1988, 1992, and 1996 Olympics. exas A&M shot putter Randy Matson, the first ever to throw past 70 feet, won the gold in 1968 and held the world record longer than anyone in history. In the fall of 1996, the final eight SWC members scattered to their new conferences.

Then-Houston coach Kim Helton summed up his feelings about the two gorillas in the SWC -Texas and A&M- in the Houston Chronicle, saying, “We do recruit against Texas A&M and Texas, and I’m glad they’re somewhere else playing against each other.” I’m glad they are going to other conferences. I don’t care what happens to them. I don’t wish either of them well.”

Kim’s comments were not justified. The comments of two great universities are tinged with jealousy, contempt,  and envy. Kim should have directed his venom at many other reasons that destroyed the SWC- not two universities.

#6 Why Arkansas left the SWC

While the feuds, scandals, NCAA rules infractions and fan apathy were indeed reasons for the death of the Conference, the official beginning of the end can be traced to a 1984 Supreme Court case in which Oklahoma and Georgia won an antitrust case against the NCAA, seizing control of television deals. Market size and TV sets were significant factors in conference affiliation. Ith the SWC is so saturated, with 90% of its schools in one state, that it hurt its marketability for a big-money TV deal. It was a regional conference in a sport going national.

Arkansas was the first to see the need to leave the SWC to maximize revenue for the Arkansas program. The SWC paid visiting teams $175,000 per game, which Arkansas said was unfair. Arkansas fans followed the Razorbacks to Rice, SMU, TCU, and…. and helped fill their stadiums but only received $175,000. When Rice came to Arkansas, the Owls brought 400 fans, but the institution still received $175,000.

Sherrill says: “I remember sitting in the meeting when Arkansas was going to the Orange Bowl to play Oklahoma, and they asked for half a million dollars more in part of the pot for traveling expenses and other things, and you had TCU, SMU, and Rice, who were not willing to give them the extra expense money. I raised my hand and said, “Hey, if one team goes to the Orange Bowl or any other big bowl like that, that brings prestige to the whole conference.” Reluctantly, the [schools] passed [the request], but there were votes against.”

Toward the end, attendance had become a significant problem for the league’s smaller schools, with Texas, Texas A&M, and Arkansas subsidizing the rest of the conference teams.

Coach Broyles said, “There was no magic formula to turn the tide back to Rice and SMU being the kingpins in attendance like they were in the old days.” Houston and Dallas were no longer college football cities. They were pro football cities, relegating SMU, TCU, Rice, and the University of Houston to small fan bases. Broyles said, “There was no way to turn the clock back. How do you regain pride in a conference with probations and a lack of attendance?”

SMU moved back to Ownby Stadium, which held just 23,783. Texas A&M drew seven of the ten biggest crowds in the history of Baylor’s Floyd Casey Stadium. Ice Stadium, which had 70,000 fans and once hosted a Super Bowl, drew a 5 A high school attendance of 17,900 for a 1990 game against SMU.

In November 1990, 25,725 fans showed up at the Astrodome to see No. 6 Houston (8-0) play 5-2 TCU, a game in which TCU’s Matt Vogler set FBS records with 79 pass attempts for 690 yards, and Houston’s David Klingler threw for 563 yards and seven TDs. The 1,563 yards of total offense was another record only since surpassed by Texas Tech and Oklahoma’s 66-59 shootout between Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield in 2016.

On July 13, 1990, Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles, the legendary former coach of the Razorbacks, told reporters at an SWC meeting that he was going to meet with SEC reps the next week to consider a move, but that it was a “strong possibility” they would stay if changes were made to their liking. 

On July 30, 1990, Broyles and Arkansas announced the school was officially accepting the SEC’s invitation, becoming the first in the modern era to jump from one major conference to another, ushering in the new world of realignment.

 On Aug. 4, 1990, Crowe was dispatched, along with quarterback Quinn Grovey, to the Southwest Conference kickoff luncheon in Dallas, the conference’s media day. He said he was booed for three minutes straight

After Arkansas gave their notice Coach Teaff said “if we had any common sense, we knew that it was probably the beginning of the end” for the SWC. The SEC administrators knew instinctively that private or church schools fan base would not convert to dollars with a T.V. audience so the SEC chose primarily state schools.  

Barry Switzer agreed saying, “there were too damn many Little Sisters of the Poor. Private schools, church schools, and small schools.” Rice vs TCU would not excite a national football audience. Coach Switzer who played for Arkansas said that Coach Broyles said “Hell, as soon as I signed the contract, I got a $6 million raise for our program.”

The SWC would soon learn that the formula for monetary success was quite simple. Money was a function of the number of T.V. sets, great state rivalries, viewers, and full stadiums. Four private colleges in the SWC did not possess any necessary formula elements to make significant money from T.V. appearances. The contest between private schools and church schools in the SWC did not fit the T.V. formula for making money.

#7 transition to the Big 12 format.

The Supreme Ruling changed the Landscape of college football and exposed the weakness of private schools and church schools’ ability to fill stadiums and excite T.V. viewers.

What T.V. sports viewers wanted to watch were now the kingmakers.

Let’s Make a Deal for T.V. rights begins with Notre Dame signing a contract with  CBS.  That deal exposed the motives of academic institutions. Joe Paterno said, “We got to see Notre Dame go from an academic institution to a banking institution.” The race for the best T.V. contracts was on.

Penn State moved to the Big 10 for “economic” reasons, and Arkansas was invited to join the SEC. For some reason, the members of the SWC still did not understand that money was one of the primary driving forces of Arkansas’s decision, not disloyalty. The SWC official’s comments were clueless and knee-jerk, saying “the Iraq of college football “is the SEC.

As the Big 12 merger neared, Texas politics played a key role in who was invited.

As the money formula took hold of the SWC, Texas pursued several options. U.T. considered the Pac 10. It would include exciting road trips playing prestigious universities on the West Coast. On the other hand, joining the Pac 10 would hurt viewing in the central and Eastern time zone. Jumping to the SEC was the logical money choice maximizing state rivalries and T.V. viewers. Texas and Texas A & M would have probably jumped to the SEC, but Texas state politics got involved, and the two universities “decided” to remain in the SWC.

Public schools get public funding and it just seemed like the legislature would want to make sure it happened. Then out of the blue, Houston was out and Baylor was in.

Texas governor at the time, Ann Richards, was a Baylor graduate. Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock graduated from both Texas Tech and Baylor. The Texas House Speaker [Pete Laney], House Appropriations Committee Chairman [Rob Junell], and Texas Senate Finance Committee Chairman [John Montford] were all Texas Tech graduates.

According to the book “Bob Bullock: God Bless Texas,” by Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson, Bullock summoned Texas and Texas A&M’s presidents to his office in early 1994 as the merger neared. “You’re taking Tech and Baylor, or you’re not taking anything,” Bullock told them. “I’ll cut your money off, and you can join privately if you want, but you won’t get another nickel of state money.”

The Big Eight officially invited Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor in February 1994. Those at Houston, Rice, SMU, and TCU were stunned.

The SWC egos didn’t change much in the new Big 12. Teams were wary of Texas’ influence and aspirations, and nobody could agree on much at first. The Big Eight teams considered the new structure as an expansion. The SWC schools viewed it as a brand-new conference. The first proposed logo was the same as the old Big Eight’s, but the number was just changed to a 12. Even that irked the SWC teams.

#8 The history of the Texas vs. Arkansas series- (it is not what you think)

 Arkansas and Texas had some great games in the series, but as a competitor to Texas, the record reflects no rivalry. In fact, Rice beat Texas more times than Arkansas did . Texas’s record is 52 wins and 18 losses against Arkansas. Perhaps that is the reason Arkansas fans hate Texas more than Texas fans hate Arkansas.

Arkansas fans say the losses accumulated due to either better Texas teams or Arkansas finding a way to lose. Arkansas coach Broyles knows why. In football, psychology is just as crucial in winning as schemes and strategies, and psychologically Texas had Arkansas number.

An Arkansas head coach in 1989 said that the week before the Texas game, the Razorback’s personality changed, resulting in the team playing tentatively against Texas. The coach said, “It was like we were walking in sand.

#9 Frank Erwin

Back then, most of the big deals were done by a man named Frank Erwin, an intimate of LBJ’s and Connally’s. “Frank Erwin drove an orange-and-white Cadillac with longhorns on the hood, and when he honked, it played The Eyes of Texas,” says Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Molly Ivins. “Does that explain him?”

Erwin was a member of the Texas Board of Regents, which oversees the state university’s eight campuses, from 1962 to ’75 and was chairman for five of those years. Erwin exercised control over all aspects of the University of Texas at Austin’s affairs. In 1968 he pushed through a $15 million plan to expand Belmont Hall, the complex of athletic offices built into the side of Memorial Stadium. But a group of students and activists objected because the plans called for razing a row of beautiful old trees. While protesters clung to the branches, awaiting a judge’s order that would have stayed the tree-cutting, Erwin personally directed construction workers to topple the trees with chainsaws. The judge’s order arrived 45 minutes after the job was done.

Erwin was at once a tyrant and a charmer, but he never charmed Royal. Erwin sought to influence Texas football as he had over the rest of the university’s affairs, but for nearly 20 years, Royal resisted him. Then, in 1976. Royal decided to retire.

According to some, Royal got out because a few highly placed state officials and alumni had observed the rampant cheating in the conference and intimated that he should join in. Royal, a man who won’t even improve a golf lie, refused. When he declared that he wanted Campbell to succeed him, Royal found himself in a power struggle with Erwin and Allen Shivers, a former governor who had become a member of the board of regents. Shivers didn’t like Royal’s affection for longhaired musicians like Willie Nelson, and he didn’t like Campbell; he liked the fresh-faced Fred Akers, who had also been an assistant under Royal and was doing well as the coach at Wyoming.

Royal may have been the most popular man in the state, but he wasn’t the most powerful, as he discovered. Akers got the job. Royal continued as athletic director at Texas for three more years after he stepped down as coach, but Akers, Erwin, and Shivers made it known that they didn’t like having him around. Finally, in 1979, Royal decided to remove himself from the athletic department altogether. As Royal walked down Belmont Hall’s steps on the day he resigned as athletic director, he passed another department official. “I’ll be back,” he promised.

#10- More reasons for the death by suicide of the SWC with Sally Jenkins

Texas and Texas A&M are observing their struggling brethren and concluding, Who needs them? The big two dominate the state’s T.V. markets and, thus assured of their own survival, show little inclination to financially assist the league they helped to found in 1915. “It’s a bunch of institutions that care more about themselves than each other,” says former Texas women’s athletic director Donna Lo-piano, who left the school in March to head the Women’s Sports Foundation. “It’s a bad business conference.”

