Here is the story of the death of 2 great power conferences and the founding of the WAC. In the 30's, there were 5 major conferences West of the Mississippi:

Pacific Coast Conference (1915–1959) - Idaho, Montana, and the PAC-8. Stable since adding UCLA in 1928.

Border Conference (1931-1962) - Formed from former indys Arizona, ASU, New Mexico, New Mexico State, Texas Tech, UTEP, and Northern Arizona. Hardin-Simmons and West Texas State joined in 1941.

Mountain States Conference (also called the Skyline Conference or Big 7) (1938-1962) - BYU, Utah, Utah State, Colorado, Colorado State, Wyoming, Denver. These teams had been together since 1921 in the Rocky Mountain Conference. In 1938, they left the Rocky Mountain in order to drop Northern Colorado, Montana State, Western State, Colorado College, and Colorado School of Mines.

SWC - Texas, TAMU, TCU, Baylor, SMU, Rice, Arkansas. Stable since 1925 when Oklahoma State left

Big 6 - Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa State, Oklahoma. They had been together since 1919 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Formed out of the best MVC schools in 1928, when they dropped Oklahoma State, WashU, Grinell, and Drake.


This was a pretty even balance of power, and it stayed stable for several decades. What happened?

1948 - Colorado leaves the Skyline Conference for the Big 6, making it the Big 7.
1951 - the Skyline Conference expanded. They plucked Montana from the PCC and New Mexico from the Border Conference.
1953 - NAU leaves the Border Conference for the Frontier Conference
1956 - Texas Tech leaves the Border Conference for the SWC. (The 3rd schools to leave the Border Conference in 5 years)
1958 - Oklahoma State leaves the Missouri Valley to rejoin the Big 7, making it the Big 8.


These all seem like minor moves and I don't know much about them. The major upheaval came in the late 50's:

From 1956-1958, a pay-for-play crisis hits several PCC schools (Cal, USC, UCLA and Washington). Those schools, plus Stanford re-form as the American Association of Western Universities. Oregon, OSU, WSU, and Idaho go indy.

In 1958, BYU's AD leads a series of discussions to form a premiere Western conference that doesn't include the scandal-plagued AAWU schools. The WAC is born, and the Border and Skyline Conferences dissolve. However, WSU, OSU, and Oregon ultimately the WAC and elect to rejoin the AAWU schools and form the PAC-8. The original WAC has 6 members: Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Colorado State and UTEP join 5 years later. Montana, Utah State, Idaho, NMSU, West Texas State, Hardin-Simmons and West Texas State are left out to dry.


I don't know too much about these events, but it seems like it was a fascinating time. It also coincides with much of the discussions to create the so-called Airplane Conference. Does anyone know more details, or care to speculate?

The biggest difference between then and now is that then there was not nearly so much significance attached to conference affiliation.

The Rose Bowl relationship was a big deal even in the days before ESPN, but the first Rose Bowl telecast was in 1952 (that was the first national telecast of any college football game) and it was only after that the game really became a BFD.

And, until after the Supreme Court ruling in 1984 deregulating college football telecasts, conferences and schools didn't even control/sell their own TV broadcast rights. The NCAA controlled that.

90% of today's advantages to belonging to a "Big 5" conference did not exist in the 1950s when that western conference-shuffling was going on.

Oh, Western State. You never could get it together could you?

Nice post btw

(07-26-2012 12:52 PM)Wedge Wrote:  The biggest difference between then and now is that then there was not nearly so much significance attached to conference affiliation.

The Rose Bowl relationship was a big deal even in the days before ESPN, but the first Rose Bowl telecast was in 1952 (that was the first national telecast of any college football game) and it was only after that the game really became a BFD.

And, until after the Supreme Court ruling in 1984 deregulating college football telecasts, conferences and schools didn't even control/sell their own TV broadcast rights. The NCAA controlled that.

90% of today's advantages to belonging to a "Big 5" conference did not exist in the 1950s when that western conference-shuffling was going on.

Good point. TV made it much more advantageous for the big schools to group together for negotiating power. It also increased the incentives to shut out the smaller schools from what became a shared revenue pot.

Oddly enough, however, we already saw several instances of smaller schools being thrown under the bus before TV came into play. The formation of the Big 6 and the Skyline Conference both happened in the 1920's, and both of them saw bigger schools coming together to shut out the smaller schools. It seems as if TV upped the ante, rather than brought about a new trend.

