The 'original' SWC - from The Handbook of Texas Online

[MrMustang1965]

The SWC officially came into existence on December 8, 1914, when the original eight member schools agreed on a constitution for what was then known as the Southwest Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Those eight schools were Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Arkansas, Oklahoma University, Oklahoma A&M University (now Oklahoma State), Southwestern University, and Rice, which was admitted provisionally. The new conference was the idea of L. Theo Bellmont,qv athletic director at Texas, who saw the need for the larger colleges of the area to organize to further the interests of intercollegiate athletics. Bellmont tried to increase the geographic area of the conference by getting the University of Mississippi and Louisiana State University to sign on, but both declined. The new conference, however, was able to raise academic and ethical standards for those schools who did join, and they did enjoy greater recognition and respect throughout the rest of the country. By 1925 the name of the conference had been shortened to its present form, SMU (1918) and TCU (1923) had joined, and Southwestern, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma A&M had dropped out. The conference was made up of these seven schools until 1958, when Texas Tech joined. Finally, the membership swelled to nine in 1972 with the admission of Houston. The SWC remained unchanged until Arkansas departed in 1990.

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/onl ... /xns2.html

[Rayburn]

God bless the Southwest Conference, may it rest in peace.

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