Proof of that is that Texas and Texas A&M won major concessions from the rest of the league, which further weaken the smaller schools. Gate receipts used to be divided 50-50 between the home and visiting teams, but beginning this season, the home team retains all gate receipts. That’s a bonanza for Texas and Texas A&M, which draw the biggest crowds. Bowl participants—read the Longhorns and the Aggies—will keep the first $500,000 they earn for postseason appearances, instead of the first $300,000. (In the Southwest Conference, the leftovers are divided among the have-nots, but in the Big Ten, all schools share equally in a bowl gate and T.V. receipts.) And as of this year, SWC schools playing in televised nonconference games keep 80% of the T.V. money instead of splitting the fees 50-50 with the rest of the league, as had been the case.

Is this any way to save a conference? That is not a priority at the University of Texas. “The reality is, U.T. has to finance its own agenda,” says Mullen. “The university has to look at how to draw the biggest revenues.”

And that means it no longer makes any sense for big schools like Texas and Texas A&M to play ball—as business partners—with the likes of Rice, SMU, and TCU. It is widely believed that the Longhorns and the Aggies, if not actually orchestrating the demise of the Southwest Conference, are doing nothing to relieve the crisis, hoping that the conference will dissolve, leaving them free to join a league in which the schools are bigger, and the little guys will not drag them down.

However, Texas and Texas A&M cannot make the first move to break from the league for one powerful reason: money. The legislature could vote to cut off state money to the big two if they bolt. “The SWC is viewed as an economic asset of the state,” Lopiano says. “To leave the SWC could be seen as detrimental to the state.”

In 1990, fearing that Arkansas’s departure for the SEC would spur the Longhorns and the Aggies to follow suit, the legislature’s state affairs committee considered calling a special hearing on Texas football. At the time, Speaker of the House Gib Lewis, a TCU alumnus, said, “If they want to leave the Southwest Conference, we can cut their funds with one vote. One simple vote.”

Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, a Texas Tech graduate, added, “Those who consider moving ought to take a course called Common Sense 101. They’d be making a big mistake with the decision-makers of Texas.”

Sentiments have not changed. State Senator David Sibley of Waco, a Baylor grad (as is Governor Richards), says, “If A&M and Texas want to leave the SWC, the next time they want to talk about appropriations for new physics professors, they’d have to come through me.”

Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds says only that the long-range future of college football is the superconference—perhaps 40 of the biggest, wealthiest schools forming a handful of alliances, with the rest dropping down or dropping the sport. “The world is going to dictate where Texas goes,” he says. “The marketplace will dictate it.”

Indeed, the Southwest Conference’s council of presidents believes that the Big Ten and the Pac-10 will follow the SEC in expanding to 12 teams, and a growing sense of urgency about losing Texas and Texas A&M prompted the presidents to vote last Thursday to approach the Big Eight, which is worried about losing Colorado to the Pac-10, about a merger. The lure of such an alliance is the money that would be earned from a playoff game between the champions of the two divisions of a conference—the members of the SEC will divvy up $6 million from the league’s first playoff, on Dec. 5 in Birmingham—and from TV-rights fees. After all, 16% of the T.V. sets in the country are located in the Big Eight and Southwest Conference regions.

An association with the marquee schools of the Big Light—Nebraska. Oklahoma and Colorado—would add luster to the Southwest Conference, and the Big Eight would enjoy the profits and the exposure generated in the big Dallas and Houston TV markets. Above all, a strong alliance could survive if some of its members decided to drop football, de-emphasize it or move to another league.

If the Southwest Conference does unravel, it will most likely do so from the bottom. At Rice, the debate over whether the university can afford to continue playing Division I-A football was a factor in the abrupt resignation last month of President George Rupp. Rupp was said to have grown weary of trying to mediate the endless tug-of-war between a board of trustees wedded to big-time football and a faculty that recently voted to toughen academic standards for the school’s athletes, even if that meant having to drop out of the Southwest Conference.

In 1987 SMU brought in a new president, Kenneth Pye, from Duke, to try to restore credibility to the school after the scandals. Now he, too, is under intense pressure from football-feverish alumni for raising academic standards and commissioning a task force to study a projected $4.9 million athletic-department deficit. The task force’s report, which is due next month, will most likely determine whether SMU stays in Division I-A, drops down to Division II or even III, or gives up football. The battle lines have been drawn. “We are not Harvard,” declares Craig James, now a commentator with ESPN. “Let’s get off this high throne, and all the academics can go work at Harvard.”

When Erwin died in 1980, his funeral was held in Austin’s campus arena that now bears his name. As the pallbearers carried in his coffin, all 2,000 mourners rose, singing The Eyes of Texas. No one since has had the kind of power that Erwin wielded.

#11 Royal, Akers, McWilliams, Mackovic, and Moffett.

Akers, Erwin’s handpicked coach, had two 11-1 seasons, in 1977 and ’83, and a Heisman Trophy winner in Earl Campbell in ’77, but he never won hearts, which remained firmly in Royal’s possession. In ’86, when Akers presided over Texas’s first losing season since ’56, there was no one to save him. He was fired, then replaced by a favorite son of Royal’s, David McWilliams, a defensive tackle on the 1963 national-championship team who wore jeans and boots and said ma’am.

McWilliams was Royal’s choice, but he was also the wrong choice. He was not a strong leader, nor could he recruit outside Texas. And while the Longhorns were suffering three losing seasons in five years, their graduation rate fell to 27%. Last January, McWilliams resigned.

Now, there is a new power base at Texas, and out front is Royal, the man who promised he would be back. But behind him is Moffett, 53, his former player who went on to become a fabulously successful wildcatter. Moffett’s New Orleans-based company, Freeport MacMoRan, is worth $1.7 billion. When it became clear midway through the 1991 season that McWilliams would have to go, Texas convened a committee to search for a new coach. A 50-member panel spent an entire day drafting a list of qualifications. But that was just for show. When John Mackovic, who had been in Illinois since ’88, was selected, only four men were really involved in the decision: Moffett, Royal, Dodds, and university president William Cunningham, who has since become chancellor of the Texas system. But the power lay with Moffett because says one source close to the athletic department, “Jim Bob runs Cunningham.” Mackovic was chosen because he possessed Moffett’s characteristic: a sound of cold business sense. That attitude is guiding the Longhorns in the ’90s.

Royal likes to size people up based on whether they would be good company on Willie Nelson’s tour bus. For instance, Texas basketball coach Tom Penders will hang out on the bus and drink a couple of beers with you. Of Mackovic, Royal told Penders, “He’s not bus material.” But that doesn’t matter anymore, and it didn’t keep Royal from endorsing Mackovic wholeheartedly.

Mackovic has done the seemingly impossible in his first season at Texas. He has broken with tradition without mortally offending anybody. He junked the time-honored Longhorn running attack in favor of a pro-style passing game. As Mackovic embraces the future, he also courts the past. He had Royal address the team before its Oct. 10 game with Oklahoma, a resounding 34-24 win.

Three Longhorn freshmen further embody Texas’s attempts to blend tradition with the imperatives of the future: Shea Morenz, the top-rated quarterback in the nation as a Texas schoolboy, and a pair of wide receivers, Lovell Pinkney and Mike Adams. None of the three would have considered visiting Austin a year ago, much less sign with the Longhorns. Adams, a home-stater like Morenz, was the highest-rated receiver in the region but expected to go elsewhere to find a passing offense. Pinkney, a one-time crack dealer from Washington, D.C., reformed himself and became a high school All-America—and another key Longhorn acquisition. His presence demonstrates that Texas is finally able to attract talent from well outside the state.

About the only familiar ingredient in the offense is quarterback Peter Gardere, a senior from Houston. Bitter fans hold Gardere responsible for the losing seasons, despite having engineered four straight victories over Oklahoma, an unprecedented feat for a quarterback on either side of that rivalry. He holds eight school career passing records, but his parents have been hounded so badly that they changed their phone number. Gardere is booed even as he breaks the records of the revered Bobby Layne.

Sometimes, success isn’t enough if the Orangebloods decide they don’t like you. Akers found that out. So has Gardere. So, perhaps, will Mackovic. On the other hand, he could be at the helm when tradition is scattered to the winds, and the Longhorns join forces with their mortal enemy, Oklahoma, in a new confederation or forsake the Southwest Conference altogether for the Pac-10 or the Big Ten.

Gardere’s only regret is that he has to graduate, whereupon he will join the legions of favorite sons and passionate alumni. He is a handsome and self-assured kid from a wealthy family, a kid whose father and grandfather both played football for the Longhorns. He understands Texas football the way some overbred children instinctively know which silverware to use. “Texas football is big business,” he says. “And where there’s business in Texas, there’s politics.”

 When Texas A&M left for the Southeastern Conference (Colorado, Missouri, and Nebraska also left of their own accord to the Pac-10, SEC, and Big 10, respectively). If any two schools have ever had a stronger love-hate relationship than U.T. and A&M, go ahead and name them. The Horns and Aggies would stay together, regardless of conference affiliation. So I assumed, and then the unthinkable happened. For reasons of their own—and one possibility is that they wanted to declare their independence from U.T.—the Ags departed. Although I could never have spent my student days in College Station, I respect and admire the Aggies. On Thanksgiving Day in even-numbered years, I used to go to Congress Avenue and watch them march up to the Capitol and then on to the stadium. It was a majestic scene.

No Need To Get All Teary-Eyed

The world is in flux; I know that. Some things that once seemed carved in stone have been tossed aside. We can adjust, or we can perish, or at least become irrelevant. I have no idea who is favored to win the Big 12 football championship this year, although it’s unlikely to be the Longhorns, who have been in an extended swoon. As for hoops, I am completely uninformed. Living abroad has afforded me a perspective I sure did not have back in the States. Even so, please cut me a little slack if I get wistful about the old Southwest Conference.

#12 The University of Texas SWC HISTORY national championships

The SWC started in 1914, and Texas set the tone in baseball, basketball, track and field, and tennis. The final SWC championship gave the Longhorns 375 conference crowns. The women claimed 85 of 112 conference titles. The men won 290 titles, and A&M was second with 84 SWC championships. In the final year of the SWC, the Horns – 1995-1996—claimed 11 of the 18 SWC titles.

Baseball – 1949, 1950, 1975, 1983
Men’s Golf – 1971, 1972
Men’s Swimming – 1981, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1996
Football – 1963 (AP), 1969 (AP), 1970 (UPI)
Women’s Swimming – 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991
Women’s Basketball – 1986
Volleyball – 1981 (AIAW), 1988
Women’s Cross Country – 1986
Women’s Outdoor Track & Field – 1986
Women’s Indoor Track – 1986, 1988, 1990
Women’s Tennis – 1993, 1995

Below is a link to an article written by Texas Almanac sharing the history of the SWC.

 https://www.texasalmanac.com/articles/a-look-back-at-the-southwest-conference

Commercialism and professionalism are as old as college football itself. Commercialism entered the game in the 1880s during a Thanksgiving Day championship in New York.

