LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - Texas Tech Athletics is enjoying plenty of Big 12 success in recent years, but it wasn't always associated with the conference.

The Southwest Conference was founded in 1914 and the Red Raiders got in on the action in 1956.

Tech won 11 conference championships in various sports until it dissolved in 1996. Southwest collection archivist Robert Weaver says that history could've gone away forever shortly after."At the end of the Southwest Conference's existence, the conference was just going to destroy those records," Weaver said, "and so the whole conference would've just disappeared."That's where the Southwest Conference archive comes in.