Looking at today's opponent, one can see the drastic changes over the decades. It also is a bit of a milestone. I'll touch on both.
In Arlington State College's, turned UT Arlington, quest to move to the highest level of college football, and athletics as a whole, they needed to play higher competition. To move from the College Division to the University Division, half the schedule had to be against University Division schools to join said University Division. Since the Southland Conference schools were in the lower level, the Rebels, then later Maverick, made a point to play University Division schools in the non-conference to achieve that goal.
Included in that University Division pool were the teams close to UTA. I've made a lot about the North Texas State University/UT Arlington rivalry, and deservedly so. With minor exceptions here and there, the NTSU/UTA games are some of the highest attended games in UTA history, home or away.
Also included in that effort were other area teams. The Mavericks opened the 1981 season against SMU. With SMU, the two played once in 1964, then three times in the 1980's, including this season.
In 2015, I posted about the 1981 win over North Texas at the Cotton Bowl during the State Fair of Texas. Those two teams played every year from 1973 to the end of the program, with one exception.
Today, marks a milestone in another fashion. Playing their Denton County rival, and the only other public school in the University, and later Division I, meant something. Playing their Dallas County rival was an intriguing novelty. Playing their Tarrant County rival was on a different level.
Starting in 1970, TCU hosted UTA eight times between then and this season. Sadly, this year was the last time they played on the gridiron. I have no doubt that the teams could have met up again. More on the frequency in a moment.
In the 1970's TCU was hardly a force. During that decade, they had one winless campaign, two one-win years and three two-win seasons. Their best marks were a 6-4-1 tally in 1971 followed by a 5-6 record in 1972.
When I said it was a big deal to UTA, I wasn't kidding. Using that successful 1971 TCU season, UTA at TCU drew 20,868 at the gate. That number beat TCU's visit to SMU by 2,000, despite the proximity and the rivalry of those two. Yes, UTA at TCU drew more than TCU at SMU.
Also that year, UTA's game at TCU drew more than 1,000 over the Rice at TCU contest. Mavs/Frogs were just 500 less than Oklahoma State at TCU and just 1,200 less than Texas Tech. TTU/TCU was also supposed to be a rivalry, the Horned Frogs were 3-3-1 and they beat the Red Raiders. The only game at Amon Carter Stadium that was demonstrably higher than UTA's was when Texas A&M came to town and 31,910 were on hand.
I posted the 1971 numbers because those were for a competitive team that ultimately had a winning record. After a half decade stretch that saw four wins three times as the high-water mark, there should have been excitement in Fort Worth. And UTA still was a highlight on the schedule.
And before you balk at "just 20,000" for a game, keep in mind, attendance then is nothing like it is now. UTA's biggest crowd ever came at Texas A&M in 1982 with 54.098 in the seats. That's roughly half of what would be today. Staying with that 1971 TCU year, a game at Penn State saw roughly 52,000, also less than half while Texas-Austin drew 63,500, about 40 percent less than now.
20,000 was quite a big deal. The first four games between the two team in the series were highly uncompetitive, a combined 160-34 score in favor of the Frogs. But in 1974, an eventual 1-10 year for UTA and first-year head coach Harold "Bud" Elliott, UTA lost by a competitive 12-3 score. The following year, the Mavs won 24-7. After a three-year absence, UTA again defeated TCU in 1979 by a score of 21-14. Any SLC team beating any Southwest Conference team was a big deal. Also of note, the 20,212 to see UTA/TCU in 1979 outdrew the TCU/SMU gate of 18,732 for that year. The Iron Skillet rivalry opened the 1979 season, with the first game usually drawing the most excitement, while the Mav/Frog affair was the third game. And UTA was still higher.
As far as on the field, a two-game win streak versus TCU was on the line going into this game in 1981.
Going back to frequency I mentioned earlier, in the event that UTA hadn't ever dropped the program, there's a real chance the two teams would have renewed the rivalry sometime between 1988 (schedules were released for '86 and '87) and 2015ish. It would have been a guarantee game for sure, but I have no doubt they would have played.
Sometime between 2015 and 2020 or so, the formula changed so drastically in the National Collegiate Athletic Association that regional non-conference games started becoming far more rare than they should. Last year, North Texas played Western Michigan, Washington State and South Alabama in non-conference. Were it not for the FCS buy game against Lamar, there would have been zero in-state games on their slate. This year, they have Indiana, UNLV, Texas State and Houston Christian. Only TXST salvaged an in-state game against another FBS team. The last time they played SMU was in 2022. The last time versus TCU was in 2002. There was a time most of the non-conference were Texas or a neighboring state.
SMU's non-conference schedule this year sees UC-Davis as their FCS buy game, Missouri State as their FBS buy game and Notre Dame as their final non-con opponent. I may look it up later, but there's a real chance this is the first year SMU will play no Texas teams at all. They, understandably, wanted to get into a Power 4 conference. They leveraged geographic rivalry to do so. Conference games in California and Virginia hardly move the needle here. They at least hosted Florida State this year though.
As for TCU, their non-con slate is a neutral site game versus North Carolina and two buy games hosted in Fort Worth versus Grambling State and Arkansas State. It is fairly common for them to avoid Texas teams. At least the Big 12 has three other Texas teams.
There was a long stretch where TCU played SMU every year. You would think SMU's elevation to the P4 would keep the rivalry going, as there's no worry about losing to a Group of 6 team. But citing "scheduling and strategic considerations," TCU declined to renew the series and there's absolutely nothing on the horizon. Somehow games against Grambling, Alcorn State, Northwestern State and Southeastern Louisiana are strategically better though...
It is happening in basketball too, though I won't spend too much time on it. North Texas has declined to play UTA since the last game between the two in 2023. Seems like a no-brainer to me. It is an easy non-conference game that fans of both schools can attend. The Mean Green just released their men's schedule and there is only one Texas team on it, Texas State (seems to be a trend). Even their two non-Division I games are against non-Texas teams. One is in Oklahoma and the other has their campus in New Mexico.
Women's basketball is also trending in that direction, but nowhere near the level in football and men's basketball.
I honestly can't see how the NCAA looks at this situation and says everything is fine. I know they are making more and more everyday monetarily, but the lifeblood of the sport is being squeezed out. In basketball, we all root for the underdog in March (unless it is against our team of course). In the short few years of a tournament at the FBS level, it seems similar.
The way things are going, it looks like there could be an NCAA equivalent consisting of only 50 or so schools. That ceases to attract many fans that came to love sports at the NCAA level as it becomes a minor league, but expensive, professional sports organization, and less of an amateur sport affiliation, which is what it was founded on. I know there have been complaints about the lack of true amateur status for decades now, but until recently, there were strict rules in place regarding compensation and transfer ability.
The idea of your student body versus our student body is long gone, but at least when it was our recruited athletes versus yours, it was about school pride and bragging rights. Many times, an athlete chose a school and then played another school that also recruited said athlete, adding another dynamic. I remember as a student when the student section would gently remind the athlete they made the wrong choice when the Mavs were on top.
Those days are gone.
But at least on this day in 1981, two Division I schools in Tarrant County played each other as TCU hosted UTA for the last time.
Taken from the Fort Worth Star Telegram, September 20, 1981.
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