By 1920, 50,000-seat college stadiums were part of America’s landscape, coaches were hired, and young, talented boys not interested in a college education were recruited to promote the college brand.

Football has Reflected the Spirit of America

American football was a distinctive sport only played in the United States; it evolved away from rugby. Football was a spectator sport with extra benefits for the fans:

• pageantry,

• cheerleaders,

• pep rallies,

• bonfires,

• tailgating,

• marching bands, and

• Homecoming weekend.

Football played an essential role in developing the American educational system acting as a bond for the students and the local community. American football created a very unique social and cultural experience. The games were like a Folk Festival providing a sense of community with meaningful rituals and adding sheer pleasure for millions of Americans each weekend.

The racial revolution in college football took place on two major fronts in the South through the school bus school breakdown of segregation and in the North through a series of rebellions by black athletes. Whether the 1960s opened, not one football team when the Atlantic Coast, Southeastern, or Southwest conference was integrated. Desegregation in college football crept from the border states southward over the decade, first in the Atlantic Coast Conference, beginning with Maryland in 1963, next in the southwest conference beginning with Southern Methodist and Baylor in 1966, and finally in the Southeast Conference beginning with Kentucky in 1967 and ending with Georgia, Louisiana State, and Mississippi in 1972.

But First, Football had to overcome many obstacles to reach THE national status as most popular sport in America.

1905

In the early 1900s, numerous articles by college presidents in national magazines like Harpers and the Saturday Evening Post brought public attention to injuries and abuses in college football games. College football was a brutal sport that, according to legend, left famous heavyweight boxing champion John Sullivan to explain that there was murder in that game.

On October 9th, 1905, President Roosevelt said that either ball reform or evolution was necessary. From this threat, in 1910, the NCAA was formed. But like all other reports, there was an initial rush of publicity, and then the matter was dropped. The first constraint was that the reform organization dealt almost exclusively with contact and rules on the playing field, with little attention to player eligibility.

Starting in 1906, the NCAA’s official position stated that compensating young men for mere athletic prowess would violate the fundamental academic mission of educational institutions and amount to professionalism. Football players were paid for campus work or by generous alumni and boosters for jobs that were phony.

 The powerful image of college sports athletic departments by the 1920s is best described in terms of a medieval metaphor. Duke’s and Barons ran their athletic territories loosely controlled by university boards and presidents.

And during this era, the university president was not even the king in his campus castle. When presidents resisted external examination of campus athletic programs, it usually was for one of two reasons. Either the university president was afraid of big-time college sports power or, at the other extreme, he was embarrassed to reveal his lack of control over the campus sports enterprise.

The university presidents chose a strategy of avoidance and accommodation when queried about the violence, educational improprieties, recruiting issues, and academic responsibility of student-athletes.

1926 Bulletin #23- a manifesto against commercialism

The reform ritual for bulletin #23 was predictable. It is impossible to restore the past. What occurred in the late 1800s in football was not considered illegal. Rather the college game was unregulated because there were no rules to break. The unresolved problem was that varsity athletic departments were affixed to the institution but not integrated into the curriculum. 

1926 and bulletin #23

#Number 23 was not the first sign of national concern about problems of intercollegiate sports. Numerous gridiron heroes` enrolled in classes to play football and dropped out of school once the season was over.

It was thought that these athletes could not be ignored or quarantined but were the reason the entire intellectual atmosphere of the American campus was collapsing.

The Carnegie Foundation wanted to fix this problem and conducted a study of national scope on January 8th, 1926, when its executive committee accepted the NCAA’s invitation to investigate intercollegiate athletics and its relation to modern education. The primary investigator was Howard Savage.

This report became the cannon that set the standard for reform proposals and policy analysis about the place of intercollegiate sports in American colleges and universities. #23 exposed the sins of alleged commercialism and professionalism at dozens of institutions.

“Savage’s coauthor’s devoted chapters to the administrative control of college athletics, the place of the professional coach, recruiting, subsidizing athletes, the position of the press, the values in college athletics, and the growth of professionalism in college athletics. “

Savage, in 1929, called for the restoration of student control of athletics. Savage argued that the abuses of the period 1905 to 1929 represented an erosion of a once admirable intercollegiate athletic arrangement. It had fallen into dispute because of institutional commercialism and cheating.

The report’s authors and the president of the Carnegie Foundation agreed that the heart of the problem facing college sports was commercialization, an interlocking network that included expanded press coverage, public interest alumina involvement, and recruiting abuses. Football players who left school after the season cost Bona fide students a chance to make the football team. #23 stated that commercialism in college athletics must be diminished, and college sports should be returned to full-time students with the goal of offering youth the ability to exercise their body and mind to foster habits to lead to good health and a wholesome character.

The report said that athletes are far from the most important features of college days. What remains confusing is precisely how critics of commercialized college football were expected to correct this situation. How were college education and athletics to coexist?

In fact, this report did not offer an acceptable resolution The only accomplishment of this report was to amuse the American public and the media. In other words, the report turned out to be unsatisfactory to the very public that clamored for change. The report chastised the media for fostering the commercial existence of college sports.

Instead of blaming the players, many in the media laid the blame for the commerciality of college sports on the professional coaches, whose major concern is not the institution and the educational process but their salary, prestige, and professional standing.

College administrators should have but did not take much of the blame for establishing a publicity Bureau designed to keep the College in the news. The result was that the commercial and profit interest of the press, the college, and the community intersected. The report showed little concern for athletic scholarships as a means of offering educational opportunities to working-class families.

The report concluded that commercialism is a negligent attitude toward the educational opportunity for which college exists.

Indeed to many #23 was laughable and impossible to administer. Clean and sportsmanlike games, chivalry, and magnanimous competition were impossible to regulate through mere administrative provisions.

The contradiction and lack of interest played out in various ways. Many institutions also believed that skilled athletes deserved a college education, stating that in and of itself, playing sports was an educational process that could help those with no financial means to attend college.

#23 changes were not possible because the report assumed that university presidents would take responsibility and purge abuses and transfer or restore programs to undergraduates. Instead, the report was tagged as naive and unenforceable, and many of the University Presidents chose to support the Athletic departments and ignore the reform ritual and deny there was a problem:

• Brown dismissed the report. The chair of the athlete council said the report was partly false and misleading.

• The Big 10 commissioners and faculty felt Howard Savage had been more a prosecutor than an investigator looking at the conference members’ athletic programs. The day the report was released, the University of Michigan faculty representative told the New York Times that the investigator had unauthorized possession of university documents.

• The graduate sports manager at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania said there’s no truth in the report.

• Stanford and Syracuse denied giving exclusive financial aid to Athletes.

• Student editors and coaches at Yale felt the report was unreasonable in its criticism of recruitment at Princeton and Harvard.

• Student editors at Columbia applauded the general motivation for the Carnegie report but thought it was unfair in its depiction of practices at their institution.

If nothing else, the #23 report exposed college sports resistance to systematic investigation and triggered repudiations and denials by college and university presidents. Over 3/4 of the colleges studied were found to have violated codes and principles of amateurism, suggesting that the commercialization of college boards had gained its acquiescence if not legitimacy.

Financial, regional, and public aspects of universities had built a “booster” foundation mentality making college sports a cooperative enterprise involving presidents, trustees, faculties alums, businesses, townspeople, radio, and the press. Civic pride and winning built some great universities through the 1940s. College sports were no longer part of the educational process for undergraduates. Intercollegiate athletics was accepted as part of college life’s pageantry.

The book “Games Colleges Play” by John Thelin states Sports served the participating campuses well, providing winning teams with identity and leverage unsurpassed by education-only-based campuses.

The Coach became the college spokesman, celebrity, and cultural hero portrayed as an educator and character builder for young men. Winning coaches embodied the greatness of American values, and it was believed that their winning methods could translate to American industry.

Many coaches drifted from the company of professors, and many professor were unhappy with the celebrity status of a coach and the lack of their recognition as a professor. Many believed that so much national attention was unwarranted. The dilemma was that winning was the only paramenter needed to define greatness. Victory, without values was easier than great coaching values but losing coaches.

WINNING, Cult of Personality football Coaches, boosterism, news media, acquiescent university leadership led to the success of football as a mass entertainment sport.

In the 1930s, alums financial support of athletes was considered more ethical than institutional support. What justified subsidization from any source was the assumption that participation in athletics did not interfere with the young man’s primary purpose in getting a college education. Many claimed playing football was educational, developing leadership skills and building character that supplemented classroom academic training. Football did have a socially redeeming value working class and ethnic outsiders with opportunities for a college education and to enter middle-class careers afterward.

The winning formula of Head Coaches Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Knute Rockne, and many others in the 1920s and 1930s resulted in money, publicity, alum, fans, enthusiasm, and the media creating gods out of football coaches.

Red Grange is a good example of the head coach’s power to consolidate intercollegiate sports into highly commercialized mass entertainment. Grange was a three-time consensus All-American for the Illinois Fighting Illini leading his team to a national championship in 1923. Grange was the first Chicago Tribune Silver Football Award recipient as the most valuable player in the Big 10. He is considered the best college football player of all time and the greatest Big Ten Icon by the Big Ten Network.

Red’s popularity as a player and coach was due to the product of newspapers and radio produced, not accolades from teammates or classmates. The media projected college football personalities as legendary images.

Sportswriter Grantland Rice named Red the galloping ghost and glorified his hard-working ethic. While weak defenses led to many of Red’s wins, the media chose to exploit Red Grange’s football success instead. The media poets in the press boxes praised his football genius. Red was one of the first to convert being a college football hero to a national cultural hero celebrated beyond the campus.

Red Grange’s success consolidated intercollegiate sports into a highly commercialized activity characterized by publicity and promotion. Red was the consummate promoter and brand builder for not only the University of Illinois but for college football in general, and by his side was a media that enhanced his brand, writing about him as if he was supernatural.

Carnegie Foundations #23

Not all Americans were happy that great athletes were more famous than outstanding scientists. In many cases, the universities primary goal to educate took a back seat to football. What could be better than alums bonded to the university by the love of football and an undergraduate base that agree that football is their defacto social center? This is probably why when many wanted to discuss the educational responsibility of their university, the presidents had a strategy of avoidance or, if backed into a corner, answered with an array of words that did not answer the question.

Not all Americans were happy that great athletes were more famous than the greatest scientists. In many cases, education in the 1920s and 1930s took a back seat to football. The alumni loved the sport, and for the undergraduates, it was the primary social center.

In 1929 a report by Howard Savage was prepared for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It was better known as “#23”, and the document received widespread public attention. It was a reform policy change that raised a red flag that intercollegiate sports had usurped the educational process of many universities. # 23 was not the first sign of national concern about problems of intercollegiate sports. In the early 1900s, numerous articles by college presidents in such national magazines as Harpers and the Saturday Evening Post brought public attention to injuries and abuses taking place in college football games. College football was a brutal sport that, according to legend, led famous heavyweight boxing champion John Sullivan to explain “there was murder in that game.”

