Here is why the SWC imploded and why we did not get into the BIG12. This is not coming from me but from an actual (now retired) BIG8 A.D.
Thanks to Coog51. He posted this a few years back. For years we have been forced fed the Ann Richards narrative. Here it is for all to see…again.
"Jon Wefald picks up the phone from his Minnesota home, and seconds later, the former Kansas State president poses a question.
“Now what on earth would you be calling me for?” Wefald asks laughing, knowing the reason for the call.
College athletics is potentially on the verge of monumental change. The Big 12 Conference, a league Wefald was instrumental in building, has been vulnerable to dissolution due to conference realignment over the past year.
So if there was ever a time to jump in the time machine and look back at how the Big Eight became the Big 12 (almost the Big 16, more on that later) nearly two decades ago, it’s now.
Not many people know more details about that time than Wefald, who served two terms as the Chair of the Association of Big Eight universities from 1989-93.
He spares to tell the story of how the 12-team league was formed — a conference that seemed ideal, a grouping of schools Wefald thought would be together for a long time.
But before he begins to paint the picture of that time, there’s one last thing.
“You know, this story has never been written before,” he says.
Moments later, he begins to tell it.
It was 1990, and the landscape of college athletics would soon undergo a significant change.
Arkansas left the Southwest Conference for the Southeastern Conference that year, and Penn State left its independent status and joined the Big Ten.
“The dominoes are real shaky in 1990,” Wefald said, reflecting back on that time period. “The dominoes were falling and I was concerned about the future of the Big Eight. It’s very similar to July of 2010, and now late summer, early fall of 2011.”
Wefald, along with Kansas chancellor Gene Budig and Iowa State president Martin Jischke, understood what was at risk if those dominoes continued to fall.
“That’s when I started thinking to myself, ‘OK, I’m the Chair here and I know there are two or three other Big Eight presidents that feel we have to get aggressive,’” Wefald said. "Otherwise what I was worried about was Texas would join the Pac-10 in 1990, kind of like the same thing we found last year and now. They’d be leaving the Southwest Conference and that would be a powerful force to maybe trigger Oklahoma into joining the Southeast Conference.
“And then Colorado, going all the way back to the late 80s and early 90s — there were people at the University of Colorado that wanted to join the Pac-10. They had that kind of vision for two decades.”
So a group of Big Eight presidents, led by Wefald, became proactive.
“We felt we had to get aggressive because if we don’t, there’s a good chance the Big Eight takes a big hit. It would create a real disturbance.”
Wefald, Budig and Jischke began to look at a partnership with the Southwest Conference, which consisted of eight schools after Arkansas’ departure: Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Baylor, TCU, SMU, Rice and Houston.
“It was something we were willing to consider, and it was something we thought we could talk the other Big Eight presidents into,” Wefald said.
Fast forward to 2011, a time when 16-team super conferences are talked about daily, and this is where the Big Eight actually appeared to be well ahead of the game approximately 20 years earlier.
The Big Eight’s goal was to form a 16-team conference, with all eight of the remaining schools from the Southwest Conference merging with the original Big Eight of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, K-State, KU, Missouri, Iowa State, Colorado and Nebraska.
“We actually were pushing that very hard,” Wefald said.
The Southwest Conference presidents and Big Eight presidents happened to be together for a meeting of the national land grant and state universities in Kansas City in the summer of 1990.
Wefald would call a meeting for all the presidents from the two leagues to attend .Twelve to 13 of the 16 presidents showed up.
A partnership between the two leagues was discussed, but University of Texas president Bill Cunningham shut down the talks relatively quickly.
“We were talking about the merger,” Wefald recalled. "After about a half-hour or 45 minutes, Bill Cunningham said ‘we’re not interested.’ They were the only one to say that.
“It was kind of interesting even then, because without Texas, we thought, 'well we might as well conclude the meeting because Texas wasn’t interesting. So the meeting ended.”
Wefald, still the Chair of the Big Eight, thought the passing of time could perhaps change Texas’ mind about a conference merger, so he let a couple of years go by.
Cunningham, the Texas president, was promoted to chancellor of the 15 educational institutions in Texas in 1992.
Bob Berdahl would take over as the university’s president in 1993, and soon after, another meeting was called, this time in the hotel of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
“We can’t tell Texas they’re coming up to Kansas City so we met at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport,” Wefald said, half joking.
Fifteen schools were present at the meeting, with Rice being the lone exception.
Southwest Conference commissioner Steve Hatchell and Big Eight commissioner Carl James were at the hotel, but stayed out in the hall during the meeting.
“We met for I’d say two hours and just had a discussion, a complete discussion on a merger,” Wefald said. "There’s 15 schools there and we’re kind of sitting on chairs, and after about a half-hour of conversation, I just said, ‘well, let’s just see who might be interested in mergering.’
“We’re going around the room and it’s one after the other ‘I, I, I, I,’ and ironically the last school was the University of Texas.”
Fitting that it would once again come down to Texas. There sat new president Bob Berdahl, pondering the decision.
“The 14 schools said let’s do it and we got to the University of Texas and Berdahl said ‘I’ve got to think about this, I’ve gotta take it to our board of regents.’ I just said to myself in my mind, ‘oh darn-it, it’s not going to happen.’ That’s just how influential the University of Texas is.”
