by Kiper » Fri Jan 18, 2002 7:44 pm
If SMU were to have a winning season or two in football, that would be a no-brainer, as far as earning an invitation. (I haven't heard anything about such a proposal.)
As far as all sports - SMU might try to go in just football and basketball. Those schools would offer little competition, if any, in many of the non-revenue sports (soccer, swimming, tennis, etc) Not that it's a bad thing to pile up conference championships, but the coaches of our nationally-ranked teams will want to face better competition in the regular season. Ask George Van Linder - the women's soccer team racked up a gaudy record against the awful women's soccer teams in the WAC, and pulled a nice upset by knocking out Texas (HA!), but we got rolled by the other ranked teams we faced - Santa Clara, Stanford, Florida and Texas A&M in the NCAA's. He might go for such a conference. Most other non-revenue coaches would not.
Again, I don't know if this is reality. But I like the sound of it.