DALLAS — David Miller is tall enough not to hide among crowds, particularly this one.
At an impromptu celebration within SMU’s indoor football facility, there is no escape for Miller. He is, after all, the chairman of the school’s board of trustees.
Who else but a wealthy Texas oil tycoon would you expect to be behind SMU's latest and most significant victory:How this all happened, a Hollywood script of a story with Miller as the lead protagonist, is no longer shrouded in secrecy. The four men spent roughly two hours exploring SMU’s candidacy as an expansion member. Talks grew serious. Financial arrangements were discussed.
For nearly 80 years, SMU competed in a power league and won. The old Southwest Conference featured the likes of Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Arkansas. The Mustangs claimed 11 conference football titles. SMU, a top-75 institution in the U.S. News rankings, is on the cusp of attaining the prestigious status as a Research 1 school.SMU boasts some of the most deep-pocketed boosters in America, many of them alums whose business success and riches they trace back to their education — itself steep and exclusive. Tuition is $62,000, enrollment hovers around 7,000 and the acceptance rate is about 53%.
A few years ago, Armstrong helped create the Vision 2025 Fund, a more than $10 million pot meant to hire and retain coaches with an important overall goal: attain membership in a Power Five conference by 2025. All of this is why Miller figuratively shrugged at Phillips' question on that April morning in the downtown Charlotte Westin.Miller smiled from across the table.Inside SMU's cross-country pursuit of Power Five statusIn Texas, that term is reserved only for the brave and curious men and women who scour the globe in search of unfounded oil wells. The original wildcatters are now long gone, but they are not lost to history.
To help in the search, the school hired consultants such as Luck, the former West Virginia athletic director who has deep connections in the industry. Luck is responsible for connecting SMU administrators with about two-thirds of the powerbrokers in each conference, Miller said. Those included key board members, university presidents and provosts, major donors and other athletic administrators.
At one point last fall, SMU officials were engrossed in serious conversations with all three conferences. In fact, on Feb. 7, photographers snapped photos of Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff watching a Mustangs basketball game from a suite, flanked by Turner, Miller and Hart. Turner believes he knows why. The Mustangs were blocked by TCU, Baylor, Houston and Texas Tech. “We give the Big 12 schools in Texas competition now in the American,” he said, “and so if we had equal billing in a power league, we could make it even more competitive.”The heartbreak stretches back to 2011, when the Mustangs accepted an invitation from the Big East before the league evolved into a basketball-only operation. The Big 12 has now twice denied them entrance.
Rick Hart, SMU’s athletic director, and David Miller, the expansion captain, moved to the front of the room and proceeded to present a financial model for the school’s entrance into the Pac-12 and ACC. Close to receiving an invite to either, the proposal required the school to forego the league’s television revenue for seven to nine years.
Attendees included Ray Hunt, a second generation oil man with a net worth of $7.2 billion; Rich Templeton, the chairman of Texas instruments and a man that Forbes once named in the top 50 of American Innovative Leaders; Chiefs owner Clark Hunt; Marty Flanagan, recently retired as CEO of Invesco; Texas automotive magnate Carl Sewell; Gerry Ford, a banking executive worth $2.
There is a significant dropoff to the ranks of the Group of Five. Last year, SMU received $9 million in total conference distribution from the American Athletic Conference, about 80% from the television deal. That’s where the millionaire and billionaire boosters enter the picture. Completely closing the gap isn’t necessary, Turner said. But he did not rule it out.
But this was an extraordinary circumstance. The ACC spent the last two years searching for additional revenue to appease a select group of schools — mostly football powers — over the gap in TV revenue between it and the SEC and Big Ten. In a further sign of fragmentation, the conference’s vote to expand was not unanimous — a rarity in conference decisions.
Even though three of the league’s four historic football powers voted against expansion, the success-initiative pool was a critical piece to striking the deal. During that April meeting in Charlotte, Miller laid it out for the commissioner. Not only did SMU’s addition bring the additional revenue from the TV shares, the Dallas market and a strong fit as a private, academic institution, the school introduced an interesting travel concept. In conversations between Turner and Stanford ambassador Condoleezza Rice, the SMU president presented a plan for the two West Coast schools and the original ACC schools to meet in Dallas to hold Olympic sports competition at SMU’s venues.
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