In 1947, when Motorola introduced the first TV under $200, there were only 44,000 TV's in the USA. By 1954, they were in over half of households:

(07-26-2012 01:33 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Good point. TV made it much more advantageous for the big schools to group together for negotiating power. It also increased the incentives to shut out the smaller schools from what became a shared revenue pot.

Oddly enough, however, we already saw several instances of smaller schools being thrown under the bus before TV came into play. The formation of the Big 6 and the Skyline Conference both happened in the 1920's, and both of them saw bigger schools coming together to shut out the smaller schools. It seems as if TV upped the ante, rather than brought about a new trend.

Yes, TV money increased the stakes, a lot, but again not until the 1980s. The Rose Bowl TV contract used to be a big deal to the Pac-8/10 and Big Ten even when the money was much smaller because it was their only significant TV revenue outside the little they got from the NCAA/CFA.

And it's true that schools with more power/prestige have often excluded neighbors just to get one-up on them -- a western example is Utah State getting the shaft when the WAC was formed, even though there was no money in it at the time and little reason to exclude them other than BYU and UU didn't want them included.

Schools also dropped out if their athletics became less competitive, like Montana and then Idaho falling out of the PCC grouping as population and money increased dramatically in the Pacific coast states starting in the 1940s and the gap between those two and the Pac heavyweights widened. The reverse of that is Colorado joining the Big 6/7/8 as their university and athletics grew faster than their former mountain-states colleagues, or Arizona and ASU joining the Pac as their state and universities grew much faster than those of the others in the WAC in the 1960s and 1970s. (ASU had about 10,000 students in the late 50s, and over 35,000 by the time they joined the Pac in the late 1970s. So on the day they joined the Pac they already had more students than any other school in the league, and now they have over 59,000 undergrads, more by far than any other school in the country.)

Idaho was left out of the PCC reorganization by the other members

they didn't drop out; they were kicked out

(07-26-2012 11:56 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Here is the story of the death of 2 great power conferences and the founding of the WAC. In the 30's, there were 5 major conferences West of the Mississippi:

Pacific Coast Conference (1915–1959) - Idaho, Montana, and the PAC-8. Stable since adding UCLA in 1928.

Border Conference (1931-1962) - Formed from former indys Arizona, ASU, New Mexico, New Mexico State, Texas Tech, UTEP, and Northern Arizona. Hardin-Simmons and West Texas State joined in 1941.

Mountain States Conference (also called the Skyline Conference or Big 7) (1938-1962) - BYU, Utah, Utah State, Colorado, Colorado State, Wyoming, Denver. These teams had been together since 1921 in the Rocky Mountain Conference. In 1938, they left the Rocky Mountain in order to drop Northern Colorado, Montana State, Western State, Colorado College, and Colorado School of Mines.

SWC - Texas, TAMU, TCU, Baylor, SMU, Rice, Arkansas. Stable since 1925 when Oklahoma State left

Big 6 - Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa State, Oklahoma. They had been together since 1919 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Formed out of the best MVC schools in 1928, when they dropped Oklahoma State, WashU, Grinell, and Drake.


This was a pretty even balance of power, and it stayed stable for several decades. What happened?

1948 - Colorado leaves the Skyline Conference for the Big 6, making it the Big 7.
1951 - the Skyline Conference expanded. They plucked Montana from the PCC and New Mexico from the Border Conference.
1953 - NAU leaves the Border Conference for the Frontier Conference
1956 - Texas Tech leaves the Border Conference for the SWC. (The 3rd schools to leave the Border Conference in 5 years)
1958 - Oklahoma State leaves the Missouri Valley to rejoin the Big 7, making it the Big 8.


These all seem like minor moves and I don't know much about them. The major upheaval came in the late 50's:

From 1956-1958, a pay-for-play crisis hits several PCC schools (Cal, USC, UCLA and Washington). Those schools, plus Stanford re-form as the American Association of Western Universities. Oregon, OSU, WSU, and Idaho go indy.

In 1958, BYU's AD leads a series of discussions to form a premiere Western conference that doesn't include the scandal-plagued AAWU schools. The WAC is born, and the Border and Skyline Conferences dissolve. However, WSU, OSU, and Oregon ultimately the WAC and elect to rejoin the AAWU schools and form the PAC-8. The original WAC has 6 members: Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Colorado State and UTEP join 5 years later. Montana, Utah State, Idaho, NMSU, West Texas State, Hardin-Simmons and West Texas State are left out to dry.


I don't know too much about these events, but it seems like it was a fascinating time. It also coincides with much of the discussions to create the so-called Airplane Conference. Does anyone know more details, or care to speculate?

Nice research. Thanks for the info. It was interesting to read.