In NCAA sports activities the time period “Pink River” is a well-liked identify for the rivalry between the College of Oklahoma and the College of Texas. Predictably, the identify itself comes from an precise river marking a lot of the border between the state of Texas and the state of Oklahoma.
What this specific river has connecting it to school gymnastics is it acts as a wall dividing two distinct areas of girls’s NCAA gymnastics. On the North aspect of the river is a set of colleges that have been the trailblazers of girls’s faculty gymnastics. The area the place the game achieved huge success and one of many pioneering areas within the growth of school gymnastics.
South of the Pink River is Texas, the American state which infamously has no main colleges sponsoring girls’s gymnastics. The area of the USA the place girls’s faculty gymnastics suffered its best failure in getting universities to undertake the game. Texas is the barren wasteland of school gymnastics. Its incapability to draw massive scale funding on the collegiate degree is particularly tendentious in distinction to the very same area being the powerhouse area of the ladies’s Olympic program.
The Pink River is what divides two areas of the USA the place the event of school gymnastics panned out in two very alternative ways. If the Pink River serves as a dividing wall inside a gymnastics context, it’s as a result of it was as soon as the border between two of probably the most historic conferences in NCAA historical past that every went defunct in 1996.
To the North of the Pink River was the Massive Eight convention that relying on the way you interpret its personal historical past, was based in both 1907 or 1928 and lasted till 1996. Within the South was the Southwestern Convention (SWC) which existed from 1914-1996. Whereas the 2 historic names are remembered primarily due to soccer, they’re essential in a gymnastics context as a result of most girls’s applications have been established within the heyday of each conferences’ existence.
Girls’s faculty gymnastics was adopted en masse within the late Nineteen Sixties to late Seventies. The game was then broadly dropped en masse from the Nineteen Eighties and into the early Nineteen Nineties. For the Massive Eight and SWC which have been round till 1996, realizing what the NCAA conferences regarded like within the early Nineteen Nineties is essential to understanding the event of the game in these essential years.
The Massive Eight had a girls’s gymnastics championships as early as 1975, a full eight years earlier than the NCAA included a Nationwide Championships of its personal. Participation charges throughout the Massive Eight have been so robust that 7 of 8 colleges had an energetic girls’s program in some unspecified time in the future in time. 4 of these applications proceed to today, most notably the reigning Nationwide Champions on the College of Oklahoma.
The Massive Eight Convention spanned six states and its members included Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, and Iowa State. Kansas State is the one college that I couldn’t discover documentation of a girls’s faculty gymnastics program ever current. Nebraska was the dominant energy in girls’s gymnastics profitable 54% of all convention titles, whereas Kansas was the one college collaborating within the sport that by no means received a convention title.
In contrast to each NCAA convention that has been thought-about one of many nice soccer powers, the Massive Eight was the one main convention that had no non-public colleges inside its ranks.
To the South was the SWC which had an association that was distinctive amongst the main NCAA soccer conferences. That being, all however considered one of its members got here from the identical state (Texas). This uncommon two-state footprint was not by design. The SWC was based as an try and safe a five-state footprint that includes Texas, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, LSU, and Ole Miss (College of Mississippi).
It was all the time the plan for the SWC to be centered across the main public colleges of Texas, however the main public colleges of neighboring states have been supposed to finish the remainder of the convention. Sadly for the SWC, it was solely capable of safe the longterm membership of Arkansas amongst the non-Texas candidates.
As an alternative, the SWC regarded inwards to search out its remaining members, with no remaining public colleges accessible, the SWC resorted to a quartet of personal colleges (Rice, TCU, SMU and Baylor) to fill out the remainder of its ranks. The SWC which was deliberate as a 5-state convention with a 7:0 ratio between private and non-private colleges ended up changing into a 2-state convention with a 3:4 ratio between private and non-private.
The ratio between private and non-private colleges is essential as a result of it correlates with gymnastics participation charges. Public colleges are inclined to have bigger enrollment figures and thus the flexibility to fund a bigger variety of athletic applications. In addition they have larger leeway in funding sports activities with a excessive working price similar to soccer and gymnastics. If you would like a powerful gymnastics convention, having a convention comprised nearly totally of public colleges is a prerequisite for that to occur.
Solely 12% of colleges within the highest degree of school soccer are non-public. For comparability 35% of all Division I colleges are non-public. Girls’s gymnastics has the identical drawback. In 2019 simply 11% of its Division I applications have been non-public colleges. Nicely under the general Division I threshold of 35%. The Massive Eight was dominated by public colleges and gymnastics thrived in that setting. The SWC with its robust emphasis on non-public colleges didn’t.
For the primary 30 years of its historical past the heavy dependency on non-public colleges was a drawback for the SWC, however one which could possibly be overcome. That every one modified throughout World Battle II when faculty enrollment skyrocketed and the upwards pattern would solely change into extra excessive in every of the following three many years from the Nineteen Fifties to Seventies. All this development disproportionally favored public colleges.
For personal colleges, a manageable drawback had change into deadly. It was on this period that the College of Denver a personal college with no relation to both the Massive Eight or SWC, however gymnastics followers are acquainted with misplaced its soccer program attributable to monetary constraints. On the identical time the SWC added two rising public colleges (Texas Tech and Houston) to assist strengthen itself.
