If you are a fan of FBS football in Texas, this is a fun site to read. They do a good job of covering all of the FBS programs in Texas, and try to keep the idea of the Southwest Conference alive.



Here is the link.

https://swcroundup.com/

(08-20-2017 03:30 PM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  If you are a fan of FBS football in Texas, this is a fun site to read. They do a good job of covering all of the FBS programs in Texas, and try to keep the idea of the Southwest Conference alive.



Here is the link.

https://swcroundup.com/

I liked that website! Clever writing...I'd split the SWC divisions like this:
Tumbleweed Division: Texas Tech, Baylor, UTEP, TCU, UNT, SMU,
Southwest Division: Texas, AtM, Rice, Houston, Texas St, UTSA
Winner plays in the Original Cotton Bowl vs SEC/ Big 10 or Notre Dame

Cute site but obviously the idea of an all TX 12 team conference is NEVER happening. It would die even quicker than the original B12 did

Do it! A conference of the willing, for now. The big boys can join it in the future if they want to.

An all-Texas could work. It just wouldn't make the money Texas and TAMU are able to command.

And it wouldn't make the money that Baylor, TCU, and Texas Tech are used to.

Without one or both of UT and TAMU (who aren't going for it) I think you need either a 12 team league with no more than 6 Texans or a 10 team with 5 (if doing divisions or more if not).

It would take a real earthquake. Either UT and OU ditching the Big XII or AAC TV revenue collapsing to get anyone to seriously talk about it.

it would not come close to working it would be a total disaster

it would suffer from the same issues as the SWC

eventually the conference would sift to teams (two or at most 3) that were pretty much at or near the top and then teams that are pretty much perpetual bottom dwellers (7 or 8) and a couple that fight to be the 7 to 9 win teams most years and to avoid being the 1-4 win team and once the bottom dwellers become affixed at that position they start to drag down the top teams in national competitiveness and then recruits head out of state in droves and the conference becomes a disaster

there is a reason that an 8 team Big 8 had a decade or longer streak of having more ranked teams year in and year out Vs even a 9 team SWC much less the 8 all Texas team SWC and that was with the teams in the Big 8 not having near the same "Texas" recruiting grounds

over time no one cares that you are the best team in a bad conference and recruits do not care that you are the "top team in a Texas conference" when the vast majority of the teams you are beating suck

the losers get entrenched in that bottom feeder position and never climb out because the limited pool of recruits they can pick from want nothing to do with them and then the top teams are drug down by that as well

(08-20-2017 11:11 PM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  it would not come close to working it would be a total disaster

it would suffer from the same issues as the SWC

eventually the conference would sift to teams (two or at most 3) that were pretty much at or near the top and then teams that are pretty much perpetual bottom dwellers (7 or 8) and a couple that fight to be the 7 to 9 win teams most years and to avoid being the 1-4 win team and once the bottom dwellers become affixed at that position they start to drag down the top teams in national competitiveness and then recruits head out of state in droves and the conference becomes a disaster

there is a reason that an 8 team Big 8 had a decade or longer streak of having more ranked teams year in and year out Vs even a 9 team SWC much less the 8 all Texas team SWC and that was with the teams in the Big 8 not having near the same "Texas" recruiting grounds

over time no one cares that you are the best team in a bad conference and recruits do not care that you are the "top team in a Texas conference" when the vast majority of the teams you are beating suck

the losers get entrenched in that bottom feeder position and never climb out because the limited pool of recruits they can pick from want nothing to do with them and then the top teams are drug down by that as well

Every conference has winners and losers.

But the apparent trend in television money for G5's is the national money will be flat or decrease (maybe shift to payment based on views).

Regional TV is the best hope for G5 to gain television dollars except no one has critical mass.

We are already at the point where the revenue dollars for UTEP, UNT, UTSA, Rice, and TXST are basically identical. If the same happens to Houston and SMU the situation becomes interesting.

But that isn't enough for a conference.

Mix in MWC front range schools or schools to the east and you might have something to work with.

(08-20-2017 10:33 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  An all-Texas could work. It just wouldn't make the money Texas and TAMU are able to command.

And it wouldn't make the money that Baylor, TCU, and Texas Tech are used to.

Without one or both of UT and TAMU (who aren't going for it) I think you need either a 12 team league with no more than 6 Texans or a 10 team with 5 (if doing divisions or more if not).

