Get to Know the (Former) FCS: Missouri Valley Conference (1907-1985)
Missouri Valley Conference a.k.a MVC, The Valley
Years in Existence: 1907-1985; 1982-1985 as a I-AA conference (1907-current as a conference at all)
Former Headquarters: St. Louis, Missouri
Former Commissioner(s): C. E. McClung (1907–unsure), Arthur (Artie) E. Eilers (1925–1957), Norvell Neve (1957–1969), DeWitt T. Weaver (1969–1972), Mickey Holmes (1972–1979), David Price (1979–1981), Richard D. Martin (1981–1985)
History
The Missouri Valley Conference is the second-oldest functioning collegiate athletic conference in the United States (12 years younger than the Big Ten), and sponsored football through 1985. But, and this probably needs to be in bold the Missouri Valley Conference that had I-AA football through 1985 is not the same as the current FCS conference named the Missouri Valley Football Conference. The MVC and MVFC may share the same offices and most of the same staff, but the MVFC logo has a football in it, so you can tell they’re different. Get it? THEY’RE TOTALLY DIFFERENT. WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?!?
Ok, let’s take a step back. What we now know as the Missouri Valley Conference was originally chartered in 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association, or MVIAA. Its founding members were the University of Iowa, University of Kansas, University of Missouri, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Nebraska, and both Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) and Drake University (although the latter two wouldn’t start playing football in the conference until 1908.
Iowa would leave the year after the first year, but in the next two decades the MVIAA would grow through the addition of Kansas State College (now Kansas State University), Grinnel College, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University–Stillwater).
In 1928, the MVIAA split and most of the larger schools formed a conference that retained the MVIAA name (although they'd ultimately change the conference name to the Big Eight Conference). Meanwhile, Drake, Oklahoma A&M, Grinnel, and WashU would remain together, renaming themselves the Missouri Valley Conference (alternatively the MVC or The Valley) and adding Creighton to the mix. They also retained the old MVIAA's administrative staff, which lead to disagreement during the Big Eight's existence, as both conferences claimed 1907 as their founding date. But the MVC still exists, so I guess they won that fight through attrition.
I don’t think it is worth walking through the next fifty or so years, and 15 or so teams who would come and go, before the conference becomes relevant to this subdivision. Check out the timeline below if interested to see who left and joined; I’ve done it before with some of the existing conferences with large backgrounds and honestly it just feels tedious.
However, there is one incident within the MVC’s history worth calling out, because it was of substantial consequence to not only the conference and college football, but also hold a place in the history of civil rights in the US: the Johnny Bright incident.
Johnny Bright Incident
In 1951, Johnny Bright was a pre-season Heisman candidate, playing halfback/quarterback for the Drake Bulldogs. Coming into a game in Stillwater against Oklahoma A&M, Drake was sitting 5-0 and Johnny was leading the nation in total offense. He also happened to be black, and this would be the first time an African-American athlete with a national profile and of critical importance to the success of his team would be playing at Lewis Field.
Oklahoma A&M players and the student body weren’t exactly shy about their feelings (though integrated a few years before, the campus was still awash with the spirit of Jim Crow). The student newspaper went as far as to report that Bright was a marked man, and several A&M students were openly claiming that Bright "would not be around at the end of the game." The rumors and talk grew loud enough that it became impossible to ignore, and media, including the Des Moines Register, would send reporters and photographers to document the game and how Bright was targeted.
During the game, Johnny Bright was knocked unconscious three times in the first seven minutes of play by a particular Oklahoma A&M defensive tackle. The final blow by said tackle, a blatant elbow to Bright’s face well after he’d handed the ball off and was out of action, would break Johnny’s jaw and force him to leave the game a few plays later. This final assault was captured in a series of photographs by Des Moines Register photographers John Robinson and Don Ultang, in a series that would win them the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1952 and draw intense national scrutiny of the incident.
Oklahoma A&M President Oliver Willham denied anything happened even after evidence of the incident was published nationwide. This attempt at a cover-up would last over 50 years, with Oklahoma A&M/Oklahoma State only responding "no comment" when the story was discussed. It wasn’t until 2005 that Oklahoma State University President David J. Schmidly wrote a letter to Drake President David Maxwell formally apologizing for the incident. The apology came 22 years after Bright's death.
When it became apparent that neither Oklahoma A&M nor the Missouri Valley Conference would take any disciplinary action, Drake withdrew from the MVC in protest. The Bulldogs would not return to the MVC until 1956 for non-football sports, and would not return for football until 1971. Fellow member Bradley University pulled out of the league in solidarity with Drake and did not return for non-football sports until 1955; its football team never played another down in the MVC (Bradley dropped football in 1970).
