EXCELLENT post! Welcome aboard!
You bring up some very interesting points. I would tend to agree that we look at Baylor through a modern lense and don't consider what Baylor was when the conference formed.
Why was Baylor selected instead of TCU
- Thread starter alaskaguy
- Start date
EXCELLENT post! Welcome aboard!
You bring up some very interesting points. I would tend to agree that we look at Baylor through a modern lense and don't consider what Baylor was when the conference formed.
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What is Big VII? Was there a Big 7 at one time?
What is Big VII? Was there a Big 7 at one time?
LOL, Big XII. :wideeyed: Still a little beaten down from attending the thrashing of Baylor in Waco on Saturday and then dealing with the record crowd at the TCU-Utah game.
I actually think there was a couple years of the Big 7 between the Big 6 and the Big 8. It was the Big 7 until Okie State joined in 1958.
Big Eight Conference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Actually in many sports Baylor is very, very good. It seems they are all in, either great or real bad. And pretty much stay that way.I know football, the sport, is awesome, but people get caught up on that too much at times. On the whole, I bet Baylor wins quite a bit in sports, and represents the Big12 well.
Baylor is actually a fine university with some proud alumni, I just don't get how they don't have more fan support. I have not been to Waco, although will probably get there sometime in the next year. Is it really that bad? Pictures of the campus look great, and I am guessing it has some great facilities too. Does Texas just get caught up in UT and aTm and the rest are afterthoughts? I would like to hear a Baylor fan's perspective.
I think the main reason they are in the Big12 is that they deserved to be at the time, and still do, but also some heavy lobbying by Governor Ann Richards. I am happy and proud to have them in the conference. People need to realize that if Baylor can get dropped from the conference, then so can ISU. I hate to type that, but I believe it to be a fact.
Baylor is actually a fine university with some proud alumni, I just don't get how they don't have more fan support. I have not been to Waco, although will probably get there sometime in the next year. Is it really that bad? Pictures of the campus look great, and I am guessing it has some great facilities too. Does Texas just get caught up in UT and aTm and the rest are afterthoughts? I would like to hear a Baylor fan's perspective.
I think the main reason they are in the Big12 is that they deserved to be at the time, and still do, but also some heavy lobbying by Governor Ann Richards. I am happy and proud to have them in the conference. People need to realize that if Baylor can get dropped from the conference, then so can ISU. I hate to type that, but I believe it to be a fact.
Sad, but true. My wife's little sister attended Baylor in the early 2000's and looks at me as if I'm from another planet when I start talking about Baylor's bowl games, or their beating Texas 50-7 (1989).
That's a really fascinating read about the Big 12's origins. I never knew Grinnell and Drake were part of the Big 6/8 precursor.
Go there for a game. Yeesh... I've seen better tailgating at FCS games. The people there seemed so indifferent, and aloof, as if talking to riff-raff Iowans from a public university was beneath them. The donor lot right outside of Floyd Casey was completely empty 1.5 hrs prior to kick off. See the pic
EDIT: for some reason, you can't make the pic bigger, but you can see how empty it is. One car way down in the corner.
Baylor fans support winning programs. Or at least ones that look like they have promise. After beating Wake Forest in game one, Baylor drew 40,000 for the Connecticut game (less than 500 visitor tickets sold). Then our boy wonder, QB Robert Griffin III was injured and it's been uphill since then.
Baylor's biggest recruiting hurdle in football is Baylor's success, or lack thereof. Other schools would knock Baylor saying you won't go to NFL if you go to Baylor, but that's not a valid argument since the #2 pick in the draft this year was a Baylor grad (Jason Smith).
Baylor's facilities are nice and getting nicer all the time. They just completed the new indoor practice facility (Baylor and A&M were the last to get one) and the residence hall/athletic facilities are top-notch.
Baylor's second biggest recruiting hurdle is getting Texas kids to stay in state.
We cannot keep out-of-state schools from dipping into the best talent pool of high school football players. Hello, Iowa State has TWENTY Texans on its football squad. OU and OSU probably have more than that. If we kept 75% of our players in state, even Baylor could be a national power.
BTW, Texas gets the creme de la creme of just about any athlete in the nation right now. Texas A&M falls behind Texas Tech and probably TCU in recruiting now.
Look, I may be missing something, but if Baylor could put together a couple of winning seasons in football, they've got an excellent argument to appeal to a players family (or to his mama) that makes Baylor different (but maybe not for everyone) than other Big 12 schools:
- Christian university (but not too Christian--i.e Jerry Falwell's Liberty U);
- great education - highest grad rate of any Big 12 school;
- close to home, since Waco is in the center of the state, so Mama can see most of the games in person.
We should add that the governor ann richards was an alum of baylor!!!!
I think that if the founders of the big 12 had it to do over again they would have taken a longer look at tcu....Just my speculation though.....
In all fairness, Baylor was quite a bit better than TCU in football at the time of conference formation. And, as pathetic as Baylor's attendance #'s are, TCU's are considerably worse and they have a much better team right now. I can easily see why Baylor got the nod.
How can that be possible with TCU? They have been great for years, and are right there in the middle of the state, that is absolutely chock full of football fans. Shocking tbh.
I must say though, I never seem to hear about TCU in any other sports besides football. I do seem to hear Baylor mentioned quite a bit in others.
Also, I think Baylor's coach might be able to get it turned around, and he was a good hire. Houston is looking pretty good, and I think that is mostly his old system and/or players.
Pretty sure that by charter, as an original member of the Big 6, ISU cannot be dropped by the rest of the Big 12 just because the Texas schools want them gone. If it weren't the case I'm not sure ISU would have been included in the first place.
Had they not paid their players and been hit with the death penalty I bet SMU would have been the most attractive choice when talks started in the mid 90s. They were on their way to a national powerhouse before the death penalty and would have taken care of having a team in the Dallas area.
While I tend to agree (and have argued in the past) with that assessment, it could also be argued that without paying their players SMU never would have been on the doorstep to becoming a national powerhouse. Then again, they were doing what virtually everyone else was doing in the SWC.
Yeah, eat it state of Texas.
Seriously though, do they know how to look at history? From 2000- now we have some good bowl history there. But they want us out? What the hell?
And Basketball? Hello? 2 conference titles in that time as well. Not to mention we were in the NCAA's more than most teams in Texas. This is why I can't stand their backwards state....and never will.
I looked in to this more after posting that. They were playing 13 players and had paid a few in the past. It looked to be the ones with the poorest families that they were doing it for. No doubt they were contributors as a 3rd string safety probably would not get the same treatment.
However, we will never know if their star QB or HB was getting paid $5K a month to be there.