But like all other reports, there was an initial rush of publicity and then the matter was dropped. Football was too important to many to eliminate it as a spectator sport from e subject matter waned. The first constraint was that the reform organization dealt almost exclusively with contact and rules on the playing field with little attention to player eligibility.

This article is a work in process- not completed!

The Road to Entitlement and Corruption

Mark Twain said all right to break laws so long as you have customs. In other words, the tradition of accommodating intercollegiate sports may be an exception to the rules, but it is alright because the university usually benefits from the custom.

American culture, including sports, is no longer shocked by abuses, player misbehavior, lies, and recruiting violations. The fans now good naturally accept abuses as part of the system. Fans want to watch sports, not police it. Fans don’t care about the educational component of playing college sports.

The fans love the NIL pay-for-play scheme because money has always led college sports to break the rules to win, so pay the athletes and be done with it!!!

The future road to college sports begins with the NIL, not the NCAA

Race and economics have been two significant drivers of college football since the early 1900s; race and economics have driven substantial changes in college football. In the early years, revenue was primarily restricted to gate receipts. Radio broadcasting rights began paying small dividends in the 1930s. The other significant change to football occurred in the 1960s when racial unrest and protest for equal rights took center stage in college sports.

Football has functioned as a public theater since it was first discovered by the mass circulation of newspapers in New York in the 1880s.

The national popularity of football made reforming it a fool’s task. For over a century, calls for reform have been present but only as background noise.

Sometimes the noise reaches a crescendo that irritates those in charge and makes the broader football public uneasy.

There are only two times that college reform in sports almost survived.

• The 1929 Carnegie Foundations report

• The the “Sanity Code” after the Second World War

Both ended up being hiccups in college football history.

In reality, not much has changed over the years. Micahel Oriard says in his book “Bowled Over, “it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that John R Tunis’s “the great God Football” from 1928 or Reed Harris’s “King Football” from 1932 could have been periodically recycled to make the case against big-time football over the years.”

“The entire history of big-time intercollegiate football has been a tortuous working out of the sport’s fundamental contradictions of being both a commercial spectacle and an extracurricular activity.”

The outcome of #23 was predictable

Reform from 1930 to 1946

Bulletin # 23 resolved nothing; in fact, there was no consensus about the role of intercollegiate athletics policies in higher education institutions.

At first, many College administrators agreed that college was not intended to be a great Athletic Association and social club. The prevailing thought was that College was an association of scholars in which provision is made for the development of traits and powers which must be cultivated in addition to those which are purely intellectual if one is to become a well-balanced and valuable member of any community. 

In 1931 a group of large Southern Universities declared that they were going to ban recruiting a united declaration for unquestioned amateurism in sports. In 1933, the large, loose Southern Conference created a new Southeastern Conference whose intent was to provide a workable alliance with tighter controls and higher academic standards. The Big 10, Pacific Coast, and Southern conferences followed suit. However, influential historical institutions such as Harvard and Yale refused to cooperate during the period from 1930 to 1946. The large historic East Coast university, bogged down by quarrels and jealousy, refused to follow the SEC rules of college sports competition.

The new SEC rules opened up what looked like a military arms race, characterized by the stockpiling of talent and facilities. All conference members were forced to emulate their opponents’ practices.

So the conference, intended as a mechanism for reform, ended up not merely allowing but promoting the kinds of practices that reformers once thought it could prohibit. Recruiting constraints were unenforceable. The Southeast Conference between 1935 and 1945 reversed the reforms of the early 1930s.

Whereas in 1931, a group of Southern University pledged unconditional amateurism, a decade later they had stepped away from such claims. In 1938, the Southeastern Conference voted to allow athletic scholarships.

The conference approved measures moving away from the earlier reforms. In 1940, the Southeastern Conference voted to allow unrestricted recruiting of athletes, justifying this decision by saying, “We think this is a free country. A coach should be allowed to get his talent wherever he can but must abide by conference rules against improper inducements.” The code no longer prohibited inducements but now outlawed improper inducements. In 1944, converses paid attention to the practice of the Big Six conference, which allowed and followed the Southeastern Conference example by lifting its ban on paying prospective student-athletes.

Reversing the reforms from 1933 to 1946, the major conferences dampened the expectations about reforms intended to move college sports towards amateurism. And in some cases, reforms initiated within the conferences were reduced, derailed, or reversed. The conferences use their power to reinstate as well as suspend institutional members. For example, the big ten allowed the University of Iowa to return in good standing.

In 1933 Big Ten representatives debated within their own ranks whether the conference would allow each university to establish dining hall training tables for varsity athletes, a practice prohibited by the conference because it was considered to be a form of payment to players. By 1938 training tables were acceptable amateurism, and acceptable practices had no fixed standards and were entirely relatively subject to the vote of conference members. Conferences legitimized training tables, and it would become the norm for college athletes.

The changing character of colleges and demographics were the reasons. Universities of the Mid-west, West, and South had come of age and were making inroads against the sports and educational power of the Northeast. America was the world’s first experiment in mass higher education.

Booster colleges in small towns formed from land grants were formed and the towns flourished. Civic pride and noble aspiration built many colleges in towns like Athens, Oxford, and Austin. Boosterism also opens the universities to political intrusions with Governors, state legislators, and mayors supporting state-run universities. It was in the 1930s that universities grasped the importance of college football as an institutional brand builder and a magnet to increase wealth and students. Politicians were quick to understand that education and athletics were perfect partners in building universities with national recognition. Athletes became the necessary architects to build a great university. The public relations tool that kept on giving. Sports became the driver to build universities for higher education. In most cases, sports triggered increased funding for the entire campus and a bonanza for publicity. Sports offered universities visibility that few, if any, of its academic programs could.

1948-1951

In 1948, the NCAA wrote the “Principles of the Conduct of Intercollegiate Athletics. The document defined amateurism, outlined the need for institutional controls, specified the responsibilities of college leadership, established required academic standards, authorized financial aid, and defined athletic recruitment protocols. The NCAA became the enforcer of amateurism principles, with the power to suspend or expel violating institutions. Most universities agreed with the principles of amateurism but rebelled at transferring control of their institution and conference rules to the NCAA. Some worried that the NCAA would become a cartel, so lawsuits followed, eventually leading to retreats and the gutting of the NCAA “Principles” document in 1951. History proves that neutering the NCAA was a mistake, and corruption in college athletics followed. In 1951, organized crime and seven basketball teams were accused of point shaving.

1951 – Organized Crime and Sports (particularly basketball) led to more rules that were not enforced.

1951

Collegiate basketball hit a new low amid FBI involvement and criminal lawsuits. Colleges lost control over their athletics. The scenario tainted the image of all college sports. Colleges had overrated the “wholeness” of their sports program, and change was demanded. However, the new rules were too strict and eventually ignored as money and branding drove Collegiate institutions, not academics.

Gamblers had no problem enlisting players as long as the motive was not to lose. Players were okay with ensuring the game was within a point of the spread.

Enter the American Council of Education’s Presidential Committee.

The ACE’s job was to restore ethics to college sports.

While there were leaders of colleges who disagreed, the outcome of the research was startling, saying:

“We must recognize that colleges are in the entertainment business. The only question is, how far shall we go?

The contingent that ultimately lost the fight to change college sports wanted:

1) A return to intramural sports as the source for college athletes instead of recruits.

2) A reduction in Bowl appearances, spring training, and recruiting.

Many institutions rejected these proposals and agreed with the SMU President, “I do not believe that corruption is that widespread, nor do I agree with the (ACE’s) remedies.”

The ACE failed to understand that it was nearly impossible to regulate college sports nationally when regionalism dictated decisions after WWII. The OU president confirmed regionalism, saying:

“A winning team had done a great deal for the state of Oklahoma.” “ I hope to build a university of which our football team can be proud.”

Presidents of universities were leaning toward using athletes as the vanguard for building a great University.” Universities chose to pursue athletics as a business and not totally as an academic goal. Funds for sports were separated from the academic funds. One report said that “ athletics is, primarily, and entertainment rather than an educational enterprise, and should be entirely self-supporting.

Instead of a new sheriff for national university compliance, there was a new regional motto that supported the drive by small towns to be the boss of their destiny.

You Cannot have a great state….without a great university.

1956

In 1956, the NCAA established the athletic scholarship that we now take for granted as the foundation of college sports payments for tuition, room, and board, and incidental fees without consideration of financial need or scholastic merit.   With the 1956 NCAA ruling, professionalism became legal for student-athletes.

The NCAA circumvented the issue of paying athletes by stating that these scholarships were for academic purposes, not athletic grants awarded to scholars who happened to play football. The NCAA promoted the term student-athlete expressly to deny they inherit the professionalism of students who pay to play sports.

1963-

1964-1972

One of the Superheated social issues in the 60s was integration. The professors thought the UT Regents were racist, while the student-faculty were for integration. The faculty condemned anti-black dorm rules  10 to 1.

In May 1964, Erwin Perry, one of six children raised on a cotton farm near Cold Spring, Texas, received his doctorate in civil engineering at UT, and in September, he became the first black member of the faculty.

Four years later, George Washington, a member of the first integrated law class in 1950, became a professor at UT.   UT then established studies in black culture and Mexican American studies.  However, with all the good things occurring academically concerning racial bias, the football team, with the support of the Regents, did not officially get involved with the athletic racial issues until 1963.

And all American varsity swimmer Frank Salzhandler was barred from the university pool by the swimming coach for refusing to cut his hair, which came to his shoulders. He had his girlfriend cut an inch off, returned to the pool, only to be grounded again after he wrote a guest column for the Daily Texan criticizing the athletic department. This time, the University of Athletic Council validated his suspension 8 to 1

Black athletes in the late 1960s and early 1970s hit college football at its heart. The college coaches of the 1960s became much more sensitive to the economic and cultural backgrounds of their black recruits, leading to greater acceptance of individuality among all players on the team. In the wake of the disruptions of the 60s, coaches lost their cultural authority and the right to dictate hair length and social behavior.

My roommate Julius Whittier was a perfect example of a black athlete not submitting to the paternalism of white father figures. Coach Royal required the footbal players to wear their hair short until Julius Whittier arrived with his Afro. Asked by the Texas senior football leadership what Royal was going to do about Julius hair, Royal responded that the Afro was part of black culture and should be allowed.

There you have it! Young men from all races, led by blacks, chose to follow the dictates of their culture and not surrender their identity to an “Opie” team image.

Still, the coaches retained their absolute power over the lives of student-athletes.

By the late 1960s, the coach’s transition from father figure to the football team’s managers had begun, but team discipline had to be maintained. Hence, at the 1967 NCAA convention, for the first time, Universities could tie a good-behavior clause to represent the University and retain their scholarships. The coaches still had the power to control the athlete with the good behavior clause.

