That initial organizational meeting in May 1914 wasn’t really big news at the time.
When it was reported, it appeared on Page 5 of The News. It was summarized in nine paragraphs, wedged below a “once-upon-a-time” fairy tale editors hoped parents would read to their children and above a story on the Sherman city council’s purchase of an $8,000 “automobile fire engine.”
The paper’s front page that May 7 favored news of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa’s exploits south of the border. Among other front-page topics of note were a meeting of the Southwestern Sociological Conference in Memphis, a story with a London dateline on “radical social reforms” designed to end upper-class “landlordism” in England, and a downtown mugging of a woman along Young Street who claimed her assailant made away with $200.
Two days later, a Saturday, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that Sunday, and all future second Sundays in May, would be known as “Mother’s Day.”
Mother’s Day lives on. The Southwest Conference died in 1996 at age 82.
Like the initial story that ran above it in The News, the conference’s initial goals proved a fairy tale. Among the causes of the SWC’s death was a decade of football scandals leaving its eight remaining Texas schools — four public and four private universities — divided into large- and small-revenue producers. They couldn’t get along. The end was predictable if not happily ever after.
Grand ambitions
Theo Bellmont, the Texas athletic director, freshly arrived from the Houston YMCA, brought with him grandiose plans for a new conference.
To that end, for the Dallas meeting he chose the Oriental, considered among the finest hotels in the city. Many considered it even tonier than the relatively new Adolphus, across the street.
Several of the conference’s charter schools had been affiliated with the Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association, a massive confluence that included high schools.
Bellmont was adamant that the Southwest Intercollegiate Athletic Conference could not allow high school membership.
Bellmont’s vision was inspired by schools to the north and east. And he wasn’t thinking Arkansas and Tennessee.
The new conference would be “equal in magnitude to the athletic organizations among the colleges of the North” that already had passed rules to do away with many of the eligibility and competitive ills of the day.
Southwest schools would no longer take the sewage that flowed from north and east.
“Tramp athletes were no longer welcomed [in the North and East], but in the relatively wide-open confines of Texas, schools still welcomed such athletes,” said Dr. Tai Kriedler, a professor of history at Texas Tech.
Kriedler is an expert on the subject.
In the wake of the death of the SWC, its history, including business records, correspondence and memoranda, were packed up and shipped in 33 boxes from the conference’s Dallas headquarters to Lubbock to be housed at Texas Tech’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.
Kriedler serves as the collection’s deputy director and overseer of SWC lore.
The SWC’s founding fathers called for athletes to “engage in sport solely for the physical, mental or special benefits to be derived from participating,” Kriedler wrote in his seminal study of the conference’s formative years.
SWC sports, it was declared, were to be nothing more than an “avocation.”
To that end, the new conference imposed rules concerning graduation, restricted transfers and “by the 1920s, it had imposed some of the toughest eligibility rules in the country,” Kriedler wrote.
The job of trying to enforce the rules went not to athletic directors or commissioners but to Dr. Daniel Penick, a professor of New Testament Greek at the University of Texas who served as the SWC’s executive council president from 1922 to 1934.
But such high-mindedness proved difficult to enforce from the start.
In the conference’s debut season, Baylor’s use of an ineligible player kept the school from sharing the 1915 football title.
Schools continued to pack their football schedules with high school teams and YMCAs. Brownwood’s Daniel Baker College became a go-to patsy for SWC schools in search of victory. Plagued by financial difficulties that limited its ability to field competitive teams, Daniel Baker was shut out 23 times by SWC schools.
Meanwhile, conference membership churned. Comings and goings became annual rites.
Rice gave up provisional membership after 1915 but returned in 1918 along with late-to-the-party Southern Methodist University, five miles up the road from the Oriental Hotel.
Southwestern University of Georgetown, Texas, left in 1917. Oklahoma’s Phillips University joined in 1920 just as the University of Oklahoma was leaving for the Missouri Valley Conference.
Phillips was out by 1921. Texas Christian University joined in 1923. Oklahoma A&M left in 1925 to realign with Oklahoma in the Missouri Valley.
From 1926 to 1955, the SWC stabilized at seven schools — six in the state of Texas along with the University of Arkansas.
Texas Tech joined in 1956. The University of Houston arrived two decades later.
The end was foreshadowed when Arkansas left to join LSU and Mississippi in the SEC after the 1991 football season. Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor and eventually TCU found a home alongside Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, formerly known as Oklahoma A&M, in the Big 12, leaving SMU to finally land in the American Athletic Conference.
At least the conference outlived the Oriental Hotel, which hosted that first organizational meeting. Its majesty was torn down in 1924 to make way for a bigger, grander hotel. Across the street, the Adolphus will be 102 later this year.
SWC membership through the years
Arkansas (1915–1991): Left for the SEC after 1991 football season.
Baylor (1915–1996): Original member for all sports.
Houston (1976–1996): Provisional member from 1972-75 (did not count in SWC standings) while raising academic and admission standards to SWC regulations.
Oklahoma (1915–1919): Withdrew to join the Missouri Valley Conference/Big Six in the fall of 1919.
Oklahoma A&M (1915–1925): Withdrew because the SWC dropped wrestling as a formal sport (competition was held from 1922-25 seasons, with the school later known as Oklahoma State winning all four times). Moved to Missouri Valley Conference from 1925-56, was independent from 1956-59 and joined the Big Eight Conference for the fall of 1959.
Phillips (1920-21): Dropped out after the 1920-21 academic year. School closed during the Depression for a year in 1933-34, then reopened and lasted until 1998, when it closed and the property was purchased by North Oklahoma JC.
Rice (1918-1996): Provisional member from 1915-17; began competition with 1918 football and stayed for the duration.
SMU (1918–1996): Started with the 1918 football and hand grenade throwing season (undocumented as to winning teams and individuals).
Southwestern (1915–1916): Short stay for varsity sports for the Georgetown school. Restarted football program in 2013 after a 62-year hiatus, now competing in NCAA Division III.
Texas (1915–1996): Original member for all sports.
Texas A&M (1915–1996): Original member for all sports.
TCU (1923–1996): Started with 1923 fall sports.
Texas Tech (1956–1996): Came into the conference in basketball for the 1956-57 season and officially began football competition in the fall of 1960; joined the Big 12 in 1994 and started Big 12 competition in 1996-97.
Courtesy Bo Carter
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