Suddenly woeful conference : the party's over saturday, when swc football ceases to exist

In the opening scene of the movie “Body Heat,” William Hurt watches from his apartment window as a restaurant that he and his parents frequented 25 years before disappears in flames. “My

history is burning up out there,” he says. Many Texans no doubt will feel equally forlorn Saturday, when 81 years of Southwest Conference football come to an end with two games, one a

cross-town rivalry, Houston at Rice, that holds little interest, even for the participants, and the other a cross-state rivalry, Texas and Texas A&M;, that even Broadway has been unable

to ignore. But, in truth, it has been years since SWC fires raged. When the four “have” schools--Texas, Texas A&M;, Texas Tech and Baylor--announced they were joining the Big Eight to

form the Big 12, leaving the “have nots”--Rice, Southern Methodist, Texas Christian and Houston--to fend for themselves, all that did was stop the smoldering. College football historians who

have addressed the issue date the beginning of the end to Dec. 4, 1976, when Texas beat then-member Arkansas, 29-12, in the last game coached by two of the conference’s most successful and

respected coaches, the Longhorns’ Darrell Royal and the Razorbacks’ Frank Broyles. Neither might recall the precise moment he decided to quit, but those around Royal at the time believe they

know when it hit him. On a visit to the Texas campus during the previous recruiting season, a highly touted running back boasted that he had already committed to Oklahoma but had come to

Austin anyway because he wanted the free trip. When Royal objected, the running back turned his back to the revered coach, bent over and. . . . Let’s just say that an ill wind has blown over

the Southwest Conference ever since. Many of the good teams in recent years became so because they cheated. The only two football programs in the conference that have not been apprehended

by the long arm of the NCAA since the mid-’80s are Baylor and Rice. In 1986, SMU shut down its program for two years after becoming the only NCAA school given the death penalty. One

violation involved Texas’ governor, William Clements, who contributed to a slush fund for players and then lied about it. Asked about the fib, he said, “Well, there wasn’t a Bible in the

room.” But even the good teams were not that good. In 10 of the last 12 times that SWC teams have ventured to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl, the reward for the conference’s champion since 1941,

they have returned home losers. In seeking a big-picture answer to what happened, blame OPEC. When the oil boom in the United States went bust, Texans had to diversify or die. They

recruited clean, high-tech industries, and, with them, came thousands of employees from other states, joining thousands of Rust Belt evacuees who had come when the Texas economy was better

than just about everywhere else except California, and suddenly there were lots of nouveau Texans who did not see the charm of SMU vs. TCU. When the dynamics of the population changed, so

did the sports landscape. Interest in college sports in the state was eroded by the influx, beginning in the ‘60s, of professional teams in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Young sports fans

who might once have worn the orange of the Texas Longhorns or maroon of the Texas Aggies more often sported the colors of the Cowboys and the Rockets. For better or worse, the Texas of the

‘80s and ‘90s was not the Texas of the ‘40s and ‘50s. There is no for-better-or-worse regarding SWC football. It is worse. For that, blame the NCAA, although it was trying to do schools a

favor when it established stricter scholarship limits. All it did in the SWC was end the dynasty of Texas and Arkansas, which between them appeared in 15 of 19 Cotton Bowl games, were ranked

in the top 10 13 times and won three national championships between 1960 and ’78. The parity created when Texas and Arkansas could no longer stockpile players because of the scholarship

limitations might have been good for Baylor and SMU, but it was not good for the conference’s prestige nationwide. Even in a state richer in high school football talent than any except

California and Florida, there were not enough outstanding players to divide among nine schools. So instead of two powerhouses every year, the conference sometimes had none. With the SWC in

free fall, Arkansas fled to the Southeastern Conference in 1992. Texas and Texas A&M; would have left sooner if not for the insistence of the Texas Legislature, which controls their

funding, that any accommodation they made also include Baylor. The Baptist influence is something that has not changed about Texas. * But we did not come simply to bury the SWC. John

