krambman;895958 wrote:And the SWC was brought down by SMU, not by Texas.
There were a lot of reasons, not just SMU. The conference survived SMU's ordeal for almost a decade. Virtually every school was on probation in the SWC by the end of the 80s and it hurt to not have your best teams on TV (Houston was probably the last major case of that). Arkansas bolted and that didn't help (don't think they were ever in trouble in that period). The main way Texas killed the conference was by leaving behind half the conference and merging with the then-Big 8. Can't really blame them for jumping on a good deal, but it was their move that ultimately dissolved the conference. Of course, you might also say that the reason everyone else started cheating was because it had worked so well for Texas for 20 years.
