The old SWC met it's demise years ago when perennial cellar-dweller TCU hired Jim Wacker as head football coach. At Wacker's first news conference he said that he was going to win in SWC by not cheating, insinuating that almost everyone else dishonest.

You guessed it. The first team caught by the NCAA was TCU and apparently they were turned in by another school in the SWC.

Eventually, every school, with the exception of Rice was caught by the NCAA. SMU was eventually given the Death Penalty.

Soon, the whole conference collapsed.

Today reporter Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News (neither is a friend of Texas A&M) wrote this article. I cut and pasted because I would not give either extra clicks.

Sherrington is sounding the alarm. Does the SEC want to go there? I think not.

Here is the article:

On one hand, it would appear Jimbo Fisher hit the ground running at Texas A&M, getting slapped with NCAA sanctions not even a third of the way into that 10-year, $75 million gig. Could have been worse. Only two relatively minor violations and nothing about an assistant giving a player hundreds of dollars to entertain recruits, as said player alleged.

The gist of it is the Aggies are out $5,000 and the football staff loses a few days on the road recruiting this fall while Jimbo is restricted to quarters. Back in the good ol’ days, it wouldn’t have wrinkled Jackie Sherrill’s grin.

On the other hand, this development bears a whiff of the good ol’ days, doesn’t it?

And not because, as one FBS coach put it recently, “Jimbo is trying to bring back the old SWC.”

Before going there, let’s first consider how we got here. The NCAA showed up at A&M’s front door in 2018 after Santino Marchiol, in the midst of attempting to wrest a waiver from A&M so he could transfer to Arizona, complained that Jimbo’s spring practices exceeded NCAA-mandated time limits. He also alleged that his position coach, Bradley Dale Peveto, had given him cash to party with recruits.

Probably worth noting here that, since ratting out the Aggies, Marchiol has led a fairly peripatetic life. First, Kevin Sumlin kicked him off the team at Arizona after Marchiol made racist comments about former A&M teammates. He then lost a shot at walking on at Colorado after an arrest last summer on domestic violence charges.

Thursday’s release made no mention of any cash transactions between Marchiol and Peveto, no longer a member of Jimbo’s staff. But it did say that, as the NCAA wrapped up the initial inquiry brought by the excessive practice charges, “the enforcement staff learned that the head coach and assistant coach made an impermissible recruiting contact with a 2020 football prospective student-athlete at his high school.”

Turns out that Jimbo and one of his assistants, Jay Graham, were recruiting a kid at an unnamed high school when they encountered a teammate who was an underclassman, and, thus, off-limits.

In recruiting parlance, this unintentional meeting is called a “bump.” A big bump, at that. Lasted 15 or 20 minutes, according to the negotiated resolution between A&M and the infractions committee. The chain of events was supported by the kid, two of his high school coaches and “video evidence.”

Dang cellphones.

Anyway, all things considered, the two-year investigation didn’t amount to much. Not compared with the FBI-sponsored cases looming over a half-dozen prominent basketball programs, Kansas included. That A&M’s case was resolved first provoked some of the program’s defenders to grumble about priorities and biases.

In reality, the swiftness of the decision, if you can call it that, can be attributed to the fact that the allegations were relatively simple, and Jimbo fessed up. Took responsibility in a statement Thursday, as the sanctions required. Kansas and Bill Self, on the other hand, have practically promised a bare-knuckles fight. Before marshaling its forces to meet that challenge, the NCAA took care of the small stuff.

Even so, it didn’t stop A&M supporters from insinuating a conspiracy. On several social media streams, it was noted that the NCAA’s executive vice president of regulatory affairs, the guy who provides “strategic direction to enforcement,” is Stan Wilcox. The same Stan Wilcox who was Jimbo’s boss when the latter bolted Florida State for College Station.

Now, I don’t have the slightest idea if Wilcox goosed investigators to go after Jimbo. I don’t even know if he has an ax to grind. Wilcox said a lot of nice things about Jimbo when the coach left Tallahassee. Didn’t blame him at all. In fact, he must have agreed, because a year and a half later, Wilcox quit Florida State for the NCAA.

If you ask me — and why else come here — the question isn’t why the NCAA investigated the Aggies, it’s who turned them in?

Could have been just about anyone. Even the high school coaches, though that seems unlikely, given that they’d probably like A&M to come back. Could have been an assistant from another school who happened to be there at the same time and witnessed the “bump.” Could have been someone who simply heard about it.

Whoever did it, though, it sure seemed like a shot over Jimbo’s bow.

Look, coaches see all kinds of infractions when they’re on the road. Doesn’t mean they tell on anyone, because if they do, it opens them up to the same scrutiny. Ever wonder how the SEC essentially cornered the market on the nation’s best talent, yet it almost never sets off any alarms at the NCAA?

Do you really believe it’s because they’re such sticklers for the rules down South?

The SEC has long had a “live-and-let-live” policy when it comes to recruiting. Not like the old SWC, where everybody turned in everybody until the league cannibalized itself. The SWC’s demise began in full when SMU ended up with the likes of Eric Dickerson.

One SWC coach told me it was one thing for Texas or A&M to corral such a talent, leaving the rest of the league to deal with the consequences, but it was another thing entirely to have to reckon with SMU, too. As a result, other SWC schools turned SMU in. Once the Mustangs went down, all bets were off. As Bum Bright told me, citing a conversation with his old pal, Bill Clements, SMU officials provided the NCAA a “hit list” on the rest of the SWC.

Now, I’m not saying that’s what’s happening now. No telling where that tip came from. But it sure looked like a statement to me, and a bigger one than the NCAA made Thursday.