dammit... I was so trying to be nice Deep Purple. But you wanna do this?
that's quite a bit of research you did in the few minutes since I posted that.
I said that I had explained that Ann Richards had nothing to do with it, and she didn't. She and Baylor never got along. Baylor's kinda conservative, you see. Heck there was a major to-do about whether to give Jimmy Carter, the 1st Southern Baptist president an honorary doctorate because he was a little too liberal, even way back when. Ann Richards was a little to the left of him. The one objective piece of journalism you cite that mentions Ann Richards as having any active role in it is the hometown startle-gram... that bastion of journalism that just today quoted baylorfans.com posters in an actual newspaper article.
I too have read much about those days, and the best newspaper article was a long form feature in the San Antonio Express News from a few years back. It's no longer online but is copied and pasted in it's entirety here:
http://ncaabbs.com/s...5976&pid=684752
and
http://www.baylorfan...ead.php?t=83536
and partially quoted here:
http://www.mwcboard....?showtopic=9841
Basically Bob Bullock had more to do with it than anyone, and although he grew up in Hillsboro and went to Baylor Law School, his loyalty was to Texas Tech. David Sibley, then a very junior Senator from Waco, had something to do with it too, but in order to get Tech included, Baylor was thrown in too, because Baylor had earned it to a greater extent than had Tech.
It's not a "fairy story" Baylor did actually earn it. Here's another objective source:
http://www.thompsonian.info/SWC.html
It shows that in the ten football seasons prior to the Big XII invite (the formal invitation was made in February 1994) Baylor had the second highest win total in the SWC. (Arkansas was gone in 1989, I think-they're under a different part of that website)
Win totals (1984-1993):
A&M = 95
BU = 66
UT = 64
TTU = 56
UH = 50
TCU = 40
Rice = 35
SMU = 29
If you look at it from a shorter term perspective (1990-1993) Baylor is still near the top.
Win totals:
A&M = 41
UT = 28
BU = 26
TTU = 21
Rice = 21
UH = 19
TCU = 18
SMU = 9
If you look at from a longer term history (1978-1993) win totals are:
A&M = 130
UT = 119
BU = 103
UH = 93
TTU = 79
SMU = 77
TCU = 51
Rice = 48
Also remember that SMU didn't play for a couple of those years, and that Baylor and Rice were the only schools not on some form of NCAA probation. It's late and I don't feel like looking up attendance figures, but that was another factor in Baylor's favor. At the time, Baylor was roughly the size of TCU and SMU combined.If Bullock wanted to include Tech, he needed to include Baylor in order for it to seem legit.
There's no question that politics had something to do with it. I'm sure if they could have at the time, TCU would have used any political leverage they had to their advantage. I think in retrospect TCU fans would agree that in the long run, wandering the conferences wasteland was the key to eventually finding the promised land... That's one of the things I admire about TCU and why I root for them. But to say that Ann Richards had anything to do with it, or say that Baylor didn't earn it is flat out wrong.
Next week, I'll cheer for you. For tomorrow though, Deep Purple just confirmed the chip-on-their-shoulder little man stereotype, and I sure hope the lizards get mauled.