What year did you graduate? I went to grad school through the SFS program and graduated in 04. I remember hearing mudge talk and I thought it had been around for a little while before I graduated.
I graduated in 2008. I feel like SFS really caught its stride in the second half of the 2000s. I remember when NSA started making different levels to the CAE certification (Education -> Research -> Operations), and that created a rush to build out lots of new coursework and pulled many new universities into the bottom tier, and SFS along with it. I don't have data to show, but I feel like both SFS and universities with CAE were more rare or exclusive earlier than that.