Heisman, who coached at Rice in the ‘20s, once said, “You’ll never have great football played by the southwestern teams. The climate won’t permit it.” Little could he have known that five

players--TCU’s Davey O’Brien in 1938, SMU’s Doak Walker in ‘48, Texas A&M;’s John David Crow in ‘57, Texas’ Earl Campbell in ’77 and Houston’s Andre Ware in ‘89--would win the trophy

named for him and numerous others would be worthy of consideration, players such as TCU’s Sammy Baugh and Bob Lilly, Texas’ Bobby Layne and Tommy Nobis, SMU’s Forrest Gregg and Eric

Dickerson, Texas A&M;’s John Kimbrough, Texas Tech’s Donny Anderson, Arkansas’ Lance Alworth, Rice’s Dicky Maegle and Baylor’s Mike Singletary. Six SWC teams won national championships

under famous coaches such as TCU’s Dutch Meyer, SMU’s Matty Bell, Texas A&M;’s Homer Norton, Broyles and Royal. But the most famous coach in the conference was Bear Bryant. When he came

from Kentucky in 1954 to take over a moribund Texas A&M; program, he discovered so little discipline among the Aggies that he took them to a deserted Army base near Junction, Tex., and

worked them out twice a day on a rocky patch of dirt in the August heat until most of them quit. Asked how bad it was, one who stayed, future Texas A&M; and Alabama Coach Gene Stallings,

once said, “All I know is that we went out there in two buses and we came back in one.” For most of the next two decades after Bryant left in 1957, the conference belonged to Texas and

Arkansas. Royal, who survived the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to become a Sooner quarterback, arrived as the head coach at archrival Texas in 1957 and brought his down-home wisdom with him, with

sayings such as, “We’re gonna dance with who brung us,” and “We didn’t come to town on a load of wood.” Indeed, they did not. Seven seasons later, Royal also brought the Longhorns their

first national championship, beating Roger Staubach and Navy in the 1964 Cotton Bowl, 28-6. It was later revealed that the Midshipmen’s sideline signals had somehow fallen into the hands of

the Texas coaching staff before the game. Royal never had a finer moment than 1969’s “Big Shootout,” also known in the Southwest as “the Game of the Century,” when unbeaten Texas defeated

unbeaten Arkansas, 15-14, in a game that former SWC publicist Bill Morgan said “had everything but a Ben-Hur chariot race.” In the dressing room afterward, although the Longhorns still had

to play Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl, President Richard Nixon presented them with a plaque proclaiming them national champions. Penn State, which also was undefeated, cried foul, but Nixon

was trying to secure the so-called New South voters for Republicans and figured football was the way to their hearts. Any discussion of that Texas team should come with a footnote. It was

the last national champion without a black player, a reminder of the SWC’s reluctance to accept the changing world. Only one other conference integrated more slowly. Royal was not proud of

that and, in years to come, tried to correct it, finding that his experiences in impoverished Oklahoma enabled him to relate to rural black athletes. One was Campbell, raised on a rose farm

outside Tyler, Tex. He was the star of the 1977 Texas team, the last from the SWC ranked No. 1 before a New Year’s Day game. There were hopes that this year’s Texas A&M; team might earn

that distinction, seeing the SWC off in glory. For decades, the Aggies, who even while creating a marvelously sophisticated university still were considered symbols of the state’s agrarian

past, bore the brunt of Polish-style jokes. Their football team did little to improve their image, beating the hated Longhorns nightly in the Broadway musical, “The Best Little Whorehouse in

Texas,” but hardly at all elsewhere. The Aggies got revenge, winning six of 10 conference championships since 1986. All it cost them was scrutiny by the NCAA. They would have won a seventh

last year if they hadn’t been on probation. They were going for No. 1 this year before losses to Colorado and Texas Tech knocked them out of the top 10. There is, however, still something to

play for Saturday--the last SWC championship. More stirring for the Aggies, if they win it, that means Texas doesn’t. Afterward? Well, there is still an SWC basketball season to be played.

But as former Longhorn publicist Jones Ramsey, the self-proclaimed “world’s tallest fat man,” once said, “The second most popular sport in Texas after football is spring football.” As one of

the SWC’s most colorful quarterbacks, SMU’s Dandy Don Meredith, would sing, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.” MORE TO READ