In NCAA sports activities the time period “Crimson 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 varsity 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 had been the trailblazers of girls’s school 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 Crimson River is Texas, the American state which infamously has no main faculties sponsoring girls’s gymnastics. The area of the USA the place girls’s school gymnastics suffered its best failure in getting universities to undertake the game. Texas is the barren wasteland of school gymnastics. Its lack of ability 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 Crimson River is what divides two areas of the USA the place the event of school gymnastics panned out in two very other ways. If the Crimson 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 essentially the most historic conferences in NCAA historical past that every went defunct in 1996.
To the North of the Crimson River was the Large 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 ladies’s packages had been established within the heyday of each conferences’ existence.
Ladies’s school gymnastics was adopted en masse within the late Sixties to late Nineteen Seventies. The game was then broadly dropped en masse from the Nineteen Eighties and into the early Nineties. For the Large Eight and SWC which had been round till 1996, realizing what the NCAA conferences regarded like within the early Nineties is essential to understanding the event of the game in these essential years.
The Large Eight had a girls’s gymnastics championships as early as 1975, a full eight years earlier than the NCAA integrated a Nationwide Championships of its personal. Participation charges inside the Large Eight had been so robust that 7 of 8 faculties had an energetic girls’s program sooner or later in time. 4 of these packages proceed to this present day, most notably the reigning Nationwide Champions on the College of Oklahoma.
The Large 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 faculty that I couldn’t discover documentation of a girls’s school gymnastics program ever current. Nebraska was the dominant energy in girls’s gymnastics profitable 54% of all convention titles, whereas Kansas was the one faculty taking part within the sport that by no means gained a convention title.
In contrast to each NCAA convention that has been thought-about one of many nice soccer powers, the Large Eight was the one main convention that had no non-public faculties 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 to 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 faculties of Texas, however the main public faculties of neighboring states had been supposed to finish the remainder of the convention. Sadly for the SWC, it was solely in a position to safe the longterm membership of Arkansas amongst the non-Texas candidates.
As a substitute, the SWC regarded inwards to search out its remaining members, with no remaining public faculties obtainable, the SWC resorted to a quartet of personal faculties (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 faculties ended up turning into a 2-state convention with a 3:4 ratio between private and non-private.
The ratio between private and non-private faculties is essential as a result of it correlates with gymnastics participation charges. Public faculties are likely to have bigger enrollment figures and thus the power to fund a bigger variety of athletic packages. Additionally they have larger leeway in funding sports activities with a excessive working value akin to soccer and gymnastics. If you would like a powerful gymnastics convention, having a convention comprised nearly solely of public faculties 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 faculties are non-public. Ladies’s gymnastics has the identical drawback. In 2019 simply 11% of its Division I packages had been non-public faculties. Effectively under the general Division I threshold of 35%. The Large Eight was dominated by public faculties and gymnastics thrived in that setting. The SWC with its robust emphasis on non-public faculties didn’t.
For the primary 30 years of its historical past the heavy dependency on non-public faculties was a drawback for the SWC, however one which might be overcome. That every one modified throughout World Warfare II when school enrollment skyrocketed and the upwards development would solely change into extra excessive in every of the subsequent three a long time from the Fifties to Nineteen Seventies. All this progress disproportionally favored public faculties.
For personal faculties, a manageable drawback had change into deadly. It was on this period that the College of Denver a personal faculty with no relation to both the Large Eight or SWC, however gymnastics followers are accustomed to misplaced its soccer program attributable to monetary constraints. On the similar time the SWC added two rising public faculties (Texas Tech and Houston) to assist strengthen itself.
Now the SWC had improved itself to a 5:4 ratio and public faculties now represented a majority of the convention. However as soon as once more the convention had did not increase past its 2-state footprint.
Finally the SWC’s issues turned an excessive amount of and the convention crumbled. The primary wrongdoer within the dissolution of the convention was the small non-public faculties 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 faculty inside 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 Nineteen Seventies. Finally Arkansas created a girls’s program of its personal.
For the eight remaining Texas faculties their prospects had been dire, however fortuitously for them, the Large Eight was in an equally precarious scenario. Whereas the SWC had robust tv markets however weak gate income, the Large Eight was within the reverse predicament affected by weak tv markets whereas having fun with robust gate income. The SWC and Large Eight had 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 situations had been mentioned as to how one can merge two of the oldest and most iconic conferences in a deal that might 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 had been in a position to dictate phrases that didn’t make sense to the longterm stability of the proposed new convention.
As a substitute of including all eight SWC faculties, solely Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor had been added to create a brand new 12 crew convention. The newly created Large 12 which was branded as a completely new convention and never an growth of the previous Large Eight would change into a case research of every part to not do when attempting to realign conferences.
The Large 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 Large Eight and SWC had nearly no widespread historical past with one another. Excluding the rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas, it was uncommon for Large Eight and SWC faculties to schedule video games with one another. The “Crimson 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 count on. After 15 years the Large 12 started experiencing the identical defections it had sought to keep away from within the Nineties. From 2010-2022 the Large Ten, Pac-12, and SEC have recruited away 50% of the unique Large 12 membership. Inside the subsequent few years Oklahoma and Texas are contractually obligated to hitch the SEC. Unusually 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’s 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 faculties to this present day from adopting the game. Texas faculties together with the biggest and wealthiest packages akin to Texas and Texas A&M modeled their athletic departments to carefully align with their small non-public faculty rivals. This meant having a smaller variety of groups of their general athletic division which decreases the chance of sponsoring gymnastics.
That development to continues to this present day. Of the 65 P5 faculties within the NCAA, roughly half of them (32) have girls’s gymnastics packages. These 32 faculties common 22.7 varsity sports activities per faculty. The 12 Texas faculties within the highest degree of school soccer common solely 16.8 varsity sports activities per faculty. 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 acceptable than ever for one (or each) faculties to satisfy the Arkansas precedent.
As for the Large Eight, it’s a defunct convention that has a stunning quantity of gymnastics historical past to it which the Large 12 inherited. As to why some Large 12 packages 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 Large Eight faculty. To this present day the Crimson River and whether or not a college is to the North or South of it has a correlation as as to if or not a serious NCAA athletic division sponsors girls’s gymnastics. The Crimson 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 school gymnastics was unusually absent.
4 of the former-Large Eight faculties have a girls’s gymnastics program that survived into the fashionable period, however they’re now divided amongst three totally different conferences. One quirky legacy to the Large Eight that may all the time function a reminder to the historic convention that when was, NCAA sports activities followers may usually be confused as to why all the colleges in the midst of the nation have reversed initials for seemingly no obvious motive.
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 Large Ten, the College of Kansas (KU) which is now within the Large 12, and College of Colorado (CU) which resides within the Pac-12.
It’s an previous Large Eight custom.
