This Week in the Southwest Conference

By: Dave Roberson

It is now the end of September and the warm-up games are behind us. The pretenders have been exposed and the sorting has begun. The first BCS polls will be out soon and most of the nation is now praying that on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a few hours after Auburn has whipped the Crimson Tide, Nevada somehow beats Boise State; that is unless Nevada is the only undefeated team left. What a mess!

Week 4 was definitely about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s start with our friends in Waco. The Bears came into Rice Stadium and left with bowl dreams still dancing in their heads. It was a must win, so put a check mark in the good column. However, the next time Baylor gets the headlines is after they beat a favored opponent, which will be most any week the rest of the year. And after slamming TCU and SMU for playing on the high school Sabbath, they actually both get a good grade this week. TCU gets a mark for both dominating in the second half while winning and SMU’s comes for putting a record crowd in Ford Stadium and playing with great intensity against a far superior team. Another attaboy goes to UH. After losing their first and second string QBs at UCLA, freshman Terrance Broadway lead the Coogs to a convincing road win at Tulane. And believe it or not, although they will stubbornly disagree, I am giving the Hogs a good grade for playing their hearts out against Alabama. I know the Arks are crushed from coming oh so close, but they played a really good game. It was just a case of the better team winning. As for the bad, I am calling the LSU and OU wins underwhelming. Although both won, OU’s on the road, I am convinced that both Coach Miles and Coach Stoops have plenty of film to teach with this week. And Rice, come on now. Do not make me look bad by bringing you back into the SWC. Got to shape up boys.

Now for the ugly. These bad boys get their own paragraph, and I mean bad as in stinking bad. It is bad enough to lay an egg at home, but when you play an opponent whose fans are bright enough to spell out not one, but two different chants, that my friend is ugly. These folks could spell both U-C-L-A and B-R-U-I-N-S. And they spelled it perfectly every time and they spelled it out often. They did not even need cue cards. I am just glad they did not get to O-V-E-R-R-A-T-T-E-D. And to add insult to injury, the lead upper deck cheerleader was wearing a sweater. It was over 90 degrees in the shade, and trust me, there was no shade in the NE corner of DKR-Memorial Stadium. We are talking about a seriously tough surfer dude. I just wish the guys in the orange jerseys were as tough as the UCLA cheerleader. Even the Showband of the Southwest took the game off with a quick, half-hearted halftime show. Hey, the game was on ABC and if you wanted to, you saw it. I do recommend that you keep the kids away from any Texas coach this week. They would definitely have their little vocabularies expanded.

Before I preview the first weekend of October, which because of ESPN actually starts the last day of September, I want to get back to this whole SWC thing. Since there is no real expectation that the Big 12 minus two, which I will now refer to as the B12-2, will last much longer, we need to be concerned as to where all of our favorite southwestern teams will wind up. And after hearing a suggestion this past week that the B12-2 should raid Arizona and Arizona State, a kind of pay back for stealing CU, it just validates that we need to be proactive on this re-alignment thing. So let’s start with a clean slate and build a 12 team conference which has plenty of tradition, natural rivalries, and several teams with a national buzz factor. The last nine members of the SWC have the tradition. OU and Oklahoma St were former members and they have great tradition and great rivalry. Throw in LSU, who was originally invited back in 1914 but who declined, and you have a potentially great conference. Arkansas and Oklahoma St are natural rivals and LSU has played many games against Rice, Texas A&M, and of course Arkansas recently in the SEC. As for national appeal, Texas and OU are always in the national discussion and LSU, Arkansas and Texas A&M can easily be when they have good seasons. And there is TCU who just happened to go to a BCS bowl last year. And over 40 million people living in the four states give you plenty of passionate eyeballs to sell to television. Since it could work, I am going to keep this dream alive until the B12m2 completely blows up.

Now that I have you on board with viability, what does it look like? Well, first we have to come up with two divisions. You can look at this several ways, but the best is to have Texas Tech, TCU, SMU, OU, Oklahoma St, and Arkansas in one division and Texas, Baylor, Texas A&M, Rice, UH, and LSU in the other. When I considered names for the Divisions, North and South seemed so yesterday. Then I had this great idea of letting the students from the schools help me. I noticed that when students talked about a hated rival, they used short mono-syllabic words that described the natural breathing process of inhaling and exhaling. That led me to think about windy weather, which seems to play a factor in many SWC games and voila, The Tornado Division and the Hurricane Division. As for scheduling, the SWC would play 9 conference games. That would still give them a throw-away game on Labor Day weekend and then 2 other non-conference games to schedule to either please the fan base or bag a couple more wins. Each team would play each team in its division, that’s five, one traditional game, that’s six, and then three others on a rotating basis. The tradition games which would be played every year are: OU – Texas, A&M – Tech, Baylor – TCU, Rice – SMU, UH – Oklahoma St, and Arkansas – LSU. This tradition game is very important. One of the criticisms of the Big 12 was that OU and Nebraska did not play every year. Great games will not be lost in the SWC. The championship game would rotate among the four domes, Alamodome, Reliant, Superdome, and Jerry’s World. And the first team on facility probation is UH. They will be forced to play in Reliant until they upgrade their campus stadium. As for possible future facility probation, SMU may be asked to expand their stadium and Rice, TCU and Baylor will be encouraged to keep upgrading theirs. We now have the perfect conference for our part of the country.

So, what is in store for Week 5. Let’s first look at Thursday night. The Aggies head north and play the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Stillwater. This is a good game for Texas A&M to finally show that they can bite as well as bark. A win on national television on the road is exactly what Texas A&M needs. It should be a good way to spend Thursday night. And thankfully we do not have to worry about Friday night this week. Saturday brings a mostly full slate. Baylor gets Kansas at home. Another must win for the Bears and I think they will pull it out. LSU gets a 2-2 Tennessee in Baton Rouge. This one should be over by halftime. SMU plays Rice in Houston. This is a major game for Rice. From my perspective, SMU has passed Rice in most categories. A win by SMU puts Rice back in the position of questioning how to get out of the basement and Bailiff may be looking for a new courtroom if this one goes bad. TCU should roll in Ft. Collins over Colorado St.

That leaves the Red River Shootout at the Texas State Fair. You have one team coming off an ugly loss at home and one team that has not put the fear of anything in anyone. This game could be a blowout, or 17-14. If Texas scores a touchdown on their first possession, especially if the scoring play is 15 yards or less, then this could be a really good game. If OU scores twice before Texas can put any points on the board, then Texas fans may want to mow the grass in the second half, or Sooner. My gut is telling me that a 3-2 Texas will spend the off week re-evaluating everything that has happened since Colt got injured in the Rose Bowl, while 5-0 OU will take a mid-season break and then get ready for Iowa St. But it is one of the greatest rivalries in the country, so who really knows what will happen.

Have a great week and let’s see if we can get another one of the teams into the Top 25.