TCU may not care, but SMU to ACC will have major implications in DFW & nationally

As the Pac-12 burned to the ground, the Big 12 had the chance to invite two of its remaining members, Stanford and California.

According to Big 12 school officials, the conference contemplated adding the two elite Bay-area schools but were met with resistance from four members, namely Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Texas Tech.

Having already added Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah to the league starting in 2024, one Big 12 official said, “There is no more money.”

The payout from the league’s media rights deal to the respective Big 12 members is set for its future 16 universities, and was not going to increase by adding Stanford and California.

Since budgets are set according to those figures, some Big 12 members were reluctant to subtract even if it meant adding two of the nation’s most prestigious academic, and Olympic sport, brands in the now Power 4.

The Big 12 member that will feel this decision the most is TCU.

TCU will host SMU in football on Saturday, in a series that is scheduled to end after 2025.

When the Big 12 passed on Cal and Stanford, it opened the door for SMU to buy its way into the ACC when the league added all three in a move that will alter SMU’s rivalry with TCU, and potentially change major conference realignment.

“I don’t have any clue; hard to predict the future and how that’s going to play out,” TCU football coach Sonny Dykes said regarding how SMU to the ACC will affect this rivalry. “I think it will (have an affect on recruiting). There is more change coming from a conference perspective, so I think all of this stuff is pretty temporary.”

All of this stuff is pretty temporary. It’s not a dig as much as it’s the truth.

TCU and SMU’s evolved relationship

The Iron Skillet will be put away around the time the real game between the long-time private school rivals from Fort Worth and Dallas will be interesting, and maybe a little nasty, too.

Given the rapid rate of evolution in major athletic conferences, don’t expect the ACC to look like the ACC for more than five years. The same can be said of the Big 12.

But in these next five years, SMU-to-the-ACC is seismic.

As a member of the ACC, SMU now can offer what TCU has been able to sell that distinguished itself apart from its Highland Park rivals: Small, private school education with big-time college sports located in a major metro area.

The only other schools that can make that pitch are Stanford, USC, Miami, Northwestern and Vanderbilt.

SMU in the ACC has the potential to put the Dallas-school back on the same plane as TCU.

From 1923 to 1995, TCU and SMU were members of the Southwest Conference. When that league fell apart, neither SMU nor TCU was invited to join the new Big 12.

Both schools were left to join the 16-team Western Athletic Conference. As humiliating as that was for TCU, it was worse for SMU, which was still recovering from the “Death Penalty” handed down by the NCAA to the football program, in 1987.

Before 1996, TCU was often called the “poor man’s SMU.”

The started to change around 2000, when TCU’s investment in athletics began to pay off, and it resulted in the biggest, most lucrative growth spurt, in the history of the school.

Beginning in 1997 to now, a strong case can be made TCU is one of the best stories in major college athletics.

Even though TCU is not ahead of SMU in the coveted U.S. News & World Report college rankings, TCU evolved out its regional-reputation, and forged a national identity that people recognize, and young students want to join.

Money poured in, and TCU began to compete to land the children of some of America’s 1 and 2 percent families. Families that previously may not have considered TCU as an option.

When TCU joined the Big 12 Conference, in 2012, SMU’s leadership could only look on in disgust, and envy. TCU had the hook, and national exposure, it wanted.

The idea that TCU was better than SMU in anything wasn’t a slap-in-the-face to a lot of Hilltoppers, it was a 3-wood to the face.

Alas, from 2000 to its current state, the rivalry between the two has been in name only. TCU is the Big 12 member, while SMU was in a Group of Five.

SMU has won a few games here and there, but TCU and SMU has been big (rich) brother versus little (also very rich) brother.

When the Big 12 announced in 2021 that it would add American Athletic Conference members Houston, Central Florida and Cincinnati, some SMU officials were livid that the AAC invited North Texas as a new member.

Disregard whatever they may say publicly, SMU does not want to be affiliated with North Texas.

SMU has spent tens of millions of dollars in upgrading its facilities, and earlier this year SMU officials passionately lobbied to join the Pac-12. The Pac-12 could not sell to its member schools that SMU was a value add, so the lead died.

When the Pac-12 died, SMU played its hole card. Money. Money, and influential members of its community who have no problem spending it.

TCU and SMU in the future of college sports

To join the ACC, SMU will not take in any broadcast right’s revenue for the first nine years of its time in the league. The school will receive some money from the league’s presence in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and bowl games, but it’s effectively paying the ACC for a spot.

Because that’s how much being a part of a Power 4 league can mean to an SMU.

SMU is now directly affiliated with ACC members Duke, Wake Forest, North Carolina, Stanford, California, Virginia and Georgia Tech; as much as a TCU fan may want to belittle SMU paying to be included with those schools, that affiliation is a major win for SMU.

SMU has potentially set an expensive precedent for schools such as Duke, Wake Forest, Northwestern, TCU, Baylor and other universities that are part of the Power 4 but feature smaller alumni bases and enrollments.

At some point, Alabama is going to ask why fellow SEC member Vanderbilt receives a full media right’s share. The same question Ohio State and Michigan would ask of Northwestern.

At some point, there will be more movement, and smaller schools not named Notre Dame will be left to hope, and spend, their way to retain their status in the upper echelon of college sports.

“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I firmly believe regarding consolidation this industry is not immune to it; every industry goes through it,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said at TCU the day before the season opener on Sept. 1.

“I do believe consolidation breeds stability, and our student-athletes want stability, and clarity.”

Not sure everyone in college sports agrees with those sentiments, but consolidation is not stopping.

The geographic makeup of the major conferences in college sports is patently preposterous, and no one has stopped it.

SMU wants to a part of it because the residuals can enhance a school the way a business school cannot, and it can afford the bill.

“I’ve spent zero time worrying about SMU,” TCU director of athletics Jeremiah Donati said in a phone interview this week. “I am focused on TCU and TCU only. I’m not trying to sound mean about it at all, but that’s really not my job.”

TCU’s rivalry will hit pause after 2025, but the real games are just beginning, even if all of this stuff is pretty temporary.