In February 1994, the Big Eight Conference invited four schools from the crumbling Southwest Conference to form the newly-coined Big 12.
It was a life-saver thrown out for teams in a historic yet deceitful conference that had torn itself apart with NCAA rules violations and general pettiness. Before the invitation was made, it was assumed that the four remaining public schools in the SWC — Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Houston — would be the ones to move on to a more stable and profitable conference for the foreseeable future.
However, one devastating, mind-boggling substitution was made.