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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby Charleston Pony » Fri Dec 29, 2017 8:14 am

mustangxc wrote:While Sonny Dykes was not my first choice, I have full confidence in his ability to achieve the same level of success we experienced under June Jones and Chad Morris. I even think he can lead us to 8-9 wins. However, SMU's biggest issue in raising the level of the program to greater heights is attendance. The biggest issue with attendance is our generalized snobby/elitist attitude as perceived by the general public. What can we do to change that? COMMUNITY SERVICE!!! SMU is used to throwing money at its problems, but this is one that requires our full engagement. We need to attract students that are big on community service and engage our alumni to help build equity in the Dallas community. We may even need to pay some of our employees to do outreach in the community. USC was in the lower echelon of the top 50 US News rankings in the late 90s and in 1999 Time Magazine named it the college of the year 2000 due to its amazing efforts in community service in the area surrounding the university which is anything but affluent. As soon as that happened applications spiked and they went from a 50% acceptance rate in 1999 to a 25% acceptance rate the following year. These statistics were quoted to me at an acceptance party hosted in Houston in March of 2000. It will not happen overnight, but if our university makes a big effort to help the Dallas community I am sure we will be able to fill our 32,000 seat stadium for 6 home games each season no matter who the opponent is. Right now Dallas sees us as "them" and we need to change that perception to one of "us".


Agree; good post
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby ponyinNC » Fri Dec 29, 2017 8:53 am

Does anyone care to list our "sister" institutions within the AAC, and opine whether we are better/equal/worse in the pecking order? SMU, Tulsa, Tulane have basically the same profile. Does anyone really think these schools are targets for expansion? No.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby StallionsModelT » Fri Dec 29, 2017 9:11 am

ponyinNC wrote:Does anyone care to list our "sister" institutions within the AAC, and opine whether we are better/equal/worse in the pecking order? SMU, Tulsa, Tulane have basically the same profile. Does anyone really think these schools are targets for expansion? No.


We saw what the P5 thought of the schools in the AAC in the last round of potential realignment. You had UH, in one of the largest markets in the country fresh off a NYE bowl victory over FSU and a non-conference win over Oklahoma, basically get the Heisman and a giant "thanks but no thanks". Oh yeah they also have a brand new shiny stadium and average over 35K for home games. The reality is that there is a lot of stench on all of the AAC schools and barring a complete collapse of a major conference (possible but far not likely) the schools we have now are going to be our conference mates for a very, very long time. This is good for SMU as it will allow the conference to develop an identity, create rivalries, and build its brand nationally.

What I hope eventually takes form is for the AAC to poach the MWC and almost assuredly kill off any real competition for the NYE bowl from the other G5 programs. You could have AAC football from 10AM-1AM CST with some pretty intriguing matchups. You could also mitigate travel costs by establishing a pod system.

West
1) San Diego State
2) Boise State
3) Colorado State
4) Fresno State
Central
1) SMU
2) Houston
3) Tulsa
4) Memphis
South
1) Tulane
2) South Florida
3) Central Florida
4) East Carolina
North
1) UCONN
2) Temple
3) Cincinnati
4) Navy
Back off Warchild seriously.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby DanFreibergerForHeisman » Fri Dec 29, 2017 9:56 am

StallionsModelT wrote:You could have AAC football from 10AM-1AM CST with some pretty intriguing matchups. You could also mitigate travel costs by establishing a pod system.

WAC 96 was ahead of its time
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby Puckhead48E » Fri Dec 29, 2017 11:25 am

Holy [deleted]... This crap fest devolved into a realignment thread. And to think I didn't believe it could get any worse.


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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby Bergermeister » Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:12 pm

It got worser. :shock:
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby Mustangs_Maroons » Fri Dec 29, 2017 2:14 pm

Turner is 72 and started at SMU the year before I did as an undergrad. It's remarkable to me that he is still university President given where we are on the academic front.

Turner should have have retired already. He receives a top 3 salary among all university presidents and we have a top 60/65 university ranking. In sports, we haven't gotten our act together to be in a P5 conference.

No University president should serve more than 10 years. We need new perspectives and thinking to make us a top 30 university...on the academic side primarily but also in sports.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby ponypatrick » Fri Dec 29, 2017 2:52 pm

Mexmustang wrote:Guys, its great everyone has an opinion about RGT's performance. That is what the board if for.

But, consider this, TCU's endowment was lower than SMU's. During RGT's term, TCU has had three Presidents. Their endowment is now larger, or about the same, It is that close. Consistency is obviously not a factor.