Oh, and in case you wanted to know how much of a bad-ass Johnny Bright was, he went on to throw a 61 yard TD pass a couple of plays after getting his jaw broken that day. The broken jaw limited his effectiveness for the remainder of his senior season, and he would finish fifth in the final Heisman vote despite his phenomenal start. But even with the broken jaw, and having to miss the better part of the last three games of the season, he still earned 70 percent of the yards Drake gained and scored 70 percent of the Bulldogs' points in 1951.
After college he would go on to have a great career in the Canadian Football League, playing for 12 season and being inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1980 when reflecting on the incident, he stated, "What I like about the whole deal now, and what I'm smug enough to say, is that getting a broken jaw has somehow made college athletics better. It made the NCAA take a hard look and clean up some things that were bad." Bad-ass indeed.
Division I-AA History
By the start of the 1980’s, Missouri Valley Conference football had undergone significant membership change. Heading into the 1980 season, the conference would be made up of Drake (returning to football play in the MVC in 1971 after having exited in protest of the Johnny Bright Incident), Tulsa, Wichita State, New Mexico State, West Texas State (now known as West Texas A&M), Southern Illinois, Indiana State, and Illinois State. The conference had remained a Division I-A league after the subdivision split in 1978, however most of the newer MVC teams were finding it difficult to remain competitive with the greater funded programs in the subdivision.
Then came a move by the NCAA in 1982–not explicitly but clearly with the Ivy League in mind–setting new regulations for I-A membership that forced the reclassification of multiple programs. Under the rules, any team that failed to meet three criteria for Division l-A membership:
- Sponsor at least eight varsity sports, including football
- Play at least 60 percent of their games against Division l-A members
- Have averaged more than 17,000 paid attendance at home games for the past four years, or play in a stadium that contains at least 30,000 seats and have averaged 17,000 paid home attendance for at least one of the past four years
was forced to reclassify to the I-AA subdivision. This rule compelled five members of the MVC (Drake, West Texas State, Southern Illinois, Indiana State, and Illinois State) to drop down to I-AA football starting in 1982. New Mexico State, Tulsa, and Wichita State would remain in the I-A subdivision, and the conference would play as hybrid across both for the next four years.
Although the forced reclassification was the start of the end for the MVC as a football conference, it was not without some benefits. In 1983, Southern Illinois would put together one of their best seasons ever, going 10-1 on the regular season and then having an opportunity for post-season play. Just their second season in the subdivision, they ended up dominating the playoffs, winning the national championship with a 43-7 trouncing of Western Carolina in the championship game.
1983 would also be the last season that New Mexico State would play in the MVC, having announced the previous year their intention to move to the Pacific Coast Athletic Association (which would later be renamed the Big West Conference). The MVC would operate as a seven team conference for the next two years, with just Tulsa and Wichita State playing in the I-A subdivision.
In May 1985, after rumors that Tulsa intended to leave the league to play as an independent, the Missouri Valley Conference announced that they'd be suspending football sponsorship after the 1985 season. Thus came the end for one of the oldest football conferences in the country.
In August of the same year, two of the remaining I-AA members from the MVC (Illinois State and Southern Illinois) announced they had joined Eastern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Southwest Missouri State (who would change their name to Missouri State in 2005), and Western Illinois from the former Association of Mid-Continent Universities (AMCU) to became a football conference under the banner of the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference; until that point, the Gateway had been a women’s sports conference founded by MVC member schools.
Since most of the schools in this new conference had already been on each other's schedules, the conference was able to initiate full conference schedules in 1985. So even though Illinois State and Southern Illinois would also play out the final MVC season, they concurrently would play for the Gateway in its inaugural 1985 season. Following the end of the 1985 MVC season, Indiana State would also join the Gateway, bringing its membership total to 7 teams.
The Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference would see two names changes in its history. The first was in 1992, when the Gateway would merge with the (now non-football) MVC. The conference retained the Gateway football charter rather than collapsing it and restarting the MVC charter, and would change its name slightly, to the Gateway Football Conference, to avoid confusion about whether it was now the MVC again.
This thought process would last until 2008, when the football conference would again change its name, this time to the Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC), in order to better align themselves with the MVC since most members of the football conference were also members of The Valley. But despite this name change, that the (now) MVFC's inaugural season is the same as the MVC's final season explains why the MVFC is considered a separate conference that does not hold the MVC's lineage.