Now the SWC had improved itself to a 5:4 ratio and public colleges now represented a majority of the convention. However as soon as once more the convention had did not develop past its 2-state footprint.
Finally the SWC’s issues turned an excessive amount of and the convention crumbled. The principle perpetrator within the dissolution of the convention was the small non-public colleges couldn’t produce sufficient gate income at soccer video games to take care of monetary parity with the remainder of the convention. Because the lone non-Texas college throughout the 9-team convention, Arkansas was the primary to defect, becoming a member of the SEC in 1992.
Arkansas left a convention with no substantial historical past in girls’s gymnastics and joined a convention with such a gymnastics custom going again to the Seventies. Finally Arkansas created a girls’s program of its personal.
For the eight remaining Texas colleges their prospects have been dire, however luckily for them, the Massive Eight was in an equally precarious state of affairs. Whereas the SWC had robust tv markets however weak gate income, the Massive Eight was within the reverse predicament affected by weak tv markets whereas having fun with robust gate income. The SWC and Massive Eight have been the 2 weakest conferences within the energy construction and at risk of collapse. However that they had geographical proximity, and will resolve one another’s weaknesses.
Quite a few eventualities have been mentioned as to tips on how to merge two of the oldest and most iconic conferences in a deal that may be unprecedented in NCAA historical past. However as a result of Texas politicians wielded monetary energy over Texas and Texas A&M on the educational aspect, whereas tv executives had monetary energy on the athletic aspect, outsiders have been capable of dictate phrases that didn’t make sense to the longterm stability of the proposed new convention.
As an alternative of including all eight SWC colleges, solely Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor have been added to create a brand new 12 crew convention. The newly created Massive 12 which was branded as a wholly new convention and never an growth of the previous Massive Eight would change into a case research of all the things to not do when making an attempt to realign conferences.
The Massive 12 made each conceivable mistake in each the way in which it carried out the realignment course of after which the way in which it managed new members as soon as that they had joined. Earlier than the merger the Massive Eight and SWC had just about no frequent historical past with one another. Apart from the rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas, it was uncommon for Massive Eight and SWC colleges to schedule video games with one another. The “Pink River Rivalry” was all that linked two in any other case fully separate factions.
What began out as an alliance created out of necessity and a enterprise deal that felt extra like a shotgun marriage, panned out precisely as one would anticipate. After 15 years the Massive 12 started experiencing the identical defections it had sought to keep away from within the Nineteen Nineties. From 2010-2022 the Massive Ten, Pac-12, and SEC have recruited away 50% of the unique Massive 12 membership. Inside the subsequent few years Oklahoma and Texas are contractually obligated to hitch the SEC. Surprisingly sufficient, what the SWC envisioned of a convention that includes Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, LSU, and Ole Miss will almost come true. It is going to simply come 110 years late, with out Oklahoma State, and in a convention not named for the Southwest however the Southeast.
The SWC was chargeable for discouraging the event of gymnastics within the area, and its lasting legacy nonetheless discourages Texas colleges to today from adopting the game. Texas colleges together with the most important and wealthiest applications similar to Texas and Texas A&M modeled their athletic departments to carefully align with their small non-public college rivals. This meant having a smaller variety of groups of their total athletic division which decreases the chance of sponsoring gymnastics.
That pattern to continues to today. Of the 65 P5 colleges within the NCAA, roughly half of them (32) have girls’s gymnastics applications. These 32 colleges common 22.7 varsity sports activities per college. The 12 Texas colleges within the highest degree of school soccer common solely 16.8 varsity sports activities per college. However now that Texas is dedicated to becoming a member of the SEC whereas Texas A&M joined a decade in the past, the time is extra applicable than ever for one (or each) colleges to meet the Arkansas precedent.
As for the Massive Eight, it’s a defunct convention that has a shocking quantity of gymnastics historical past to it which the Massive 12 inherited. As to why some Massive 12 applications don’t have gymnastics, the reply is commonly influenced by their earlier convention historical past and whether or not or not they’re a former Massive Eight college. To today the Pink River and whether or not a faculty is to the North or South of it has a correlation as as to whether or not a serious NCAA athletic division sponsors girls’s gymnastics. The Pink River is the wall the place the event of gymnastics couldn’t appear to cross. Coincidently, it divided two groupings of colleges, one the place the event was exceptionally robust and the opposite the place faculty gymnastics was unusually absent.
4 of the former-Massive Eight colleges have a girls’s gymnastics program that survived into the fashionable period, however they’re now divided amongst three completely different conferences. One quirky legacy to the Massive Eight that can all the time function a reminder to the historic convention that after was, NCAA sports activities followers may typically be confused as to why all the faculties in the course of the nation have reversed initials for seemingly no obvious purpose.
The College of Texas is “UT” however the College of Oklahoma is “OU.” The identical is true for College of Missouri (MU) which is now within the SEC, the College of Nebraska (NU) which is now within the Massive Ten, the College of Kansas (KU) which is now within the Massive 12, and College of Colorado (CU) which resides within the Pac-12.
It’s an previous Massive Eight custom.
