Southwestern Athletic Conference
Southwestern Athletic Conference logo
Established	1920
Association	NCAA
Division	Division I FCS
Members	10
Sports fielded	18 (men's: 8; women's: 10)
Region	Southern
Headquarters	Birmingham, Alabama
Commissioner	Duer Sharp
Website	swac.org
Locations

The Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) is a college athletic conference headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, which is made up of historically black universities in the Southern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I for all sports; in football, it participates in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), still frequently referred to by its former designation of Division I-AA.

The SWAC is one of two conferences (the other being the Ivy League) that does not participate in the FCS football playoffs, and is the only one of the two whose members offer a full complement of scholarships for football.^[1] The SWAC instead splits its schools into two divisions, and plays a conference championship game. Furthermore, one SWAC game, the Bayou Classic between Southern and Grambling State, is positioned on the schedule after the NCAA tournament has begun. In addition, Alabama State plays Division II rival Tuskegee annually on Thanksgiving Day (The Turkey Day Classic). These moves have been criticized by other conferences containing historically black universities^{[citation needed]}, especially the only other Division I conference made up entirely of such schools, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, which annually places its champion into the FCS tournament.

History[link]

In 1920, athletic officials from six Texas HBCUs — C.H. Fuller of Bishop College, Red Randolph and C.H. Patterson of Paul Quinn College, E.G. Evans, H.J. Evans and H.J. Starns of Prairie View A&M, D.C. Fuller of Texas College and G. Whitte Jordan of Wiley College — met in Houston, Texas, to discuss common interests. At this meeting, they agreed to form a new league, the SWAC.

Paul Quinn became the first of the original members to withdraw from the league when it did so in 1929. When Langston University of Oklahoma was admitted into the conference two years later, it began the migration of state-supported institutions into the SWAC. Southern University entered the ranks in 1934, followed by Arkansas AM&N (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff) in 1936 and Texas Southern University in 1954.

Rapid growth in enrollment of the state-supported schools made it difficult for the church-supported schools to finance their athletics programs and one by one they fell victim to the growing prowess of the state-supported colleges. Bishop withdrew from the conference in 1956, Langston in 1957 and Huston-Tillotson (formerly Samuel Huston) in 1959, one year after the admittance of two more state-supported schools: Grambling College and Jackson State College. The enter-exit cycle continued in 1961 when Texas College withdrew, followed by the admittance of Alcorn A&M (now Alcorn State University) in 1962. Wiley left in 1968, the same year Mississippi Valley State College entered. Arkansas AM&N exited in 1970 and Alabama State University entered in 1982. Arkansas-Pine Bluff (formerly Arkansas AM&N) rejoined the SWAC on July 1, 1997, regaining full-member status one year later. Alabama A&M University became the conference’s tenth member when it became a full member in September, 1999 after a one year period as an affiliate SWAC member.^[2] Most of the former SWAC members that have left the conference are currently a part of the Red River Athletic Conference of the NAIA.

Today, the SWAC ranks among the elite in the nation in terms of alumni playing with professional sports teams, particularly in the sport of football.^{[citation needed]} On the gridiron, the conference as been the biggest draw on the Football Championship Subdivision level of the NCAA, leading the nation in average home attendance for 19 of the 20 years the FCS has been in existence.^{[citation needed]} In 1994, the SWAC fell just 40,000 fans short of becoming the first non-Football Bowl Subdivision conference to attract one million fans to its home games.^{[citation needed]}

Current championship competition offered by the SWAC includes competition for men in baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, indoor track, outdoor track & field and tennis. Women’s competition is offered in the sports of basketball, bowling, cross country, golf, indoor track, outdoor track & field, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball.^[2]

Membership[link]

There are currently 10 members in the SWAC.

Membership timeline[link]

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DateFormat = yyyy

ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:20

Period = from:1920 till:2015

TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal

PlotArea = right:20 left:0 bottom:50 top:5 #> to display a count on left side of graph, use "left:20" to suppress the count, use "left:20"<#

Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.99,0.7,0.7)

         id:line     value:black

         id:bg       value:white
         id:Full value:rgb(0.742,0.727,0.852) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports
         id:FullxF value:rgb(0.551,0.824,0.777) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports except for football
         id:AssocF value:rgb(0.98,0.5,0.445) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member for football only
         id:AssocOS value:rgb(0.5,0.691,0.824) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in some sports, but not all (consider identifying in legend or a footnote)
         id:OtherC1 value:rgb(0.996,0.996,0.699) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference
         id:OtherC2 value:rgb(0.988,0.703,0.383) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference where OtherC1 has already been used, to distinguish the two

PlotData=

  width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s

  bar:1  color:Full from:1920 till:1956 text:Bishop (1920-1956)

  bar:2  color:Full from:1920 till:1929 text:Paul Quinn (1920-1929)

  bar:3  color:Full from:1920 till:end text:Prairie View (1920-present)

  bar:4  color:Full from:1920 till:1959 text:Samuel Huston (1920-1959)

  bar:5  color:Full from:1920 till:1961 text:Texas College  (1920-1961)

  bar:6  color:Full from:1920 till:1968 text:Wiley  (1920-1968)

  bar:7  color:Full from:1931 till:1957 text:Langston (1931-1957)

  bar:8  color:Full from:1934 till:end text:Southern (1934-present)

  bar:9  color:Full from:1936 till:1970 text:Arkansas AM&N / Arkansas-Pine Bluff (1936-1970;  1998-present)

  bar:9  color:Full from:1998 till:end text: 
  bar:10 color:Full from:1954 till:end text:Texas Southern (1954-present)

  bar:11 color:Full from:1958 till:end text:Grambling State (1958-present)

  bar:12 color:Full from:1958 till:end text:Jackson State (1958-present)

  bar:13 color:Full from:1962 till:end text:Alcorn State (1962-present)

  bar:14 color:Full from:1968 till:end text:Mississippi Valley State (1968-present)

  bar:15 color:Full from:1982 till:end text:Alabama State (1982-present)

  bar:16 color:Full from:1999 shift:(-15,-5) till:end text:Alabama A&M (1999-present)

ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:5 start:1920 TextData =

   fontsize:L
   textcolor:black
   pos:(0,30) tabs:(400-center)
   text:^"Southwestern Athletic Conference Membership History"

1. > If the chart uses more than one bar color, add a legend by selecting the appropriate fields from the following six options (use only the colors that are used in the graphic.) Leave a blank line after the end of the timeline, then add a line with the selected values from the list, separated by a space. Full members Full members (non-football) Assoc. members (football only) Assoc. member (list sports) Other Conference Other Conference <# </timeline>

Former members[link]

• Arkansas AM&N (1936 to 1970; returned as Arkansas-Pine Bluff in 1997)
• Bishop College (1920 to 1956)
• Langston University (1931 to 1957)
• Paul Quinn College (1920 to 1929)
• Samuel Huston College (later Huston-Tillotson College) (from 1920 to 1959)
• Texas College (1920 to 1961)
• Willey College (1920 to 1968)

Conference facilities[link]

• Alabama State will open its new stadium in November 2012. Early-season home games will remain at the Cramton Bowl.

SWAC Championships[link]

Football[link]

All games have been played at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama.

Men's basketball[link]

Tournament performance by school[link]

Women's basketball[link]

Notes and references[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)

An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other at the professional, collegiate, or high school level. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller and smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. Conferences often, but not always, include teams from a common geographic region.

United States[link]

In the United States and Canada, the National Hockey League (NHL) and National Basketball Association (NBA) are divided into the western (NHL, NBA) and eastern (NHL, NBA) conferences, with three divisions within each conference. In both leagues, the winners of the three divisions in each conference automatically advance to the playoffs, with the 5 next best teams in each conference also going to the playoffs. In the NHL each of the three division winner is guaranteed one of the top three seeds (or ranks to determine who has home advantage and the matchups for each round of the playoffs, where the top ranked teams play lower ranked teams) in the NBA the top four seeds go to the three division winners and the next best team, based on record. A pending realignment will divide the NHL into four regional conferences instead of two.

The National Football League has an American Football Conference (AFC) and a National Football Conference (NFC). Both conferences have 16 teams, and each conference is divided into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. Each of the 4 division winners is guaranteed one of the top 4 seeds in the playoffs. These conferences, for the most part, derive from the fact that they were once separate organizations: the original National Football League and the 1960s American Football League; the two entities merged in 1970, with each league forming the basis of the NFC and AFC respectively.

Major League Baseball does not use the word "conference." Instead, it is divided into two separate leagues (which, although their operations have been integrated via the Commissioner of Baseball in modern times, were originally separately managed and highly rivalrous organizations); each league has three divisions each. These are the American League with 14 teams and the National League with 16 teams. Each league is divided into the Eastern, Central and Western divisions; each division winner is also guaranteed one of the top three seeds, even if their record is lower than the league's wildcard team.

In all four sports, the champion of one conference (or league in MLB's case) plays the champion of the other conference for the final round championship, this is guaranteed to occur because the rules for the playoffs require play to be exclusively within the conference/league in all rounds before the final round, leaving only two teams for the finals (one from each conference/league) and the records of teams outside a conference/league are ignored, which can allow teams with inferior records to make the playoffs while teams in the other conference with better records do not get in. An extreme example of this occurred in the NFL in 2010 in regards to the Seattle Seahawks, who achieved a playoff position despite having a losing record (the only time this has happened in a non-strike season). Also, in each sport, teams play predominately within their own conference during the regular season, but play some games outside their conference (or league in baseball).

In college sports, the terms "league," "conference" and (generally at lower levels) "athletic association" can be used interchangeably to refer to a group (usually of approximately ten colleges and/or universities) of teams that regularly play against each other within the National Collegiate Athletic Association; most of these groups (including all of those in the Bowl Championship Series) refer to themselves as conferences, although the Horizon League, Ivy League, Patriot League, Pioneer League and Summit League use the word "league" instead. The NCAA itself is divided into divisions and subdivisions, which can lead to redundancy when these conferences also have divisions of their own. For instance, the Southeastern Conference is part of NCAA Division I (specifically the Football Bowl Subdivision), but is itself also subdivided into an east and west division.

England and Wales[link]

In English Association football, Conference National is one level below the The Football League. The second tier of which is divided into Conference North and Conference South. Although, this does not meet the above definition as Conference National is the fifth tier of the English football pyramid whilst Conferences North and South are the sixth.

Australia, New Zealand and South Africa[link]

In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the highest level of provincial rugby union is Super Rugby. From the 2011 season, Super Rugby will work on a conference system. The competition will have one conference based in each country. The winner of each conference will receive a play-off spot, as will the three next best teams overall.

Philippines[link]

In the Philippine Basketball Association where teams do not represent geographical entities, a conference is a tournament within a season.

See also[link]

• Sports league
• Regulation of sport
• Outline of sports#General sports concepts
• List of college athletic conferences — in the United States