When I was trying to think of something I could blog about, I considered things that I would personally like to know the answer to. One thing that has been on my mind is our football program. I think being raised around LSU football is what has made me fall in love with the game. Last year I devoted a ton of time to (and won) a fantasy football league, and had an absolute blast. This New Years I paid an outrageous price for sugar bowl tickets so that I could watch Hawaii and Georgia play in the Superdome. I love everything about football. It is so exciting to watch, especially if you're at the game. But SMU football, now that's a different story. So I decided to use blogging as an excuse for find out more about our program, and hopefully will get some information from other people too.
What exactly is this death penalty that everyone keeps bringing up? How long will it take the program to get back to it’s full potential? If we had a better football team, would support be better?
After googling to find out more than what my dad had told me about what happened in 1987, I read a pretty good article.If you want to read more about what happened to cause SMU to get the death penalty. In the article it states that the purpose of shutting down the program was to "eliminate a program that was built on a legacy of wrongdoing, deceit and rule violations." Fair enough, but why is the program still not back on it’s feet? I don’t mean to be such a downer, but no one thinks it’s any fun to watch a losing team. All I can hope is that June Jones turns the program around and by the time we graduate we all have a team to be proud of.
5 comments:
The title of your article really grabbed my attention. I definitely can agree that watching the SMU football games have not been that much fun. I am hoping June Jones can help turn around our team because then the games will be more enjoyable if we are actually winning.
The article you posted was very interesting and I had no idea that their was a "death penalty" against our college football team in 1987. It is shocking that the SMU football team was barred from playing. I was surprised when they stated "SMU now has been penalized seven times, the most in NCAA history, since 1958." This statistic was very unbelievable because I had no idea that their had been so many infractions against the team. From the article it sounds like there was a lot of under the table pay offs. For instance, they talked about a football player, David Stanley, being paid $750 per month by the recruiting coordinator. Also, athletes were receiving apartments without having to pay rent. It is definitely a shocker that this happened and I think Paris did a great job! The article was very interesting and I have become more knowledgeable about the 1987 issue.
Good topic and thanks for the link. A little trip down memory lane. Since I started teaching here in 1980, I saw the whole thing, winning times, death penalty, and the long climb back. SMU "Boosters" provided the players with cars, fake jobs that they didn't have to show up for, apartments, and God only knows what else.
The football players were very big in those days, a lot bigger than SMU players today. I had Jerry Ball in one of my classes. I think he went on to play for Detroit. Boy was he big. And here's another part of the problem: SMU recruited players who were unlikely to graduate. They just played out their eligibility and left. I actually saw coaches walking players to Dallas Hall to make sure they attended class. I saw coaches up at this end of campus, hanging around professors' offices.
Then it all fell apart and there was no football for two years. When it came back, SMU had heavy restrictions on recruiting only the academically qualified. In fact, the NCAA required that SMU football players had to have higher SAT and ACT scores than the average for admission here. That hurt our ability to recruit some of the top high school athletes, and even though, as I say, that requirement is no longer in effect, its damage to the SMU record lives on. I don't want to see SMU ever go back to recruiting guys that can't do the work, academically. That's exploiting people, what we were doing. Do you think other schools are still exploiting athletes in order to get a winning team?
Oh my gosh I can't believe this was happening. SMU has such high standards now but I guess it took lessons like this to make it so today. It surprises me more because the campus is so conservative. I'm shocked it went unnoticed for so long or if it was noticed that nobody did anything about it. It's like the World Trade Center bombing eventually getting our economy to what it is today. Years later we're still feeling the ramifications. Even though the World Trade Centers were from an outside source which again could have been stopped years earlier under the Clinton administration before anything happened, I think it's much the same. If bribes weren't being handed out and polluting the system the school wouldn't have gotten caught red-handed. But I agree, why hasn't the program recovered after so long?
I think a winning football team is a key aspect of a successful university especially in Texas. The winning football team creates pride for a university. Having students and alumni that are proud of their university will lead to a great variety of benefits for that institution. Proud students will take better care of their campus, they will create a more spirited atmosphere, they will work harder so they can too be a part of their university’s pride, and the students will create less mischief and in turn report crime to defend their university. Proud alumni will be more willing to organize university events and to donate more. That in turn will lead to the university having more money to expand, attract better students and athletes, and perpetuate the cycle of a great football team leading to a greater university.
Tell me if I am wrong, but I think our football team shows signs of brilliance at times. I mean, our defense is terrible but this is in no way June's team yet. In the Houston game, our offense looked like they had a plan, and that is a good thing to see in a football team. I think people have given up on him too early, and we will be a good team soon.
Prediction: SMU will be ranked before 2012.
You heard it here first. Go Stangs.
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