In 1971, the NCAA limited varsity sports’ contact hours to 20 per week during the season. However, that did not include voluntary conditioning and film sessions, which nearly doubled the time allocated to their scholarship sport to 44.8 hours per week.

1973

Amid signs of the apocalypse, the NCAA strengthens institutional control over rebellious student-athletes by replacing the 4-year scholarship with a renewable 1-year scholarship.

 1980’s

In 1981, the College Football Association broke from the NCAA to sign its TV contract with CBS. It supported A lawsuit filed by the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia against the NCAA’s TV monopoly.

1982 Jackie Sherrill signs a six-year contract with Texas A&M for more than 1.7 million—a shocking sum at the time.

In 1982, the NCAA began requiring Division One athletic departments to provide their athletes with the necessary academic support.

In 1984, the Supreme Court opposed the CFA back-sweet suit, ending the NCAA’s control over television rights.

In 1987, the Sugar Bowl was the first game played on January 1st, 1988; it became the first major bowl with a corporate sponsor. Georgia bills a $12 million heritage hall and prepares for the recruiting arms raised to follow the money.

In 1987, the president of the Carnegie Foundation wrote about college spectator sports that the “situation” had gotten worse, not better. Many believed that college sports celebrated community in the wrong way. They argued that the emphasis on beer drinking and a circus-like atmosphere before and after games in public educational institutions took priority over students receiving a good education.

1990’s

1990 Notre Dame breaks with the CFA to sign a TV contract with NBC. In 1991, the Big East added the University of Miami, becoming a football- and basketball-conference.

1991 – government, IRS, Knight Foundation, and restricted compensation

1. In 1991, a House of Representatives committee recommended that colleges and universities be required to disclose student-athletes’ graduation rates, as well as detailed, systematic information on how college athletes’ programs are financed. Higher education lobby groups and the NCAA opposed the proposal.

2. The Internal Revenue Service was also questioning whether granting tax exemptions for ticket receipts and broadcasts of postseason college football games should be allowed. And the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, was trying to show that college football associations’ television contracts violated antitrust laws. These organizations did not believe that intercollegiate sports should be part of the university educational system.

3. The NCAA passed cost-cutting measures, including the creation of a restricted earnings coaching position, which were challenged in court and led in May of 1998 to the award of $67 million to the affected coaches.

4. In 1991, the Knight Foundation Commission’s report called for a new model whereby intercollegiate athletics would keep faith with the student-athlete ideal. It implored university presidents to give renewed attention to academic integrity, financial integrity, and program accountability.

5. The Andrew W Mellon Foundation is one of the newest and most conspicuous participants in the long-term analysis of college sports. The Mellon Foundation shifted the emphasis away from discussions of University panels and distinguished donors toward fundamental and systematic research designed to test primary hypotheses about student-athletes. The Mellon Foundation has focused on the role of intercollegiate athletics at a few academic institutions over the past half-century. Comparing institutional investments, admissions, alumni governance, and historical context. After this research, the Mellon Foundation conducted a study of contemporary student-athletes at Princeton, Columbia, and Amherst.

1992

At best, reforms in college sports are illusory and transient. This was the case with the 1929 Carnegie Foundation report and is all too familiar in reform efforts of the 1990s.

As author John R. Thelin says, historical changes to the curriculum have been like “excavating a minefield.” Good intentions and wishful thinking rather than enduring accomplishments have characterized campaigns to restore integrity to college sports.”

When the federal government chose not to get involved in the reform of athletics at universities, there was no one left to enforce academic standards over sports.

As is the case with most intercollegiate sports reports, initial support for the Knight Commission report quickly waned.

Without government intervention, American colleges ignored the policy recommendations because the reports’ conclusions were both mixed and complex.

With the government on the sidelines and not in the game in 1992, a bowl coalition was created. It involved four major bowls (Cotton Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar) and five major conferences that excluded the Big Ten and the Pac-10, along with significant independents such as Notre Dame, to match the two top-rated teams in the championship game.

1995- The bowl coalition is replaced with the boat alliance involving four conferences, Notre Dame, and three bowls.

1995 Bobby Bowden becomes college football’s first $ 1 million coach.

In 1997, Florida’s Steve Spurrier became college football’s first coach to earn $2 million.

1998 was the first year of the BCS. The payments to participants in each of the four BCS bowls totaled 12.5 million, while payouts in the 18 other bowls ranged from 750,000 to 3.6 million.

2001 -22 coaches now have salaries of at least $1,000,000.

In 2003, Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College left the Big East for the ACC and were replaced by Cincinnati, Louisville, and South Florida.

In 2005, under threat of possible congressional action, BCS leaders announced a series of changes that added a championship game and increased potential access to BCS bowls for the lesser division 1A conferences.

In 2006, a presidential task force of the NCAA released a report urging universities to practice fiscal responsibility and restraint. USA TODAY reports that the average Division 1A coach salary is $950,000, with at least 42 coaches earning $1 million and nine making $ 2 million or more.

In 2007, Alabama made Nick Saban possibly the NCAA’s first $4 million coach.

In 2008, ESPN outbid Fox for the rights to the BCS bowls, increasing Fox’s current payment by roughly 50%.

The benefits for many who played collegiate sports outweigh the dark side of the college sports entitlement syndrome.

There is no question that college football has historically provided social and economic mobility for thousands of young men and women who otherwise would not have been admitted to college. Offspring of blue-collar workers who received an athletic scholarship did better for themselves after graduation. These athletes, with degrees in hand, used their connections with local celebrities to secure jobs with banks, insurance companies, and retail outlets. Employers hired them because they knew that sports build character and foster traits that produce great employees.

Lou Holtz said it best about entitlement :

The Money Trail in collegiate sports is the Source of Entitlement that is now ingrained in the conscious level of most athletes.’

Alumni boosters in the early years, providing extra benefits to players, was the beginning of the entitlement syndrome. Money flowed from boosters to players in the symbolic form of a “money handshake.” A culture of entitlement that was eventually exposed and amplified by the media on the national sports pages.

Among the most famous cases occurred in the 1990s when a disgruntled defensive back taped coaches discussing illegal payments to players and handed those tapes to NCAA investigators.

The sense of entitlement is now a conscious privilege supported by 5-star dorms, dining halls, workout facilities, and academic support. The downside of such opulence thrown at boys as they turn to men is a mentality that leads them to believe the rules that govern society do not apply to their actions, resulting in boorish and even criminal behavior. Jocks drunkenly brawling and groping women at fraternity parties were seldom prosecuted until the national media began to pay more attention to the degree and scale of the misbehavior.

Miami and Oklahoma win the Criminal title.

According to “Bowled Over” by Michael Oriard:

In 1989, Barry Switzer’s team terrorized the Sooner campus. Quarterback Charles Thompson was in handcuffs after his arrest for selling cocaine. Three of Thompson’s teammates had recently been arraigned for gang-****** a woman in the football dorm, and another had shot a teammate after an argument.

Oklahoma’s problems, according to Sports Illustrated, began with head coach Barry Switzer who ran his program like a loose ship. It was an American disgrace. Then, OU players exposed the crisis in football brought on by the entitlement generation, where the athletes believed their criminal excesses would be tolerated for the sake of the winning football team.

The Boston Globe followed Sports Illustrated and wrote a four-part investigative series titled “College Sports out of Bounds,” which included an installment on athletes’ criminal misadventures.

Finally, in 1995, the Los Angeles Times issued a special report listing college athletes’ sports crimes. Based on 252 police incidents involving 340 sports figures, 120 were college football players, including attempted murders, unlawful discharge of a firearm, and theft.

However, after 100-plus years of legal dishonesty, lack of educational priorities, and infractions in college sports, college sports remain an integral part of American higher education, not something tacked on.

If you want a medical metaphor, eliminating football might be closer to removing both kidneys than amputating A gangrenous foot.

100-plus years of governance by the NCAA, including six decades of regulatory power and the last 20-odd years driven by the college president’s agenda, have proven that system-wide reforms inevitably fall short.

.

during his tenure, the Oklahoma football program was investigated several times, and one major NCAA case ultimately led to sanctions and his resignation.during his tenure, the Oklahoma football program was investigated several times, and one major NCAA case ultimately led to sanctions and his resignation.

 

The Ineligibles

The Eligibles

 

 

 

The rules are clear- will college athletic departments obey or break the rules?

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS TO THE HISTORY OF RECRUITING INFRACTIONS – 1960-2020

1. The 1960’s-

2. The 1970s, the prequel to flagrant NCAA rules violations in the 1980s-

3. 1980s SWC Recruiting Violations run rampant-

4. 1990’s REGULATING INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS –

5. #5 2000s Infraction transitioning –

6. Judging intangibles is where Coaches make the most recruiting mistakes – The Good Egg-

7. RECRUITING STORIES

#1 1960’s 

1964-SMU was punished for recruiting violations and retaliated by filing charges against most other schools in the SWC. Texas received a year’s probation without sanctions for some minor infractions, including: 

• excessive visits with a prospect,

• failure of an alumnus to accompany a prospect on the flight of his private airplane to Austin,

• payment of expenses of a friend of one athlete, and excessive entertainment.

U.T. was so upset with the petty violations that, for the first time, hinted they might leave the SWC and join a “superconference.”

The NCAA rules were made when most college players were white and had financial help from their families for things like dating, movies, and dinners. But by the 1970s poor and minority students started receiving scholarships that included room, board, and tuition but no extra spending money was available from their families to enjoy the college experience.

1968 – NCAA divides college divisions into I, II, and III

#2 1970’s the prequel to flagrant NCAA rules violations in the 1980’s

Cash in unmarked envelopes, cars, free trips, do-nothing summer jobs, new clothes, jobs for mom and dad infringed on the integrity of SWC college sports. Sportswriter Dan Jenkins referred to these years as the “money whipped” recruiting generation. Texas had a few minor infractions and Royal said “We’ll take our slap on the wrist, and go on.”

In the early 1970s, the NCAA members decided to create divisions, whereby schools were in divisions that would better reflect their competitive capacity.

In 1971 O.U. received a “private reprimand over high school recruiting.

In 1973 the NCAA cracked down and OU was put the football program on probation for two years for altering high school transcripts. O.U. was forced to forfeit 8 games in 1972, including the Sugar Bowl.

1972- Abe Lemons, with tongue-in-cheek remarks, has a solution to cheating in recruiting. He says, “Give ever …… coach the same amount of money to spend on recruiting, and let him keep what’s leftover.”

Switzer added flash, flamboyant rings, and a fur coat to the Sooner Nation during the recruiting process

“Down and Dirty- The Life and & Crimes of Oklahoma football” by Charles Thompsons and Allan Sonnenschein states that Barry Switzer understood the needs of poor but talented black athletes. . As has been proven to be true, the Proposition 48 tests had a cultural bias. He chose to violate NCAA rules that he felt were either archaic or unrealistic by condoning “financial aid” to the players from boosters. An offer to help an athlete was ok, but it had to be done the “right way’. (Whatever that means). Switzers staff also “worked” with the professors of academically challenged athletes to maintain their eligibility for game day.

