Posts Tagged ‘Florida’

Adios, Southwest Conference

Quick – Name the last eight members of the Southwest Conference.

Not so easy, is it?

Entering the 1994 season, the long-anticipated demise of the SWC became official.  The 1994 and 1995 campaigns would be the last for the storied conference.  After 80 seasons, the Southwest Conference would fold up its tents; its teams left to a new future. 

Arkansas, the only Southwest member outside of the state of Texas, had defected to the Southeastern Conference in 1990.  Now Texas, Texas A & M, Baylor, and Texas Tech, commencing with the 1996 season, would join the Big Eight to form the Big 12.  Southern Methodist, Rice, and Texas Christian, meanwhile, would join the Western Athletic Conference.  The Houston Cougars, originally set adrift to fend for itself as an independent, would eventually settle upon an affiliation with Conference USA.

Why would a conference as steeped in history as the SWC fold?  Several reasons were proposed:  1) the increased popularity of the NFL in Texas had eroded the state’s college fan base; 2) the widely-held belief that the conference was made up of two teams (Texas and Texas A&M) and a series of woeful second-tier teams; and 3) the …

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