From the brink to the big time: How TCU, Baylor shared wild road to prominence

College athletics was spinning off its axis, mangling conferences, destroying rivalries and spitting in the face of tradition in the endless pursuit of market shares and Tier 1 cable subscribers.

Down in the Southwest, Texas A&M had just bolted the Big 12 for the SEC, in part to get away from the University of Texas. The Longhorns, meanwhile, were running a power play fueled by overconfidence that their new Longhorn Network would give them an insurmountable competitive advantage. The University of Oklahoma saw enough writing on the wall to stop being conciliatory.

“I don't think OU is going to be a wallflower,” school president David Boren said as he announced the Sooners would look at “various options” for conference membership, including a proposed Pac-16.

That was Sept. 2, 2011, a bleak day for the Big 12 and a panicked one for schools that appeared on the verge of being left behind and relegated to second-class status.

Two of those schools played football that night: Baylor, which was fearful its conference was about to collapse, and TCU, which had just put together a 13-0, Rose Bowl champion season, but was still seeking a viable, long-term home.

The Frogs were playing at the time in the Mountain West but were promised the next season to the Big East, a conference that blew up two weeks later when Pittsburgh and Syracuse suddenly bolted to the ACC.

"That was a scary time," Chris Del Conte, TCU’s athletic director said. "The landscape was chaotic.”

Officials at both schools spent the day on the phone, trying to sell their schools’ potential while grasping for gossip and wondering who was about to double-cross whom.

“You had a knot in your stomach because you didn’t know what tomorrow would bring and where it would leave Baylor,” athletic director Ian McCaw said.

The game that night in Waco was epic. It ended with the Floyd Casey Stadium scoreboard reading Baylor 50, TCU 48, the field full of Bear fans unable to contain their excitement, and a kid named Robert Griffin III, who’d just thrown five touchdowns surrounded by television cameras and talk of a Heisman campaign.

McCaw stood in one end zone and surveyed the magical madness of a rising program beating its longtime rival. Normally, this would be the reward for the million hours a week the job requires. Instead he feared they were on the verge of this no longer being considered major college football.

He wore a weak smile. The future, he well understood, still rested in the hands of Texas and Oklahoma.

“A very sobering feeling,” McCaw said.

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On Saturday, TCU and Baylor play again in Waco, the 110th meeting of a series that is, remarkably, tied at 51-51-7.

There are no longer any nerves. There are no longer any knots. There is no longer any chaos.

TCU is 4-0 and ranked No. 9 in the polls. Baylor is 5-0 and ranked fifth. The game will not be played in aging, off-campus Floyd Casey, famous for the old tarp that covered a section of the stands. Instead, Baylor’s McLane Stadium, a brand-new, $266 million state-of-the-art facility along the Brazos River, will shine on national television. If it were TCU’s turn to host, then kickoff would be in the completely renovated Amon G. Carter Stadium, where a $110 million facelift turned it into the “Camden Yards” of college football.

Most importantly, both schools are now members of the rock-solid Big 12, which somehow, someway survived. Fear of conference realignment and being pushed aside politically is just a memory now, as the future of both programs is finally here.

TCU and Baylor are playing one of the biggest games in the country and certainly the biggest game in the state. It is, at least this year, far bigger than that one up I-35 in Dallas, the one between Texas and Oklahoma, the historic Red River Showdown, featuring two teams looking up in the rankings at the Frogs and Bears.

Three years ago, you could’ve gotten some long odds on that happening.

“We’ve got two top-10 teams in the country,” Del Conte said.

“We’re definitely excited,” McCaw said, “about taking center stage in the state of Texas.”

– – – – – – – – –

How close the fortunes of realignment came to rocking Baylor, TCU and any number of other schools is anyone’s guess. Everyone involved knows it was close. Too close.

Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops admits that at one point he was certain the Sooners were headed to the Pac-16 and had already begun thinking about the recruiting implications and the feeling of playing league games out in California. The fallout would have been considerable across the country, but especially in the old Big 12 outposts left behind, from Ames, Iowa, to Manhattan, Kan., to Waco to wherever.

No one wanted to think of the alternative, even if those involved frantically feared it becoming a necessity.

“Plan B changed by the hour,” McCaw said. “All I knew is that for Baylor, Plan A, B and C had to be the Big 12.”

For Baylor and TCU, the frustration was particularly great because they were about to be left behind at the precise moment they were finally getting their acts together. Both are private, religious schools that had failed for decades to invest in their athletic programs in a way to overcome the inherent advantage mammoth state schools enjoyed.

What they had done is make smart hires. TCU rose to prominence behind Gary Patterson. Baylor was in the process of doing it with Art Briles. Facilities were constantly being improved as national profiles grew, but realignment was no longer about what made sense. It was about ego and rivalries and ego and revenue and ego and divisions and ego and ego and ego.

It was one thing they couldn’t control.

“When I was hired, they asked two questions,” Del Conte said. “Can you help us build a stadium and can you get us in a BCS conference?”

The question wasn’t whether someone would get left out as the tectonic plates stopped shifting. It was who and how many. For athletic directors this was like skidding into a potential car wreck, except the feeling didn’t subside for weeks.

“It was a roller coaster,” McCaw said.

“Every day,” Del Conte agreed.

Which made the 2011 game so … unusual? Historic? Bizarre?

The two schools have been playing since 1899, yet this may have been the best both teams ever looked. By almost any standard it was college football at its finest and a grand night for Baylor, a national television audience being fully introduced to the brilliance of Griffin, and the pyrotechnic offense of Briles.

McCaw could see from that night to now … the national respect, the high rankings, the league championship, even the flashy new stadium they were pushing toward getting built: “It’s an incredible landmark for the university.”

In the moment, however, it was all threatened. He can only smile at it now. Eventually, power broker Chuck Neinas came in as interim commissioner of the Big 12 and settled down everything. Texas committed to the league. Oklahoma understood there was no need to leave. TCU and West Virginia were brought in. A rich new media deal was signed, including a grant of media rights that links everyone, for now, at least.

“The league held together,” McCaw said.

Now it’s Baylor and TCU, of all schools, live from Waco, of all places, carrying the Big 12 flag, fighting Saturday for first place, an inside track to the league title and perhaps a playoff berth. The near-abandoned and the late-invitee-who-arrived-because-of-the-chaos matchup, and now no one is worrying about whether they belong.

That OU-Texas game up the road will serve as a nice warm-up act.

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