1972

In 1972 the NCAA made freshmen in football and basketball eligible for varsity competition. 1972 was also the first year of fully integrated football as the last of the Southeastern Conference schools joined the rest of the football world; the racial transformation in college football was complete.

1973

in a special session in August 1973, the NCAA divided its membership into Division One, two, and Three. The school’s most committed to big-time football could now begin to legislate for themselves, period.

Also, in 1973 the NCAA required only that incoming scholarship freshmen earn a 2.0 grade point average in high school courses, whether physics or woodshop. To the casual observer, that 2.0 requirement might have looked rigorous, but in fact, it opened the door to recruiting virtually any athlete the football coach wanted. Suddenly with the new 2.0 standard blue chip, athletes, regardless of their academic preparation, could play a scholarship sport.

Waves of black football players were the beneficiaries of the NCAA’s lower admission standards. Having offered talented athletes with six or 7th-grade reading riding and math skills, the top priority for universities was how to educate them and keep them eligible.

Two answers were to give athletes credits for courses they did not take or passing grades they did not earn.

In the 1970s, the USC athletic department admitted 330 scholastically deficient athletes, mostly football players, independently of the universities admission process and then kept many of them eligible through devices such as credits for phony speech courses.

In Georgia, the athletic department ran its own laboratory in the university’s developmental studies program to keep several football players eligible for a bowl game by receiving credit for grades in advanced classes after felling remedial coursework in the same subjects.

The pattern of academic abuse in the admission and investment of student-athletes at the University of Georgia due to pressures from the athletic department and with the knowledge of the university president was abhorrent. Two high-level administrators were fired, and the presidents resigned.

The NCAA was criticized for alleged unfairness in the exercise of its enhanced enforcement authority………. As a result, in 1973, the NCAA adopted recommendations…. “dividing the prosecutorial and investigative roles of the Committee on Infractions.” 1973- Abe Lemons from Oklahoma City University files complaints against OU, suggesting NCAA rule infractions. The Sooner nation was upset, but Lemmons said: “Was I the only one to report them?” “There is no one thing that triggers an investigation. It’s a series of things over a series of years.”

Eventually, all this fraud was exposed, and the unethical practices transcended to a national collegiate scandal. The phony summer school credits at Georgia and the USC mess were exposed on May 19, 1980, by Sports Illustrated. A student-athlete hoax scammed America. Academic chicanery was exposed.

Scandal reform started with the NCAA passing Proposition 48 in 1986, which, in effect, restored higher academic scores to qualify for a scholarship. To receive a scholarship and be eligible, a high school recruit had to have a 2.0-grade point average in 11 core course high school courses as well as a score of at least 700 on the scholastic aptitude test.

Bogus credits to keep athletes eligible is finally challenged.

There is no right or wrong answer. No matter the new NCAA ruling, some groups will be punished. Proposition 48 created a whole new collection of problems.

When Proposition 48 ruling was enforced, college football was an integrated world, and charges of racial discrimination followed Prop. 48. African American athletes with poor academic backgrounds period they were disproportionately affected by the tougher rules. Prominent black individuals such as Jesse Jackson accused the NCAA of racism in approving Proposition 48.

The issue was not the core curriculum but the SAT, which had long been challenged for its cultural bias.     Joe Paterno said that Proposition 48 was not a race problem. He said the problem was that American culture told black athletes who bounced balls, run fast, and catch touchdown passes were more important than academics.

Collegiate sports history says always follow the money trail to find the motivator for a collegiate administration’s athletic decisions. The harsh reality is the demands of the marketplace are the number 1 priority, and making money will always undermine efforts for academic reform.

1975- UPI breaks with a story that Texas athletes were receiving payment for work not done with the state senate. The NCAA, a UT special committee, and the SWC cleared Texas of any wrongdoing.

1976- the College of Football Association is formed.

Al Eschbach, columnist for the Oklahoma journal accused Texas of being just as guilty as the Sooners of giving excessive numbers of tickets to players for scalping. OU distributed 1, 155 tickets to the players for the OU-Texas game. Royal did his research and stated the Texas players had either received or paid for a standard allotment of 365 tickets. The matter was dropped after this revelation.

1977- John Nelson, who played for OCU basketball in the early ’70s, says “I received special offers nearly everywhere. One place offered him a new car each year”, and another University said they would pay him $100 for every game he started. “Lemons says, “You try to be straight, run a clean program, and somebody down the road is cheating, trying to put you out of business, but if you yell, you’re the one who is scorned. ”

1978- The United States House of Representatives “held hearings to investigate the alleged unfairness of the NCAA’s enforcement processes. New rules were adopted designed to address criticisms made during the hearings. Concerns were abated, but the NCAA’s enforcement processes continued to be the source of substantial criticism through the 1970s and 1980s”.

The gaps began at the 1978 NCAA convention in Atlanta, where a bitter, yearslong fight between the haves and have-nots ended with the richest schools getting their way, dividing the sport of Division I football into two distinct bodies: I-A and I-AA (now known as FBS and FCS, respectively). Two years prior, the have-nots in the new I-AA had seethed that the split would be a “slap in the face.” The haves of the new I-A bristled at the thought of their “super” division eventually spending limitless resources on an amateur sport and thus again splitting. Division I has since become inflated, and more than doubled in size since ’78. In the past ten years, the FBS has grown by 10 teams.

#3 1980’s SWC Recruiting Violations run rampant.

• 6 of the 9 conference schools were slapped with NCAA probations. Texas received two-year probation handed down in 1987 that was reduced to one year for good behavior. Texas was guilty of small offenses such as handing out $80 or less, selling complimentary tickets and letting players use coaches’ cars for short campus trips.

• SMU got the death penalty, and Governor Bill Clements was implicated.

• TCU’s violations were almost as bad as SMU’s. In 1985 Wacker kicked off the team 7 players for receiving illegal payments. TCU still received one of the stiffest punishments from the NCAA.

• Texas A & M received two-year probation for 25 rules violations.

• Houston received a two-year penalty.

• Texas Tech got slapped around by the NCAA for minor infractions.

The Power of Oil money led to the demise of the SWC

Comments below are from Journalist Sally Jenkins

The cheating that ran through the Southwest Conference in the 1970s and early ’80s was masterminded by some of the state’s richest and most powerful men. The payoffs and recruiting scams began as an attempt to correct a disparity in the conference that dates way back to 1923. In May of that year, oil was discovered in a west-Texas grape field that belonged to the University of Texas system. The oil and natural gas royalties from that find were placed into an existing account called the Permanent University Fund. The fund is now worth more than $3.7 billion. The state legislature decreed that two-thirds of the annual interest go to the University of Texas, and one third to its next of kin, Texas A&M. None of the other schools in the conference receive so much as a dime from the fund.

All that money for two-state schools created a glaring imbalance of resources among the Texas-based schools in the SWC, and that was gradually reflected on the football field. A&M and Texas either won or shared the league title 18 times from 1940 to ’70. By law, the oil riches belonged to the big two, but as the ’70s approached, Longhorn and Aggie rivals decided that they were loath to let them have all the football riches too. TCU and SMU were powers in the ’30s and ’40s, and their alumni—many of them oilmen riding the petroleum boom—wanted their gridiron glory back.

In 1967 William Clements, a successful oilman and SMU trustee, who would twice be elected governor of Texas, became chairman of the board of governors of SMU. Clements and his fellow Dallas businessmen on the board didn’t like to lose to anybody—not if money could prevent it. From 1970 to ’86, SMU’s endowment jumped from $26.7 million to $282.1 million, and the Mustangs climbed to national football prominence, an ascension that culminated in a record of 41-5-1 from 1981 to ’84, thanks to players like Craig James and Eric Dickerson. It was during this era of football success that payoffs to Mustang athletes and recruits became a virulent disease.

Wealthy SMU alumni, not content with having ruined their own program, proceeded to spend their time and money trying to get the other SWC schools in trouble: A fund was reportedly devoted to investigating rivals and turning them in, and by the end of the ’80s, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Houston—which hadn’t even joined the league until ’76—had all been punished to varying degrees by the NCAA. Only Arkansas, Baylor, and Rice emerged unscathed.

By the mid-1980s the conference was so tainted that homebred football talent, considered to be among the best in the country, began fleeing to other states, an exodus that has not stopped. In 1986 the state of Texas had 12 recruits ranked among the top 100 nationally, and seven of them left the state to play their college ball.

In the 1980’s “University presidents increasingly found themselves caught between the pressures applied by influential members of boards of trustees and alumni, who often demanded winning athletic programs, and faculty and educators, who feared the rising commercialization of athletics and its impact on academic values. Many presidents were determined to take an active, collective role in the NCAA’s governance, so they formed the influential Presidents Commission in response to these pressures”.

1982 the Longhorns are put on NCAA probation for a ticket-scalping infraction involving wide receiver Johnny “Lam” Jones.

1984A– “The University President’s Commission began to assert its authority and called a special convention in June of 1985. This quick assertion of power by the President of the universities led one sportswriter to conclude that ‘There is no doubt who is running college sports. It’s the college presidents.”‘ “Over time, however, the presidents were gaining a better understanding of the workings of the NCAA, and they were beginning to take far more interest in the actual governance of intercollegiate athletics.

1984B– Starting middle linebacker Tony Edwards was arrested long after curfew and charged with assaulting a police officer. Akers said that Edward would be able to continue to play because he “was innocent until proven guilty. This was a bad decision by Akers because it implied to the team members that they would not be disciplined if they broke team rules. Edwards played against Baylor and the #6 Horns lost 24-10, and the Horns followed that loss with a Freedom Bowl 55-17 to Iowa. There are lessons to be learned here about the importance of discipline in winning.

In 1986 the NCAA went all out in their crackdown on steroids. Bosworth tested positive and had to sit-out the Orange Bowl.

1987– Texas was put on probation for the 3rd time- but the first time with sanctions. 38 rules violation. Only one was serious, and that was small cash payments and benefits give to Tony Degrate by a longtime family friend, who was also a Texas season ticket holder. In landmark legislation in 1987, the NCAA banned boosters from the recruiting process altogether — they previously had been allowed to call prospects .- Coaches no longer babysit committed prospects all the way to signing day. Instead, they had to adhere to strict limitations regarding when and how they contacted recruits. That led to ever more creative interpretations of the rules. While Banowsky served as the chief compliance officer of the Big 12, this case crossed his desk. “I’ve had coaches go so far as to rent a limo and drive it up in front of a recruit’s house, call the recruit on the phone from the limo and have a telephone conversation with the recruit while the recruit is either in the house or on the front porch of the house and think that it was acceptable because they technically weren’t having a face-to-face meeting,” Banowsky said. “They were simply talking on the phone.”