It would take a real earthquake. Either UT and OU ditching the Big XII or AAC TV revenue collapsing to get anyone to seriously talk about it.

The P5 schools arent going to get in a league with the other Texas FBS schools unless some sort of college football armageddon strikes. If the P5 split off from the NCAA and all the air went out of G5 TV contracts----I could see how that could one day force the G5 to reorganize into more geographically compact conferences. You might have a Texas-centric conference at that point with an all (or mostly) Texas division. Call it the SWC.

Texas Division
Houston
SMU
Texas St
UTSA
Rice
N Texas

SW Division
Tulsa
LaTech
Arky St
Tulane
S Miss
Memphis

You could even add Wichita as an olympic member. If you wanted to go bigger and add some extra rivalries---move Tulsa to the Texas division and plug ULL and Middle Tenn to the other side. Hard to see how some good old fashionwd bad blood rivalries wouldnt eventually develop there. I think UTEP would probably end up going west---but they could probably be included if you limit the eastern footprint.

(08-20-2017 11:42 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(08-20-2017 11:11 PM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  it would not come close to working it would be a total disaster

it would suffer from the same issues as the SWC

eventually the conference would sift to teams (two or at most 3) that were pretty much at or near the top and then teams that are pretty much perpetual bottom dwellers (7 or 8) and a couple that fight to be the 7 to 9 win teams most years and to avoid being the 1-4 win team and once the bottom dwellers become affixed at that position they start to drag down the top teams in national competitiveness and then recruits head out of state in droves and the conference becomes a disaster

there is a reason that an 8 team Big 8 had a decade or longer streak of having more ranked teams year in and year out Vs even a 9 team SWC much less the 8 all Texas team SWC and that was with the teams in the Big 8 not having near the same "Texas" recruiting grounds

over time no one cares that you are the best team in a bad conference and recruits do not care that you are the "top team in a Texas conference" when the vast majority of the teams you are beating suck

the losers get entrenched in that bottom feeder position and never climb out because the limited pool of recruits they can pick from want nothing to do with them and then the top teams are drug down by that as well

Every conference has winners and losers.

But the apparent trend in television money for G5's is the national money will be flat or decrease (maybe shift to payment based on views).

Regional TV is the best hope for G5 to gain television dollars except no one has critical mass.

We are already at the point where the revenue dollars for UTEP, UNT, UTSA, Rice, and TXST are basically identical. If the same happens to Houston and SMU the situation becomes interesting.

But that isn't enough for a conference.

Mix in MWC front range schools or schools to the east and you might have something to work with.

yes, but every conference would not have narrowed themselves down to basically a single state to try and pull recruits from and just as much viewers

you can always give the ridiculous argument that "Texas has so many recruits", but that ignores the reality that those recruits are not constrained to only signing with a school in Texas

conferences with a recruiting base that consist of many more states and even more so just one or two major programs in the same conference in that state have the advantage of the fact that some kids will want to stay in state and then their choices to play in the "top conference" are limited to that one or those two schools

or they want to go where a large number of their friends go and yet at the same time they want to play at a top program.....so again that generally gets them back to looking at the major flagship or land grant university in that state that is also in a major conference

when you start giving a kid 12 choices for "in state" and "in the big time conference in the state" they start looking around at all those choices and 75% of them suck year in and year out well they start looking outside the state rapidly

and as the SWC found out it becomes very hard for that 75% of the teams that suck year in and year out to pull in those recruits and over time it becomes hard for the two or three better teams in the conference to retain the top recruits

and suddenly 60%+ of your huge pool of in state talent is going elsewhere and you can forget pulling in kids from out of state

again there was a reason that the SWC with 8 and even 9 teams consistently had fewer ranked teams almost every year Vs the Big 8 and their 8 teams even with the "Texas recruiting grounds"

and there was a reason that Arkansas was always near the top while they were in the conference.....because Arkansas could hold in state recruits extremely well especially back then and they could dip into Texas

once they were gone and once it was clear that a large portion of the SWC was just going to suck every year and a couple were fighting to make a bowl game and to not fall to being a 4 win team and that even the teams at the top were getting throttled in The Cotton Bowl the flood gates were opened and Texas recruits were going out of state in droves

there is a reason that the 4 teams in the PAC 12 in the same state, the 4 teams in the Big 12 in the same state (no matter the teams), the 4 teams in the CUSA in the same state (no matter the teams), the 5 teams in the MAC in the same state and the 4 teams in the ACC in the same state all struggle to ever consistently be at the top of the conference as a group year in and year out for an extended period of time no matter what the other teams in the conference are doing

