Is it true that Texas left in the middle of the night just like this and screwed over the SWC.
The SWC began dying in 1960 when a very specific event occurred: the NFL put a franchise in Dallas and called them the Cowboys. From that moment on, the SWC was doomed. If you look closely, you'll notice Texas was problem THE college team of the decade in the 60s...and the moment the Cowboys got good, Texas got...not so good. The NFL has been the most common catalyst for everything that happens in CFB. Paid players in the NFL is how scholarships were invented for college players.
Here's how the dominoes fell:
1) In January 1990, Notre Dame left the CFA - which was all the non-Big 10 or Pac-10 schools who negotiated as a single entity with the networks - and got the NBC deal.
2) The Big Ten grabbed up Penn State.
3) Roy Kramer began the job in January 1990, and his predecessor (Harvey Schiller) had already been at work trying to increase TV sets. After Notre Dame and Penn State, Kramer got permission at the May 1990 SEC meetings to expand the conference - and we looked at FSU, Miami, S Carolina, Arky, Texas and ATM. The key point to it all was simply getting two teams after they'd read the fine print of the laws and learned they could have a conference title game if they had 12 teams. What's funny is to all of us on the outside, adding Arky and SCAR for the 1992 season, it looked like big letdown after the names we'd heard.
Texas and the Aggies wanted to come, but the state politicians got involved and stopped it. Then all this stuff happened.
4) The SWC did not believe Arkansas would leave. The moment they did, the SWC began calling Oklahoma and Okie State to leave the Big 8. At the same time, the SWC (July 12, 1990 fwiw) opted to consider a merger with the Big 8. Actually, it began as a TELEVISION CONTRACT ALLIANCE that eventually became a merger.
5) Nebraska, Missouri, and Syracuse all got on the phones and begged the Big 10 to make them the 12th team for a potential playoff, but Delany and the bunch decided adding teams wasn't going to happen.
6) The Pac 10 suggested expanding by adding Texas, the Aggies, BYU, and Colorado. They wound up doing nothing.
But then the bomb blew up....
7) In December 1993, Fox gained control of the NFC package from CBS, who was now left without any football at all. And they had a ton of money since they were free of that lousy baseball contract and weren't paying out the wazoo for the NFL anymore...and NASCAR wasn't big yet.
8) In February 1994, CBS inked the deal with the SEC of 5 years, $85 million. This sent the Big 8 and SWC into a seizure. It also caused them to decide a merger was their only chance of survival. The Big Eight was trying to negotiate a TV contract, and because Texas was flirting with "we'd like to go to the Pac 10" and the Aggies were actually calling the SEC (yes...in 1994), they kept watching networks throw money at other conferences. Basically, they got the framework of an, "Okay, if we have a 12-team conference with the old Big 8 and it included Texas from the SWC, what can we get?" Even then, Texas played that dumb hard to get game to the end.
The Big 12 basically was a marriage of convenience out of fear of a bunch of teams getting left out completely.
The SWC was going to die anyway:
a) once Arkansas left, who outside of Texas even cared?
b) even with TV, who outside Texas cared?
c) pro football was and is bigger, and the Cowboys were successful
d) once Arkansas left, the Cotton Bowl lost prestige unless it changed, too
Texas gets a ton of blame for the SWC implosion, but it was Roy Kramer reaching in and snagging Arkansas that built onto their "we're just a local conference" problem...and Kramer didn't start that fire, either, but once Notre Dame signed that contract, all bets were off.