A search of news clippings from the period reveals that the coach in question was Colorado’s Rick Neuheisel, who was accused of more than 50 NCAA violations — many involving improper recruiting contacts — while in Boulder. Neuheisel, now the head coach at UCLA, is the owner of a law degree from USC, and he argued that he had not violated the rule in that case. While that argument might have worked in a court of law, the NCAA does not always offer due process to the accused.

1988- In December 1988 O.U. was put on suspension by the NCAA for three years. The infractions included :

1) An assistant coach had promised a recruit that he would be “taken care of” if he enrolled at O.U.

2) A booster had provided a recruit with an automobile at no cost.

3) An assistant coach gave a prospective recruit a $1000 to induce him to come to O.U.

4) Players on the football team were given cash for their complimentary tickets to games.

5) Free airline tickets were provided to players and recruits.

6) Switzer had supplimented the salaries of his coacher and paid for rental cars for students out of his personal checking account.

7) Transportation, entertainment, and inducements were provided to prospective players.

The NCAA penalties included no televised games and bowl games for three years.

1989A -Texas sophomore Alan Luther’s’ jeep police find a syringe and a small vial of liquid labeled “epitestosterone.” Alan is released but charged with possession of a controlled substance. Dodds ordered one of the most extensive, expensive drug-testing programs in college athletics. The players were all passing the test. In the spring of 1989, the Austin American-Statesman challenged the reports of football players passing the drug test, reporting that as many as 25 Texas football players had used steroids after 1986 and that some players continued to use them during the 1989 season. The substance is used as a masking agent for a drug test.

Doctor William Taylor specializing in anabolic steroids, says an athlete can inject epitestosterone one hour before a drug test and receive a negative result for steroid use.

Jeff Leiding, who played for Coach Akers said he witnessed Longhorn teammates, primarily linemen abusing steroids.

1989B– Senior deep snapper Tal Elliott unexpectedly quits the team. The Austin police on a sting operation seized betting slips with Tal’s name, but the investigation found no other Longhorn names on the betting slips. 3 months later the Austin American Statemen breaks with the story that Tal was the team’s bookie for gambling on professional and college games. Players confirmed that Elliott took wagers from them for various sporting events. A student manager said they “use to come in the locker room with money saying I’ve got to pay off some debts.” One player said, “Tal was right next to my locker. I won’t say specific names, but if you want to get to the nitty-gritty of it, pretty much everybody bet with Tal.” The wagers varied between $2 to $100.

Once again, the Texas Athletic Department investigated with Longhorn great Knox Nunnally leading the probe. The case was finally closed with no NCAA probation for the Horns.

#4 1990’s REGULATING INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS

1991- Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Warren E. Burger issued a report suggesting new procedures for infractions for the investigation process. The purpose of the review was to “make sure that the process is handled most effectively and that fair procedures are guaranteed, and that penalties are appropriate and consistent.”

1993

UT Faculty Senate approved a “no pass, no play” measure. If passed, this would jeopardize the 1993 basketball players and many football eligibilities. The premise followed by the faculty – “athletes are students first.” The NCAA already had a grade requirement for student-athletes, but the requirements are weak compared to the pending UT measures. This concerned many that complying with the new stricter standards would hurt the revenue stream generated by athletics.

1994

The University president’s involvement with the NCAA had grown to the extent that they had changed the very governance structure of the NCAA, with the addition of an Executive Committee and a Board of Directors for the various divisions, both of which are made up of presidents or chief executive officers.

1996- After 80 Years, The SWC Is Dissolved. 

Backstabbing, cheating, and open pocketbooks, starting in the ’80s, reached its zenith in the 1990s and destroyed the SWC. There were also other factors responsible for the demise of the SWC:

• Arkansas’s joining the Southeastern Conference;

• Private schools no longer able to compete financially with state schools;

• too many Division I teams in one state to support a strong fan base for all Texas Universities;

• the SWC was too regional in scope for national exposure;

• The Cotton Bowl contractual obligation to feature the SWC winner against another ranked team became an anchor around the Bowl committee’s neck. At best, the play of the SWC teams was mediocre.

“As the role of television and the revenue it brings to intercollegiate athletics had grown in magnitude, the desire for an increasing share of those dollars had become intense. In time, however, a group of robust intercollegiate football programs was determined to challenge the NCAA’s handling of the televising of games involving their schools. In NCAA v. Board of Regents, the United States Supreme Court held that the NCAA had violated antitrust laws. This provided an opening for those schools and the bowls that would ultimately court them to reap the revenues from their football games’ televising directly. This shift has effectively created a new football division called the College Football Association, which is made up of the football powerhouses in Division 1. Because these schools have funnel more television revenues in their direction, which has led to increases in other forms of income, they have gained access to resources that have unbalanced the playing field in football and other sports. ”

#5 2000s Infraction transitioning

2001

Sometimes, a coach can use a new rule to his advantage. Two years after the NCAA allowed Division I athletes to get jobs, first-year Memphis basketball coach John Calipari, who inherited a program with a zero graduation rate, asked executives at local giant FedEx if they would provide paid summer internships for some of his players. Those internships gave Calipari an answer to the toughest question he encountered on the recruiting trail. “I have to enter a house with a zero percent graduation rate and promise parents that will change,” Calipari told The New York Times in 2001. “FedEx lets me show them their kids will get real work experience.” According to a December Forbes story, 25 Memphis basketball players have taken the internship.

The NCAA, under Syracuse Chancellor Kenneth Shaw, was determined to stop the “ leech and parasite” recruiters. Shaw said we have to reach a consensus to balance sports and the academic mission. I don’t think basketball ever eradicated illegal recruiting. Following the money trail and you will know why.

2005

Oregon Ducks designed custom comic books starring each recruit as the hero who leads the Ducks to a national title. Because NCAA rules at the time only allowed programs to send letter-sized, black-and-white pages to recruits, Coach Gilmore sent each prospect one page a week. After a few months, the recruit had the full comic book. And when that recruit came to Eugene for an official visit, he would find the bound, full-color book sitting on a table, possibly alongside a fake Sports Illustrated cover — attached to a real copy of the magazine — featuring the prospect wearing an Oregon uniform and holding the Heisman Trophy.

Recruits loved the books, and they helped the Ducks land several stars. For example, Jonathan Stewart didn’t lead the Ducks to a national title the way he did in Snoop: A Hero Is Born, but he did become the school’s second-leading rusher in just three seasons. Before they could immortalize the class of 2006 in graphic-novel form, Gilmore and his team received the ultimate backhanded compliment — the NCAA banned the books.

New academic standards were established that are ripe for fraud and deception. A 50% graduation rate over a 5 year period was mandated for each university. Schools that don’t maintain 925 on a scale of 1000 are subject to scholarship losses. The president of the NCAA, Myles Brand, stated: “ (The NCAA) is holding schools and individuals for the academic success of their student-athletes.” “The messages are clear: Recruit student-athletes who are capable of doing college-level work. Help them meet the standards for progress toward a degree and work with them and keep them enrolled so that the opportunity for quality education becomes a reality.”

Based on the 2003 – 2004 school year, 410 Division I teams risked penalties, and 328 Division I schools have one team facing sanctions.

The Big 12 needs more classroom participation from their student-athletes ranking 8th among the 11 conferences in Division I.

All 9 of the Longhorn women’s sports exceeded the 925 mark with sports receiving a perfect score.

2007 -NCAA banned texting in 2007.

0.05.2012 | Football Bill Little commentary: New folks

    Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

The massive changes in the college football landscape began in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Penn State announced its intention to join the Big 10 Conference. Soon afterward, Arkansas declared it was moving from the Southwest Conference to the SEC. The 1980s had been a traumatic time for the Southwest Conference.

But as the 1990s proceeded, the large shadow of the television industry began to influence decisions. The Big 8 Conference, whose schools were linked geographically in the Midwest, had only seven percent of America’s TV sets. The Big 10 had over 30 percent and the SEC 23 percent. Even though Texas teams brought major television markets in Dallas and Houston, the SWC had only seven percent coverage itself.

#6 Judging intangibles is where Coaches make the most recruiting mistakes – The Good Egg

Recruiting Student-Athletes By The Early ’70s Morphed Into A Research Laden Process Requiring Full Dossiers On Each Potential Student-Athlete, But Recruiting Errors Were Still Made.

•  Coach Lemmons says that intangibles are how the prospect handles himself- charisma, mannerisms, excitement level, and the way he shoots the ball.

  1. Abe Lemons said that farmers could hold up an egg to the light and see if it is a good egg. Unfortunately, recruits cannot be handled that way “to see what is inside ’em.” Abe Lemon once said, “doctors bury their mistakes, but mine (recruiting) are still on scholarship.” Coach Lemon concedes that “it’s the worst part of coaching.” The annual search for high school talent is one of the most pressure-filled parts of college sports. Recruiters can’t read the player’s mindset, so they decide based on the high school athletes’ past performance, agility, and quickness.

  2. Some athletes who did not have to work hard in high school are not willing to pay the price of hard work. Others are too overconfident that they do not feel the need for sufficient effort.

  3. Others have a great attitude but play poorly in pressured games.

  4. Many great athletes lose interest in the sport for many reasons: homesickness, a girlfriend at home, or just sports burn-out. In 1978 Booger Brooks from Andrews Texas signed by Coach Freddie Akers, but he packed up his car and went home before he ever took a snap in a game. His heart was not in football. He loved the rodeo and wanted to be a welder. Akers tried unsuccessfully to talk Brooks out of leaving U.T., but he left the game with the comment, “People were just a lot more serious about football than I was. To me, it was always just a game”.

  5. Others leave the program because of timing issues. Mike Presley was a great athlete who could have started for many other football programs, but Mike had to compete against Marty Akins. Mike never got the starting job, so he left the Longhorn program in his senior year. While Priest Holmes did graduate from Texas, he was in the same position as Mike Presley. After suffering an injury, Priest was Heisman trophy winner Ricky Williams back-up.

  6. However, the primary intangible that recruiters cannot judge is a player’s ability to adjust from home life to college life. Many athletes are unable to adjust to all the freedoms and responsibilities of college. Immaturity, poor role models, bad study habits, lack of discipline, little foresight, inspirational and motivational deficiencies, and alcohol abuse result in a loss of free education.

  #7 RECRUITING STORIES

• Author and former Longhorn football player from the 1940’s R.E. Peppy Blount are still relevant in 2019. “How does one quell the recruiting abuses of the paunchy, overzealous alumnus, whose fool brains, understanding — and ability in most instances— never got any higher than their stomachs”?

  1) In the early ’30s, Tex Robertson won the national championship as a swimmer at the Junior College level. He received a scholarship to USC, then transferred to the University of Michigan and was listed as a freshman again. The NCAA finally caught up with Tex, and he was ruled ineligible to swim for Michigan during the 1936 season.

