What has 14 years of membership in the Big 12 athletic conference brought Baylor and Waco?

Some would say it’s the thrill of having elite college sports in Waco’s own backyard. Or the valuable publicity of a national women’s basketball championship. Some would contend that it brings an economic windfall to the community on game days, though how much is unclear.

What is clear, as the Big 12 breakup scare showed this summer, is that the conference represents the company Baylor and Waco want to keep.

Employee Luke Brown (left) hands a order to customer Melissa Gonzales at Vitek’s BBQ in Waco. The crowd on Baylor football game days at the restaurant is “phenomenal."
Duane A. Laverty/Waco Tribune-Herald

The city’s fortunes have risen with Baylor’s and will continue to do so, Waco Industrial Foundation chairman Bill Clifton said.

“Smart communities attract smart people,” he said. “The more prestigious Baylor is on the intellectual side, the more opportunities it will have for intellectual growth and businesses capitalize on that growth. We might have the opportunity to attract industries we couldn’t even contemplate today.”

As Baylor has ramped up its athletic department, it has also aimed higher in academics, working to reposition itself as a national-level research university. The university is now hoping to cement that reputation with a research park at the old General Tire plant, called the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative.

Clifton said the BRIC project could transform the local economy, and he thinks the Big 12 alignment is an indirect motivator.

“I don’t think Baylor would be doing all this without peer pressure from being in the Big 12,” he said.

Larry Lyon, a Baylor sociologist and the graduate school dean, said the Big 12 membership wasn’t the driving force of the “Baylor 2012” vision that put Baylor on the research university path.

But he said the conference has created academic and administrative networks with other Big 12 schools and has given Baylor nationwide prestige.

“I can’t measure that,” he said. “But I have a gut feeling that it helps. It’s one of the ways we differentiate ourselves.”

Around Baylor and Waco, some people refer to the threatened Big 12 break-up during the summer as a “near-death experience.” The area’s leaders and legislators vowed to do everything in their power to stop it, saying it would harm Waco’s economy and prominence.

The Pac-10 was trying to recruit the other Texas Big 12 schools — University of Texas, Texas Tech and Texas A&M — without extending an invitation to Baylor. If those Texas schools had not committed to stay in the Big 12 and thereby keep it alive, Baylor would have had to seek membership in a less elite Division 1 conference. One possibility would have been the Mountain West, which includes Texas Christian University.

Even if that had happened, Waco City Manager Larry Groth said, the result would have been less than apocalyptic.

“No, Baylor would still be a great university with a great reputation,” he said. “They could have found a place somewhere. But when you’re building, you don’t need a failure.”

Lyon agreed that Baylor would not slide into decline if it had to compete in a lower-profile conference.

“Baylor would be negatively affected, primarily in athletics but also academically,” he said. “But I think the university would still be fine.”

Lyon pointed to the experience of three Southwest Conference schools — Rice, Southern Methodist University and TCU — that didn’t make the cut for the Big 12 in the mid-1990s. They are still strong schools today, he said.

But unlike those universities, Baylor is not in a major city. In that sense, Waco needs the national prominence that an elite-conference school can bring more than Dallas, Houston or Fort Worth do.

“You have to be sure businesses get you on their radar,” Lyon said. “We know Dallas is a player, we know Houston is a player. Is Waco a player or not?”

Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce president Jim Vaughan said Baylor’s membership in the Big 12 is an economic development tool.

“I like it when people on the national scene talk about Texas, Missouri and Kansas because they also mention Baylor and Waco. I think people who read the business page also read the sports page,” Vaughan said.

“You never know what got a prospect to look at Waco. Maybe they’ve seen an article or have done some Internet research and found out what they needed. Maybe they were watching a football game, heard Baylor mentioned and put Baylor and Waco together. When I came here (in 2004), I knew Waco was home to a major university.”

Baylor sports certainly have a more direct effect on the Waco economy, but the degree is a matter of debate.

This summer, Waco-based economist Ray Perryman estimated that separating Baylor from the other Texas Big 12 teams would have cost the state $714 million in economic activity, including $200 million in Waco.

Based on economic impact models, he estimated 6,000 jobs lost for Texas, 1,200 for Waco.

But research about the four Texas Big 12 schools by two sports economists suggests the dollar value of sporting events to a community is overrated. In fact, the research showed, some cities lose sales tax revenues when they host college football games.

Dennis Coates of the University of Maryland and Craig Depken of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte examined monthly sales tax data collected between 1984 and early 2008 for Austin, Waco, College Station and Lubbock.

Coates and Depken found that when the Texas rivals played each other, the host city sometimes lost sales tax revenue and sometimes gained it, but the amounts were small either way. Coates said home football games may actually hamper local spending because residents stay home or leave town rather than fight the crowds.

“What the results suggest is that by and large a football game itself doesn’t add that much more than a typical weekend would do,” Coates said in an interview. “In some places, the effect is harmful, but it’s not a huge difference. That’s something that the typical boosters and consultants don’t talk about when they’re talking about football games.”

He said the breakup of the Texas Four probably wouldn’t have had a major economic effect on Waco, especially if Baylor continued to play Division I sports.

Perryman said monthly sales tax reports don’t provide enough information to be conclusive about the effects of the games on local economies.

“One need only observe the traffic at restaurants and hotels in Waco on game days to see that there are notable effects,” he said. “I should also mention that being in a prestigious conference with national exposure has other benefits as well, in terms of recognition and recruitment.”

Julie Vitek-Keith, owner of Vitek’s barbecue restaurant, 1600 Speight Ave., said high-interest home games keep her cash register ringing. 

“Our game day crowds are phenomenal,” she said. “Football season is the peak of the year, especially homecoming. The first game this year was bigger than we expected. It was great to see that kind of participation.”

The restaurant offers park-and-ride service to the games and is completing an expansion that will accommodate more game-day visitors, as well as regular lunch customers.

Waco Convention and Visitors Bureau director Liz Taylor said home football games, and basketball games to a lesser extent, help fill hotels and motels here.

“If they can put 40,000 or more through the gates on a football weekend, hotel rooms will fill,” she said.

Last year’s occupancy tax receipts from Waco hotels and motels showed healthy but not outstanding revenue during football season. Monthly receipts during football season averaged $1.97 million, about the same as the rest of the year.

But Roger Copas, general manager of the Waco Hilton, said football and other Baylor sports are an important part of business, and the Big 12 designation has helped the hotel.

“I think it’s critical,” he said. “In recognition alone, it’s a tremendous boost for us and the local economy.”

Lyon, the sociologist, said Baylor and Waco are in the same boat when it comes to proving to the world that they are elite conference material.

“We know how desperately Waco is trying to reimagine itself,” he said. “We don’t need any setbacks. Baylor is trying to move up to the national stage and we don’t need a setback either. Waco and Baylor can’t be satisfied with where they are.”

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