and it is because as some of those teams sift to be the "consistent losers" in the state in that conference they can forget about being appealing to recruits in that state and even the one that might consistently be the better of the group struggles against the talent in the state always looking outside the state after they decide their 4 or 5 options in state for that conference really is just one option or one very good option and one "help us get better" and two or three "we just suck, but we really want you" so time to look elsewhere for those recruits

when you look at the real world performance over many many years it is extremely easy to see that too many schools in the same conference from the same state is detrimental to the conference overall and especially to those teams in that state

if you look at the results it is undeniable

(08-21-2017 01:48 AM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  

(08-20-2017 11:42 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(08-20-2017 11:11 PM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  it would not come close to working it would be a total disaster

it would suffer from the same issues as the SWC

eventually the conference would sift to teams (two or at most 3) that were pretty much at or near the top and then teams that are pretty much perpetual bottom dwellers (7 or 8) and a couple that fight to be the 7 to 9 win teams most years and to avoid being the 1-4 win team and once the bottom dwellers become affixed at that position they start to drag down the top teams in national competitiveness and then recruits head out of state in droves and the conference becomes a disaster

there is a reason that an 8 team Big 8 had a decade or longer streak of having more ranked teams year in and year out Vs even a 9 team SWC much less the 8 all Texas team SWC and that was with the teams in the Big 8 not having near the same "Texas" recruiting grounds

over time no one cares that you are the best team in a bad conference and recruits do not care that you are the "top team in a Texas conference" when the vast majority of the teams you are beating suck

the losers get entrenched in that bottom feeder position and never climb out because the limited pool of recruits they can pick from want nothing to do with them and then the top teams are drug down by that as well

Every conference has winners and losers.

But the apparent trend in television money for G5's is the national money will be flat or decrease (maybe shift to payment based on views).

Regional TV is the best hope for G5 to gain television dollars except no one has critical mass.

We are already at the point where the revenue dollars for UTEP, UNT, UTSA, Rice, and TXST are basically identical. If the same happens to Houston and SMU the situation becomes interesting.

But that isn't enough for a conference.

Mix in MWC front range schools or schools to the east and you might have something to work with.

yes, but every conference would not have narrowed themselves down to basically a single state to try and pull recruits from and just as much viewers

you can always give the ridiculous argument that "Texas has so many recruits", but that ignores the reality that those recruits are not constrained to only signing with a school in Texas

conferences with a recruiting base that consist of many more states and even more so just one or two major programs in the same conference in that state have the advantage of the fact that some kids will want to stay in state and then their choices to play in the "top conference" are limited to that one or those two schools

or they want to go where a large number of their friends go and yet at the same time they want to play at a top program.....so again that generally gets them back to looking at the major flagship or land grant university in that state that is also in a major conference

when you start giving a kid 12 choices for "in state" and "in the big time conference in the state" they start looking around at all those choices and 75% of them suck year in and year out well they start looking outside the state rapidly

and as the SWC found out it becomes very hard for that 75% of the teams that suck year in and year out to pull in those recruits and over time it becomes hard for the two or three better teams in the conference to retain the top recruits

and suddenly 60%+ of your huge pool of in state talent is going elsewhere and you can forget pulling in kids from out of state

again there was a reason that the SWC with 8 and even 9 teams consistently had fewer ranked teams almost every year Vs the Big 8 and their 8 teams even with the "Texas recruiting grounds"

and there was a reason that Arkansas was always near the top while they were in the conference.....because Arkansas could hold in state recruits extremely well especially back then and they could dip into Texas

once they were gone and once it was clear that a large portion of the SWC was just going to suck every year and a couple were fighting to make a bowl game and to not fall to being a 4 win team and that even the teams at the top were getting throttled in The Cotton Bowl the flood gates were opened and Texas recruits were going out of state in droves

there is a reason that the 4 teams in the PAC 12 in the same state, the 4 teams in the Big 12 in the same state (no matter the teams), the 4 teams in the CUSA in the same state (no matter the teams), the 5 teams in the MAC in the same state and the 4 teams in the ACC in the same state all struggle to ever consistently be at the top of the conference as a group year in and year out for an extended period of time no matter what the other teams in the conference are doing

and it is because as some of those teams sift to be the "consistent losers" in the state in that conference they can forget about being appealing to recruits in that state and even the one that might consistently be the better of the group struggles against the talent in the state always looking outside the state after they decide their 4 or 5 options in state for that conference really is just one option or one very good option and one "help us get better" and two or three "we just suck, but we really want you" so time to look elsewhere for those recruits

when you look at the real world performance over many many years it is extremely easy to see that too many schools in the same conference from the same state is detrimental to the conference overall and especially to those teams in that state

if you look at the results it is undeniable

The SWC problem was one of cheating and probation. Recruits saw programs getting banned from bowls one after another and didn't want to get screwed for something JoeBob did 4 years ago.

That was part of it but there were a lot of other factors too

The biggest one of course was deregulation of television. A conference like that was and is 100% irrelevant outside the borders of Texas. And while Texas is a large state it can not command by itself the money that multi state conferences like the PAC, SEC and B10 were and are making. This means less money for coaches, facilities and players. Combined with less attention and less chance to be on a nationally relevant team, no out of state or top instate players want to play for a SWC team. In the end you have 9 teams fighting for the handful of 4 star players left but most of their teams are 2 & 3 star players so even if you win the SWC you are getting humiliated in the big bowl games almost every year. This cycle further incentivizes the 4 star player to leave as well when they see how few of their peers who play in this conference are getting drafted.

It all happened and it would all happen again. Heck you can even argue that it's happening to the B12 too for all those same reasons of being too concentrated in one state

(08-20-2017 05:27 PM)10thMountain Wrote:  Cute site but obviously the idea of an all TX 12 team conference is NEVER happening. It would die even quicker than the original B12 did

Oh I agree 100% it's never happening but with the projected growth in Texas over the next 20 years our population will exceed many states combined together.

"Power" leagues are about eyeballs, and with FB being king in Texas it would draw eyeballs.

That said I want to reiterate we agree.... never going to happen.

(08-21-2017 07:53 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  That was part of it but there were a lot of other factors too

The biggest one of course was deregulation of television. A conference like that was and is 100% irrelevant outside the borders of Texas. And while Texas is a large state it can not command by itself the money that multi state conferences like the PAC, SEC and B10 were and are making. This means less money for coaches, facilities and players. Combined with less attention and less chance to be on a nationally relevant team, no out of state or top instate players want to play for a SWC team. In the end you have 9 teams fighting for the handful of 4 star players left but most of their teams are 2 & 3 star players so even if you win the SWC you are getting humiliated in the big bowl games almost every year. This cycle further incentivizes the 4 star player to leave as well when they see how few of their peers who play in this conference are getting drafted.

It all happened and it would all happen again. Heck you can even argue that it's happening to the B12 too for all those same reasons of being too concentrated in one state

SWC broke up before ESPN became a money cow. It broke up six months after ESPN2 was launched with the vision of being the home to non-traditional sports.
Four months after Fox landed the NFL.
The NHL's deal with ESPN required ESPN telecasts to be blacked out in local markets ABC carried only three days of NHL playoffs and none of the Stanley Cup and ESPN had to share the Cup broadcasts in the LA and NYC areas.

It was a vastly different time in the TV economy.

another issue you run into and the SWC had this is droves is the "we are with who we want to be with so job over"

you get teams in a conference like a 12 Texas team Big 12 that will just be glad they are in that conference with all of those other "in state rivals" and that think that is the end of what they need to do for their program

one day you look up and you are in a conference filled with garbage facilities, terrible budgets, ADs and academic administrations that are just going through the motions and coaching hires that are just terrible and everyone knows it from day one

but what do those programs care they are "with all their in state rivals" and "all that has happen is we catch a break!"

of course they never catch a break, they churn through bad coaches, their facilities decline and they keep on losing and it drags everyone else down

eventually a program has to do like TCU did and go it on their own and set themselves apart from the rest of the apathy and the association with "all those other Texas programs"

it is the same answer that some people cannot seem to understand about "Big 12 expansion"

if any of the current members of the Big 12 feel they need G5 programs to join the conference and make it better and to build it up and to do something that their program cannot do then the people running those programs might as well join the AAC or the MWC or MAC now because that is where they are headed

and if your argument is "well if we were in your conference we would really show you what kind of fan support we would get and what type of donor support we would get" then on the same train of thought you are not going to benefit the conference you are just going to be another drag on it

if you are looking for a conference to build/save/improve your program then you are going to not get the results you expect

and if you are in a higher level conference looking for others to throw you a life boat to keep you at the same level then you might as well give up

and that is what the VAST majority of teams that have fans dying to get in a "12 team all Texas conference" consist of......programs that want to be in that conference so they can wait for the conference to benefit them instead of doing something for themselves and whatever became of that conference they would accept it as long as the other 11 D1-A programs in Texas were also stuck in that conference and situation

(08-22-2017 12:14 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(08-21-2017 07:53 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  That was part of it but there were a lot of other factors too

The biggest one of course was deregulation of television. A conference like that was and is 100% irrelevant outside the borders of Texas. And while Texas is a large state it can not command by itself the money that multi state conferences like the PAC, SEC and B10 were and are making. This means less money for coaches, facilities and players. Combined with less attention and less chance to be on a nationally relevant team, no out of state or top instate players want to play for a SWC team. In the end you have 9 teams fighting for the handful of 4 star players left but most of their teams are 2 & 3 star players so even if you win the SWC you are getting humiliated in the big bowl games almost every year. This cycle further incentivizes the 4 star player to leave as well when they see how few of their peers who play in this conference are getting drafted.

It all happened and it would all happen again. Heck you can even argue that it's happening to the B12 too for all those same reasons of being too concentrated in one state

SWC broke up before ESPN became a money cow. It broke up six months after ESPN2 was launched with the vision of being the home to non-traditional sports.
Four months after Fox landed the NFL.
The NHL's deal with ESPN required ESPN telecasts to be blacked out in local markets ABC carried only three days of NHL playoffs and none of the Stanley Cup and ESPN had to share the Cup broadcasts in the LA and NYC areas.

It was a vastly different time in the TV economy.

I'm not saying the money was yet what it is today but by the time the SWC broke up, you could see the way the wind was blowing and what was now important. ND and a couple other of the big conferences had signed new TV deals that were (relatively) huge at the time. So again, it wasn't hard to see that a conference that brought eyeballs from just one state, even a big one like TX, was not going to make it in the new environment.

(08-22-2017 06:34 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  

(08-22-2017 12:14 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(08-21-2017 07:53 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  That was part of it but there were a lot of other factors too

The biggest one of course was deregulation of television. A conference like that was and is 100% irrelevant outside the borders of Texas. And while Texas is a large state it can not command by itself the money that multi state conferences like the PAC, SEC and B10 were and are making. This means less money for coaches, facilities and players. Combined with less attention and less chance to be on a nationally relevant team, no out of state or top instate players want to play for a SWC team. In the end you have 9 teams fighting for the handful of 4 star players left but most of their teams are 2 & 3 star players so even if you win the SWC you are getting humiliated in the big bowl games almost every year. This cycle further incentivizes the 4 star player to leave as well when they see how few of their peers who play in this conference are getting drafted.

It all happened and it would all happen again. Heck you can even argue that it's happening to the B12 too for all those same reasons of being too concentrated in one state

SWC broke up before ESPN became a money cow. It broke up six months after ESPN2 was launched with the vision of being the home to non-traditional sports.
Four months after Fox landed the NFL.
The NHL's deal with ESPN required ESPN telecasts to be blacked out in local markets ABC carried only three days of NHL playoffs and none of the Stanley Cup and ESPN had to share the Cup broadcasts in the LA and NYC areas.

It was a vastly different time in the TV economy.

I'm not saying the money was yet what it is today but by the time the SWC broke up, you could see the way the wind was blowing and what was now important. ND and a couple other of the big conferences had signed new TV deals that were (relatively) huge at the time. So again, it wasn't hard to see that a conference that brought eyeballs from just one state, even a big one like TX, was not going to make it in the new environment.

It isn't just the dollars, it is how the dollars are earned and calculated.

No Texas and Texas A&M were never going to be better off in the SWC as it existed under either economic model (viewership or carriage fees).

As the model shifts, I am skeptical that in the long run it makes any sense for the G5 Texas schools to be in a different conference. I'm agnostic on the fate of Texas Tech, TCU, and Baylor if they have to live in a post-Longhorn, post-Sooner conference.

Having critical mass for a Texas distributed network whether OTA or via wired delivery is quite viable.

Now maybe AAC bangs out a great deal when this one expires, I just lean to being skeptical given the overall circumstances.