  2)When Tex Robertson accepted the head swimming job at Texas in 1935, he had no scholarships to offer swimming athletes. But he still provided scholarships to some of the best swimmers. “Tex’s solution was to pay for as much of the Longhorn swimmers’ scholarships as he could with his own money. Admirable but not allowed under NCAA rules. Coach Reese, the present Coach of the Longhorn swimmers, said Tex’s help was “morally fine, ethically fine but NCAA’-L.Y., he was a dead man.” Fortunately, the NCAA in the ’30s was still not enforcing many of the institution’s rules, and Coach Robertson was not punished.

  3) Joey Aboussie was an All American in high school, and many universities were “bidding” for his service under the table, but he chose Texas with no bribes offered. Joey says most of the bribing came from the alumni, not the coaches. Like many other recruits, Joey said he was not prepared for the pressure put on him to sign.

4)In the early ’60s, Ernie Koy was heavily recruited by universities across the nation. One recruiter came to his house and volunteered to help him slop the hogs at sundown on his father’s place, hoping that this work would convince Ernie of their sincerity to “help” him. Ernie says, “I never met a nicer bunch of gentlemen.” Ernie signed his letter of intent with Texas and learned very quickly that the honeymoon was over. The recruiter who wanted to tuck him in at night and loved his parents changed dramatically. Ernie got no more sweet talk from the coaches. It was time to learn and earn. 

5) In 1960, Duke Carlisle told a story in his book about the harshness of rejecting a recruiter’s courtship. Duke decided to cancel his Baylor trip to attend Coach Royal’s spring game. When he told the Baylor coach he was canceling his visit, the Coach was upset and said: “Well then, why did you schedule it?” He then said to Duke, “He (Duke) might want to be careful with his flippant attitude.” After this incident, Duke said: “the fun and glamour had fast gone out of my recruiting experience.” 

6) Coach Todd Dodge a 1982 recruit says to his high school football players in 2018, “back in 1980 and 81 when I was getting recruited the recruiting process started around January 1 and it lasted about one month,” Dodge said. “There were no games that you went to; there were no camps; there were no junior days. You found out, basically, from your coach when the season was over. ‘Oh, by the way, these guys like you”. He (the high school head coach) probably already set up your visits for you, and here’s your four, five visits. So it was only about a one month process.”

Todd Dodge says, “One of the things we try to tell our (high school) players is don’t let anybody take your joy away during the (recruiting) process.”

7) Billy Dale wishes he had listened to Todd Dodge and Duke Carlisle. As a 17-year-old boy in 1967, It sounded like fun to visit a campus, all expenses paid, but it was not. He always respected authority, and coaches were the center of his authoritarian universe. Informing one coach from an SWC university that he would be a Longhorn was his first brush with the mean spirited side of recruiting. The day after he publicly announced his decision to attend Texas, the coach, whose courtship was rejected, called him at 7:00 A.M. on a school day. By respecting authority, Billy listened to the Coach, but he soon realized that this coach’s soft-sell approach had morphed into a hard-sell approach. Billy got upset when the coach said: “you will never play at U.T..” His father finally stepped in, yanked the phone from him, and said to the coach, “the boy has made his mind up, and he is going to be a Longhorn.”

Scalping Tickets and other Infractions

Players were given two complimentary tickets and the option to purchase four more, all on the 50-yard line. Most players opted for the six tickets to sell the tickets to corporations and wealthy alumni. Unfortunately, scalping tickets were banned by the SWC in the late ’40s, which resulted in objections from some prominent members at the university level. Clemson’s Athletic Director reasoned that if it was ok for the student body to scalp their tickets, it should be alright if athletes yo do the same. Coach Bear Bryant said when he was at college, “scalping tickets paid for toothpaste and shaving cream” and various other necessities. For many of the players from low-income families, this extra money helped them with incidentals and even dating. From my recruiting experience in the late ’60s, I know scalping tickets were prevalent, so the 1940 SWC ruling against scalping must not have been enforced. In 1976 O.U. Players made a lot more money than Texas players off of ticket sales. Texas players in 1976 bought 365 tickets while O.U. players bought 1155. In the book Down and Dirty- The Life and Crimes of Oklahoma football by Charles Thompson and Allan Sonnenschein, Charles admits that in 1989 “ there was more demand for O.U. tickets than seats available and “the players had plenty of tickets, and that was the only currency we needed.”

Longhorn infractions

Winning games begins with signing great recruits. A coach can hardly overcome a lack of talent by implementing a superior recruiting technique because competitors immediately mimic any recruiting success story. Universities that cheat most often do so because they have some inherent recruiting disadvantages (location, prestige, better heritage, and …). So they justify cheating as necessary to add value, making their University look equal in the recruit’s eyes.

Coach Akers inherited a program when The SWC was losing the battle to remain relevant and competitive with other conferences. In Fact, In 1980, 1986, 1988, and 1989 there were no SWC Teams in the final top 10. The great Texas high school football athletes left the “boring” SWC for more “exciting” football venues. Many SWC teams resorted to desperate means to survive – including illegal recruiting, dirty money, and predatory tactics. Only Rice, Baylor, and Arkansas escaped the eyes of the NCAA in the ’80s. The going rate for recruits was about $300 per month. That means that a team could get about 15 top players for the price of an assistant coach’s salary. There are reports of superstar recruits getting six figures, but these offers are rare.

After an 18-month investigation, U.T. is accused of violating 19 NCAA rules from 1980 – 1986. Texas received some minor sanctions for giving players small loans of $10- $50, loaning cars to players, and selling complimentary tickets. Akers said, “These violations are an accumulation of small things over a long period that could happen almost anywhere you have a major program.” Twenty-five players lose some or all of their complimentary tickets for scalping.

Stealing a lollipop is not as significant as stealing a car, and in this analogy, Texas took a lollipop and S.M.U. stole the car. S.M.U. chose deceit over compliance to recruit great athletes and fill their coffers.

Fortunately, for the integrity of college sports, S.M.U. was caught and punished with the “death” penalty. Naturally, there were a lot of Longhorns complaining about how minor the infractions were. Ken Hackemack, the U.T. defensive tackle, said, “I think the NCAA is making the S.W.C. into the scapegoat for violation accusations.

It is ridiculous to punish S.W.C. teams when most other schools are making the same or worse violations. Almost everyone does it. It is hard to avoid. Stephen Llewellyn, another defensive tackle said, “If they penalize us for a coach lending $10 for a guy to go home for his mother’s funeral or lending a car to go across campus, then in the light of violations like S.M.U.’s, ours are minor and ridiculous.” They (NCAA) are making a big deal out of nothing. Now, if they uncover something like boosters giving significant gifts, well, then we should be punished.” Jeff Ward, the U.T. kicker, said, “The NCAA is ridiculous. They are naive, and they seem to have their priorities in the wrong places. They are so understaffed that they can’t catch the real violations. I guess they have just decided to camp out in Texas and flash their badges here for a while. They should have something better to do. ” However, the U.T. President William Cunningham disagreed with the players on the team. He said (The violations) may be perceived by many people as relatively minor, but the University takes any violations of rules seriously.”

Four weeks earlier, SMU received the “death penalty” from the NCAA. SMU in the 80’s chose deceit over compliance to recruiting great athletes to win games and fill their coffers. Fortunately, for the integrity of college sports, they were caught. The NCAA rightfully punished SMU with the death penalty. 

Bryan Millard labels the Texas-SMU game as competition “between a couple of jailbirds.” 

1) 1987, Eric Metcalf violates an NCAA rule. He receives room and board at Jester Center during the summer, but he does not attend school. The punishment is a one-game suspension for Eric. He misses the BYU game, and Texas loses 47-6. 

2) In 1995 Texas Wins The SWC Championship With A Scholarship Player Who Has No College Eligibility. Ron McKelvey (Ron Weaver) Plays In all 11 Games At Texas. His Mother And Father don’t even know He Is On The Texas Team. Federal Prosecutors Charge Ron With “Fraudulent Misrepresentation” And Misuse Of a Social Security Number. The Result- No NCAA Infraction for Texas And Ron reimburses Texas $5000 For The Cost Of The Scholarship. 

3) Texas gets probation without sanctions for buying Marcus Dupree’s new boots.

Unfortunately, the need for winning, power, and money still lead to infractions in college sports. Hence, with all its flaws, the NCAA is still necessary to both investigate and enforce sanctions. Unfortunately, in many cases, probation builds a football program instead of acting as a deterrent. 8 of 13 of the colleges with the most infractions – OU, Auburn, Florida State, Texas A & M, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona State, and West Virginia- have, in most cases, not been hurt by illegal recruiting.

It is not the purpose of this website to overload the reader with statistics to prove a point. If you are interested in this subject, visit the OU season record website and compare the Sooner’s won-loss record after probation vs. SMU’s record after the death penalty. You will be surprised by the data.

The recruiting Infraction story has Not Ended- to be continued in the present and future. 

Be careful what you ask for and remember the Faust·​ian | \ ˈfau̇-stē-ən , ˈfȯ- \ parable.

Definition of Faustian –made or done for present gain without regard for future cost or consequences a Faustian bargain

Greed Comes for College Football: Knight Commission Recommends the FBS Leave the N.C.A.A.

Mark Schipper

Dec 11, 2020

• Jan 17, 2021

NCAA Delays Vote on New Compensation and Transfer Rules, but Revolution Remains a Real Threat

By Mark Schipper

The NCAA has built a reputation as a steadfastly conservative, even reactionary, organization after decades of swiftly and deftly shooting to bits any proposal that threatened to modify their model of amateurism, which they had well established in the early decades of the twentieth century.

This pay for play concept has been roundly rejected by the NCAA and described for decades as a non-starter as a reform mandate. It is an issue they consider untouchable as an amateur organization and one that would signal the end of their oversight of collegiate athletics. Even their new reform legislation is explicit about athletes not being employees of any single school, or being compensated directly for their athletic efforts. All of their proposed compensation allowances are tied to individual name recognition and notoriety, and not as athlete-representatives of a specific university.

Regarding the potential anti-trust issues, the NCAA recently received a letter from Mark Delrahim, the antitrust division leader of the U.S. Department of Justice, warning that a program overly restrictive to an athlete’s rights to compete in an open marketplace could trigger antitrust action from the government.

Even as the NCAA attempts to move forward, they are finding their organization is stuck in the past. And because they waited so long to acknowledge the problems with their model of amateurism, their piecemeal approach to fixing them has come so late in the game they are in danger of being swallowed up by a far more revolutionary model mandated out of the nation’s capital by ambitious legislators.

Whether or not the NCAA survives this round, and they will, is not the important thing. These battles over the future of college athletics are only beginning and what comes out the other end in the next decade is at the moment a bad bet on any square. The NCAA might get its chaos, after all.