In the end, just four of the five Division I-AA MVC teams still play in the FCS today. West Texas State (which now is named West Texas A&M) dropped down to Division II and the Lone Star Conference after the collapse of the MVC. Meanwhile Butler (who left the conference in 1933) and Drake–which stopped offering scholarships starting the 1986 season– would go on to help charter the Pioneer Football League in 1991, and Illinois State, Indiana State, and Southern Illinois remain in the MVFC since they joined in 1985/86.
Membership
The MVC had a total of 29 members during its 79 year participation in football. The conference was at seven members when it made the determination to drop football, but only five of those seven (Drake, Illinois State, Indiana State, Southern Illinois, and West Texas State) ever playing in the D I-AA subdivision.
| Former Member Schools | Location | Years of Football Membership | Mascot | Current Football Conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bradley | Peoria, Illinois | 1948-1951 | Braves | discontinued football in 1970 |
| Butler | Indianapolis, Indiana | 1932-1933 | Bulldogs | Pioneer Football League |
| Cincinnati | Cincinnati, Ohio | 1957-1969 | Bearcats | American Athletic Conference (FBS) |
| Creighton | Omaha, Nebraska | 1928-1942 | Bluejays | discontinued football in 1942 |
| Detroit Mercy (formerly University of Detroit) | Detroit, Michigan | 1949-1956 | Titans | discontinued football in 1964 |
| Drake* | Des Moines, Iowa | 1908-1951, 1971-1985 | Bulldogs | Pioneer Football League |
| Grinnell | Grinnell, Iowa | 1919-1939 | Pioneers | Midwest Conference (D-III) |
| Houston | Houston, Texas | 1951-1959 | Cougars | American Athletic Conference (FBS) |
| Illinois State Illinois State** | Normal, Illinois | 1980-1985 | Redbirds | Missouri Valley Football Conference |
| Indiana State* | Terre Haute, Indiana | 1976-1985 | Sycamores | Missouri Valley Football Conference |
| Iowa | Iowa City, Iowa | 1907-1908 | Hawkeyes | Big Ten (FBS) |
| Iowa State (formerly Iowa State College) | Ames, Iowa | 1908–1927 | Cyclones | Big 12 (FBS) |
| Kansas | Lawrence, Kansas | 1907-1927 | Jayhawks | Big 12 (FBS) |
| Kansas State (formerly Kansas State College) | Manhattan, Kansas | 1913-1927 | Wildcats | Big 12 (FBS) |
| Louisville | Louisville, Kentucky | 1963-1974 | Cardinals | Atlantic Coast Conference (FBS) |
| Memphis (formerly Memphis State University) | Memphis, Tennessee | 1968-1972 | Tigers | American Athletic Conference (FBS) |
| Missouri | Columbia, Missouri | 1907-1927 | Tigers | Southeastern Conference (FBS) |
| Nebraska | Lincoln, Nebraska | 1907-1918, 1921-1927 | Cornhuskers | Big Ten (FBS) |
| New Mexico State | Las Cruces, New Mexico | 1970-1982 | Aggies | FBS Independent |
| North Texas (formerly North Texas State University) | Denton, Texas | 1957-1974 | Mean Green | Conference USA (FBS) |
| Oklahoma | Norman, Oklahoma | 1919-1927 | Sooners | Big 12 (FBS) |
| Oklahoma State (formerly Oklahoma A&M College) | Stillwater, Oklahoma | 1925-1956 | Aggies/Cowboys (used interchangably until 1957) | Big 12 (FBS) |
| Saint Louis | St. Louis, Missouri | 1937-1949 | Billikens | discontinued football in 1949 |
| Southern Illinois** | Carbondale, Illinois | 1974-1985 | Salukis | Missouri Valley Football Conference |
| Tulsa | Tulsa, Oklahoma | 1935-1985 | Golden Hurricane | American Athletic Conference (FBS) |
| Washburn | Topeka, Kansas | 1935-1940 | Ichabods | Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (D-II) |
| WashU | St. Louis, Missouri | 1907-1942 | Bears | College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (D-III) |
| West Texas A&M (formerly West Texas State University)* | Canyon, Texas | 1972-1985 | Buffaloes | Lone Star Conference (D-II) |
| Wichita State | Wichita, Kansas | 1945-1985 | Shockers | discontinued football in 1986 |
*Played in D I-AA from 1982-1985 as a member of the MVC
**Played in D I-AA from 1982-1985 as a member of the MVC; was also a member of the Gateway Conference in 1985 for subdivision play
Conference Success and Strength
Conference Championships
FCS National Championships
The Missouri Valley Conference holds claim to one Division I-AA national championship, despite placing teams into the playoffs just twice in the four years of subdivision play:
Posted Aug 19, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC