The Texas Conference: A Plan to Save College Football in Our State

[TexasTowelie]

With Texas and Oklahoma joining Texas A&M in the SEC, the remaining schools in the Big 12 have been left in the lurch. For fans of Baylor, TCU, and Texas Tech, this means the terrifying prospect of deciding whether loyalty to the Big 12 is the best play, or if it would be better to heed to the siren call of conference realignment and seek membership in the ACC or Pac-12.

But neither is a good option for those Texas schools. Loyalty to the Big 12, with its unsteady leadership, faltering reputation, and lack of big-money member schools is not the right choice. The Big 12 is just as likely to be heading to the conference chop shop as it is to be heading into a prosperous future. But waiting for overtures from other major conferences might be just as unlikely to work out. For universities like Baylor and TCU—small, private, religious institutions that lack the athletic tradition of UT or A&M, their recent football success is unlikely to appeal to a major conference. And Texas Tech, way out in West Texas, is at risk of being grafted into a conference that operates two time zones away.

No, now is not the time for loyalty or to sit around and wait for rescue. Now is the time for Texas’s remaining college football powers to take control of their own destiny, to band together with their historic rivals in the same way Texas did with Oklahoma. Now is the time to form the Texas Conference.

The proposal for Baylor, TCU, and Tech is to create a new, Texas-only conference with all the other Division I FBS schools in the state. This would be: Baylor, TCU, Tech, SMU, Houston, Rice, UTSA, UTEP, UNT, and Texas State. Of course, many of these teams were in the old Southwest Conference together, but Rice, TCU, SMU, and Houston were left out of the initial formation of the Big 12. This could right those wrongs and add other Texas teams.

Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/college-football-texas-conference-proposal/

[LeftInTX]

1. Doesn't sound very exciting for Baylor and Rice!

"We get to play UTSA...yee-haw!"

[TexasTowelie]

2. I'll mention that Division III football almost has its own Texas conference.

The American Southwest Conference (ASWC) consists of ten teams, eight from Texas, Louisiana College, and Belhaven University in Mississippi. Louisiana College decided to leave the conference to go NAIA while Austin College in Sherman is moving back from the Southern Athletic Association (SAA) to the ASWC. If we could convince Trinity to join the ASWC and have Belhaven replace them in the SAA then the geographical alignments would be perfect.

The ASWC would consist of Austin College, East Texas Baptist, Hardin-Simmons, Howard Payne, Mary Hardin Baylor, McMurray, Southwestern, Sul Ross State University, Texas Lutheran, and Trinity. Believe me when I wonder whether the trip to Alpine ranks high on anybody's list.

[liberal N proud]

3. Several Texas DII schools joined the MAIA

A conference that spans Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas

[czarjak]

4. Texas Conference without Texas?

[TexasTowelie]

5. They don't own everything.

And for a historical footnote, the first chartered university in Texas was in 1840 was a place called Rutersville Unversity (Methodist affiliated). The charter from that university had three other Methodist universities fold into it and a new university was created in Georgetown, Texas in 1870 known as Texas University.

In 1873, the name Texas University was ceded back to the state and the renamed university in Georgetown became known as Southwestern University, my alma mater. I really hope that Board of Trustees in the early 1870s held out for some major concessions for relinquishing the naming rights. Esssentially, there would be no UT if TU hadn't become SU. (We're also responsible for the Southwestern Medical School in Dallas).