Berdahl, regarded as a low-key person by those who knew him, then caught everyone’s attention.
“He just said 'if I had my way we’d join the Pac-10,” Wefald recalled. “He just said ‘look, we’re not doing well in the Southwest Conference and we play all our games in Texas except for a few.’”
Unlike today, Texas was struggling in the early 90s. From 1991-93, the Longhorns posted a 16-16-1 record in football while failing to make a bowl game during that time. In addition, their basketball attendance was waning significantly. In its 1988 men’s basketball season, Texas averaged just 4,028 fans per game in an arena that seated 16,231.
So Texas was seeking change.
“So we had 14 out of 15 that were saying ‘I,’” Wefald said. "So the Big Eight presidents decided we shouldn’t let this draw out and let’s try and get a conference call within two weeks because you can’t just let that sit there.
“We knew Texas had to meet with its board of regents and I assume that they did that within the week. So we had a conference call that was set up within ten days and all of the Big Eight presidents were on the conference call, and quite frankly, we did not know who was on for the Southwest Conference.”
Fifteen minutes into that call, Wefald spoke up.
“I just said 'what do you guys in the Southwest Conference want to do?” he asked.
The first person to chime in: Bob Berdahl, the president of Texas.
“He said 'we’ve decided you should invite four schools: Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech,” Wefald recalled.
Texas and A&M were considered key components to the expansion, while Baylor and Texas Tech had some advantages on its side.
Ann Richards, the governor of Texas at the time, was a Baylor graduate. Therefore, the Bears’ move to the Big 12 would be supported.
Texas Tech also had leverage, as key members in both the House and the Senate of the Texas legislature had a strong affiliation with the Red Raiders.
Meanwhile, TCU, SMU, Rice and Houston would be left out of the mix
“After the conference call I made sure we got telegrams with invitations to those four schools to join,” Wefald said. “So like magic, we had a Big 12 and it was ready to go by 94.”
On the outside looking in, everything seemed OK in the Big 12. But there were always points of contention in regards to the league perhaps catering to Texas. The Longhorns were a valued commodity to the league, and perhaps had some advantages others did not.
“The University of Texas, we met maybe a month later to come up with a mission statement and some ground rules,” Wefald said. “Texas made it very clear all gate receipts would be kept by each school and we all supported that.”
But Texas also took issue with Proposition 48s — which was a rule enacted in 1986 that requires incoming college athletes to have a 2.0 GPA in 11 core courses and score at least a 700 on the SAT or a 15 on the ACT. This was better known as partial qualifiers, and Texas wanted the number allowed in the old Big Eight to be decreased significantly in the Big 12, which left a sour taste in the mouth of Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne.
“At the time, Tom Osborne maybe had over 20 or 25 Prop 48s and they were all excellent players,” Wefald said. “Texas said we’re only going to permit one and if you don’t go along with it we’re not going to join — it was almost like that. And we supported that. It was so important to have Texas and Texas A&M as part of this new conference and Baylor and Texas Tech are both excellent — so we had this Big 12 and we pretty much agreed on the ground rules.”
But there were other rules some schools were bitter over. Revenue would not be distributed evenly under the guidelines of the new Big 12, as only 50 percent was divided equally among the league’s schools.
“It was always the debate on the other 50 percent of the television revenues,” Wefald said. “In the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference, they share 100 percent and that was always a point of contention. But Texas and Texas A&M, Oklahoma and probably Nebraska felt it was fine to have 50 percent based on appearances because they were going to be on just about every week and that’s just the way it is.”
So the Big 12 was built, and in 1996, K-State played Texas Tech in the inaugural Big 12 football game in Manhattan. It was an exciting time for nearly all involved.
Those happy times have now turned to doom and gloom for a league that just a few years ago, had its issues, but all the schools seemed content.
Now animosity appears to exist, and trustworthy relationships have seemingly turned into a game of everyone looking behind, hoping not to be stabbed in the back.
“I’m sitting here and I can’t believe this is happening,” Wefald said. “You’re taking a conference that was just perfect. You could drive to anywhere — everything was drivable. We had great rivalries — historic rivalries. We all got along well.”
The rapid speed of all the talk regarding conference realignment has shocked Wefald.
“I am stunned at how rapid and quick this whole development has taken place,” he said. "I wish they would just think about it for a while.
“It’s a great conference. I think people really love the Big 12. I just wish they would stop and think about all the advantages for the Big 12. There are so many.”
Wefald admits he’s just a fan now, but at the same time, it’s difficult to watch something he helped build possibly crumble so quickly. And there’s nothing he can do but hope that in the end, cooler heads prevail, and logic defies greed and jealousy. And with Tuesday’s news, everything may turn out OK for the league.
“The whole thing — it’s all most surrealistic,” he said. "I shouldn’t be getting a headache over this, but I do. It’s just, ‘why?’ How is this helping the sports of all these Big 12 schools?
"It’s very disappointing. It all kind of leaves you speechless. The fact that pride, irritation, anger over things you wouldn’t say are that major would lead to the dissolution of the Big 12… I just wish everybody would sit back and think about it more.
“It would just be very heartbreaking to see the Big 12 break up.”
Did you all catch this:
“You know, this story has never been written before,” he says.
Now you understand what uta did. Now you have a little bit of a better idea why some of us do not fancy uta.
