Rice and SMU were in that conference with them. It was a "major conference" of a forgotten time.
As you imply by the "thing in the past" part, the campus life improvements are still quite new. It takes a while to create a real marketable fanbase. Don't know exact dates but a lot of their new on campus housing has only been around for a year or two. <=20 year olds aren't going to turn into a marketable fanbase for quite a long while, even given perfect conditions as far as win/loss record.
Also, don't fall for their talk about being a tier 1 research school. It's a mirage, they got tier 1 by the organization that evaluates solely on research dollars, not by the organization that every other school in the country actually cares about that evaluates on a bunch of other metrics.
Well yeah. But SWC wasn't a slouch for their time.
For the rest, their housing is mostly newer, yeah. But you have to start somewhere. I'm not saying they have the traditions of A&M or UT, but it's not like they're anywhere near the status of a community college like they might have been 20 years ago.
And yeah I know the tier one thing is mostly marketing. UCF is in the same research status by Carnegie but few would know it. I do commend them for making it a point. There aren't a lot of schools in that very high research status. 15% or so? Idk I'm drunk.
I feel there is a lot of support, they have a big endowment, and they have the benefit of being in a massive city. Their current president seems to have them on the right path much like UCF's came in 20 years ago to work on putting us on the map.