Snubbed SWC Schools

[50's PONY]

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HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Sports

Feb. 28, 2004, 2:06PM


The new days
Snubbed SWC schools slowly making way
By DAVID BARRON
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

IF it weren't for lingering memories and the inescapable realities of the bottom line, life after the Southwest Conference would be an unqualified success for the four schools -- TCU, SMU, Houston and Rice -- that didn't get invited to join the Big 12.

Rice, after all, won six team conference championships in 1999, which would have been unheard of in its SWC days, and in 2003 celebrated perhaps the greatest triumph in the history of Rice intercollegiate athletics -- the Owls' College World Series championship.

TCU has six straight bowl appearances in football, a distinction that even the Texas Longhorns can't claim, and has five teams that are nationally ranked in assorted spring sports.

SMU has dominated soccer and excelled in swimming and diving, its traditionally strong sports during the SWC days. UH has a conference football title and two bowl games to its credit, plus a healthy baseball program and a nationally ranked women's basketball program.

However, the four schools by one account reported combined athletic department revenues last year of $77.9 million, which is barely more than the $74.1 million that Texas raked in last year and considerably less than the $183 million earned by the four Texas Big 12 schools.

And while the student body of each school has completely turned over twice since the final season of the SWC, the memories of alumni remain constant, nostalgic and, on occasion, bitter.

"The people who come to the games are the ones who remember the Cotton Bowls," said UH athletic director Dave Maggard, who was working on plans for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics when the SWC folded and who came to Houston two seasons ago. "These folks still have a real nostalgic feeling about the old Southwest Conference, even though the current student body doesn't know there's anything that's different. Those are the folks who remember the disappointment of being excluded from the Big 12, and they remember the close Texas connections, and they still have considerable nostalgia for it."

No one is more nostalgic for the old days than Rice athletic director Bobby May, an SWC and NCAA champion hurdler during his undergraduate years and the only one of the four non-Big 12 athletic directors who was at his current post 10 years ago.

"I loved the links and the proximity with the (SWC) schools and the rivalries," he said. "It was great, and it was a huge disappointment when it went away. I thought if it had held together for a couple more years, it might have had a chance for additional life. But it didn't, and we moved on."

The Owls moved on to the Western Athletic Conference, where their three winning football seasons in eight years equaled the number of winning SWC seasons they recorded between 1963 and 1995. They never hit the big time in football, but in that sport, and in others, they were competitive.

"As it kind of played out, this has been great for Rice," May said. "We had good experiences in the WAC, which was a good league for us to compete in, and we're looking forward to Conference USA (beginning in 2005), which we think will be an even better setup for us.

"Our student athletes have benefited, and we think we have a lot to be proud of."

Calculating athletic department finances can be tricky. Based on information reported to the Department of Education under the Equity in Athletics Act, Rice reported $9 million in revenues and $14 million in expenses in 2002-03. Other sources cited in an annual report compiled by the Orlando Sentinel estimate revenues at $19 million and expenses at $20 million. That's a fraction of what the big schools bring in, and Rice has to budget accordingly.

"It's pretty obvious that we would be better off financially in the Big 12," May said. "But we've tried to be as frugal as we can be and craft a program that can be successful at a spending level that makes sense.

"You can always do better, and one of our goals is to minimize the cost (of running the athletic department) to the university."

That's a continuing challenge for UH as well. Maggard's goal for the 2004-05 school year, in fact, is to reduce the subsidy that the athletic department receives from the school by a million dollars. That sounds like chicken feed in the supercharged economic world of big-time athletics, but it's a substantial challenge for UH.

"Some of it will be spending cuts, and some of it will be increasing revenue from football, basketball and from Cougar Pride (the department's fund-raising arm)," Maggard said. "This program has been trying to get back on its feet for some time now, and we need the help of the university and of alumni to get it done."

For UH to succeed, Maggard said, alumni need to pitch in with the attitude -- in the words of a song that was popular during the SWC's heyday -- that these are the good old days.

"The amount of money that we want to raise has never been done here," he said. "The University of Houston is working much harder at raising annual funds. The total has never been large. It's been meager. And now the push has to begin, and it has to come with help from people who haven't been on campus for years and don't know how good it looks right now."

In that sense, the challenge is the same one voiced by Maggard's predecessors, Bill Carr and Chet Gladchuk, as they tried to steer UH athletics through a world without the SWC.

"This is a different time now," he said. "Let's make our new niche."



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