Both Arizona State University and University of Arizona start their new football seasons on Saturday. The Sun Devils host Wyoming, while the Wildcats host New Mexico. It will be the first season for both schools in the Big 12 Conference, after leaving the Pac-12.
That will mean games against some new opponents. But this isn’t the first time the Arizona schools have moved conferences.
Ryan Swanson is a professor at the University of New Mexico, where he focuses on sports history. He also wrote a history of the Border Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, of which all three of Arizona’s public universities were members starting in the 1930s. He shared more with The Show.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Ryan, what was behind this group of schools trying to get together? It seems like there were maybe a few factors at play that led them to do this.
RYAN SWANSON: Yeah, I think there were a number of things going on. I think the first thing to consider is just the geography. The West, the Southwest is a big place now. But really in terms of technology and getting around and travel, it was even bigger almost 100 years ago. So when schools in Arizona and New Mexico and west Texas trying to figure out football schedules — and football is really the key to all of this — early on, they’re trying to find some proximity.
And so I think the Border Conference is certainly just about figuring out that geography. Another part of it, though, is concern that the the intercollegiate athletics that are going on in this region of the country are particularly prone to corruption. You’ve got you’ve got players jumping from one team to the next. You have no kind of set, shared rules.
And so while there’s a part of the Southwest that really embraces the Wild West mentality, the thinking from some university leaders is it’s kind of time to rein it in, get organized. And, you know, there’s a desire to do so with kind of like-minded, like-situate universities.
BRODIE: So the Border Conference lasts roughly 30 years or so before it really starts to break up. At the time, in the early to mid ’60s when schools were really leaving it, what was its reputation in college athletics?
SWANSON: Pretty solid. It was a place that seemed to be growing, too. Certainly the Border Conference benefited from its connection with bowl games. The Sun Bowl and the development of games in Phoenix and Tucson. So those bowl games were seen as really innovative and promising. There was probably even some jealousy from other conferences.
So the Border Committee really has a really good 20-year run. And it’s really most of that time kind of on an upward trajectory.
BRODIE: Yeah. So we’ve obviously seen so much realignment and conferences expanding and contracting in recent years. And one of the big reasons why a lot of observers say is money. I wonder what role money played for these schools and this conference back during its time.
SWANSON: Initially, money is really at the forefront of the Border Conference. One of the reasons they want to get organized is, as I’ve already said, kind of the respectability and let’s figure out the rules. There’s certainly that component. But another part of it is figuring out how to maximize revenues. And so the university — and I’ll just call them by their modern names — University of Arizona, Arizona State, Northern Arizona, University of New Mexico, New Mexico State are the initial five that get together. And their desire is to create rivalries, which will drive people to the games, increase the gate. They also want to sign new radio contracts that will bring more money in that way. So at the beginning, there’s really a concern about bringing in revenue.
But what I will say when the Border Conference breaks apart, I think it’s less about money and more about reputation and kind of aligning with like-minded schools. That breaks things apart.
BRODIE: So you also write about the roles of race and class in the Border Conference. And it’s so interesting because it seems like in some ways it’s very similar to what a lot of schools were probably dealing with at the time. But in some ways it feels very different.
SWANSON: Yeah. So the Southwest has a different climate, in terms of race, from the rest of the country in the 1940s, for example. If you think about college football, the hotbeds of college football have long been, for example, the American South.
And there is a racial history and a history of slavery and a history of Jim Crow — or a really at that time in the 1940s dealing with Jim Crow — that’s all kind of going on in the American South, real problems, real things to deal with. But I would argue an unfortunate clarity. In the 1940s, there’s no question if the University of Mississippi or Arkansas or something like that is going to allow African Americans to compete. They’re not. Whereas in the Southwest, there’s a bit of opportunity and ambiguity.
And so race does become a tension point in the Border Conference, especially after World War II. And so in the Border Conference, it really becomes a divide between the Texas schools and everybody else. The Texas schools very much associate themselves with the customs of their brethren in the Lone Star State, and that causes problems in terms of what they are willing to consider interracial competition.
BRODIE: What role, if any, did all of that play in the Border Conference breaking up?
SWANSON: I think it plays a pretty pivotal one. Texas Tech comes late to the Border Conference, who joined a couple of years after the Arizona and New Mexico schools come in. And then El Paso comes in after that. But it’s really Texas Tech that’s kind of the — I don’t know — the troubling star of the conference for a long time.
On the one hand, it puts more money into its sports and athletics and football. And so it has a lot of success. But Texas Tech is always looking to try to jettison the border conference and join the Texas schools. And similarly, it has a very rigid line on race. So what happens is there’s a couple of incidents that force Texas Tech to kind of say exactly what its policy on race is, in the athletic sphere.
And for a long time, the school had just kind of tried to avoid the issue with other Border Conference schools. But in 1948, Texas Tech is slated to hold the conference track meet, the championship for the conference. And at that time, kind of leading up to that, the other schools from Arizona and New Mexico keep saying, “What’s your policy in terms of allowing our African American athletes to compete?”
And finally, Texas Tech simply says, “Never mind. We won’t host the meet at all.” And they give it off to Albuquerque to kind of try to avoid it one last time. And so that eventually becomes a real schism between the Arizona schools and the New Mexico schools and Texas Tech.
BRODIE: I wonder if you see any through line from the Border Conference and sort of its rise and eventual fall to all of the conference realignment that we’ve been seeing over the past, let’s say, half decade in modern times and in college athletics.
SWANSON: Yeah, I’m sure there is a through line. I’m not sure I’m the one who can find it, but I'll take my best shot. I think some of the consistencies you see when you look across college athletics over the past century, for example, is it's almost constant that universities are trying to reshuffle their associations in order to better themselves.
And sometimes that’s just about money. And that was true 100 years ago, too. But the schools of the Border Conference were really kind of looking around and shifting their positions in a way that isn’t that different than the Arizona schools here just did with the Pac-12 and now the Big 12, trying to figure out what kind of university should we associate with, where are we going to be best for the future?
And there’s no there’s no guarantees. And so there’s a bit of this mix of loyalty but longing for something different. But we know what’s here. But maybe that’s better over there. So I see that as kind of a through line that there’s just this never-ending, looking over at is the grass greener on the other side?
We’ve had a big reshuffling in college athletics now. But history would tell us there’s no reason to suspect the universities are going to stop looking around for what’s next.