TCU is now the local college of choice at HPHS. Doesn't seem important, but a great deal of our significant alumni went to HPHS. Worse, it is our hometown HS, the school of Doak Walker. If SMU is now second tier we need to know why. This came from their College Placement Counselor two years ago. You might say well that is to be expected, so close to home etc., but formerly it wasn't the case.

I realize it is difficult to compare, but TCU's rankings have rapidly moved up, while we have been static in ratings. We are still ahead, but given we are 30-35% more expensive than TCU, we are vulnerable. How can they be so more efficient? We know we reached our borrowing limits and were downgraded by the rating agencies, but why? Why is RGT reported to be the fifth or so highest paid college executive; when the school ranks in the mid-50's amongst universities and over 100 when all colleges and universities are ranked together. Why did the board re elect a man for another 5 years that will be almost 80 when his current contract matures?

It is simply bad business, to have any CEO for over 12 years. Ours will exceed 30! Even if they do a great job. New blood is simply necessary to keep ideas fresh and quite frankly weed out those executives that are simply there because of their relationship with the CEO or decisions are pre-empted by the status quo. Every great Dallas public company changes CEO's to keep fresh blood and young executives moving upward. Great CEO's such as Eric Johnson self-retire for the good the company. I notice we have no board members now from one of Dallas' great public companies. (For those of you who don't recall Mr. Johnson, he was one of the founders of TI, retired at his request, became mayor of Dallas, set the annual planning structure referred to as " the Goals for Dallas", personally conceived of DFW Airport was the first head of the airport board, united minorities and Fort Worth and Dallas behind his vision). Where is Halliburton, TI, American Airlines? We used to have the majority of our board members from these great local companies. They knew about governance, they knew about succession planning. We don't.

Any of you in business, having worked or working in a large organization know this to be true.

But, in a non-profit having the sole board member and CEO as the organizations only paid professional on the board is just dangerous. The board only hears what the CEO wants it to hear. In SMU's case the board has practically all been selected by the President. The by-laws of the university were changed during the Pye years, such that the President doesn't report to the board, but the board reports to the President. I asked two of my former board members why hadn't they amended the by-laws and their response is it takes a 2/3rds vote to change the by-laws and we can't even bring it to a vote.

We quite frankly don't have an effective governing board. First, we now have a board of over 40 people. This isn't a board its a private social club! Second, RGT because of his tenor, has all but personally selected 40 of them. Third, many board members are not independent. For instance the President of the Alumni Association is on the board. Who elects that person? As alumni have you ever seen a ballot? Last time I checked Turner was on 13 boards, many of which share memberships with our (his) board members, or in the case of at least two, they are the CEO's.

The FBI was saddled with J. Edgar for far too long, Now there is a 12 year term limit. The Red Cross scandal was the result of a single entrenched professional. Even large church denominations have found it necessary to move the senior pastors after informal term limits. It is just good business.

SMU is now an organization where decisions are made simply on the basis of what upper and middle management interpret as "what would Gerald want", not sounding out new ideas or debate. I asked one of our recently departed coaches about SMU, their honest answer was simply, "No one on this campus can even fart without Gerald Turner's permission.

I don't care about defending Gerald's record, good or bad, form your own opinion about that, but at least learn about corpoorate governance, succession planning, efffective managment of non-profit organizations, study how successful businesses transition leadership, then you just might get what I'm trying to say.

I've been a member of four public companies, three on the NYSE, been COO of one, CFO of another, been on the Pye Board, know many of our board members, and I've told each one them how vulnerable they are as board members for failing to do their duties as independent board members. I don't suspect any financial fraud, but I do feel the numbers have been manipulated and key information kept from this board because they simply don't take the responsibility to ask!





Very well written summary of Turner's power. Regardless of his job performance , it is well past time for RGT
to go. The power structure also needs to be tweaked , especially the unwieldy size of the BOT.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby SoCal_Pony » Fri Dec 29, 2017 4:04 pm

One of my mentors was a CFO of a Dallas-based NASDAQ company (where I first met him), who later became one of a NASDAQ company here in California (where I reported to him) then later became President of a NASDAQ company. Made enough $$$ along the way to retire early in life a very wealthy man.

His post-retirement passion was writing about the inefficiencies of Boards. I've seen him on TV discussing it. Much of what Mex says parrots what my old boss is saying, so in this regard, I think Mex knows what he's talking about.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby ponypatrick » Fri Dec 29, 2017 5:37 pm

StallionsModelT wrote:
Stallion wrote:Do you feel better now that you've excused the failure of our alumni, family and friends to bother to show up--because that's all it is an excuse

Excuses aren't going to mean a damn when the next conference realignment occurs. There is no SMU Exception for small, private schools or schools whose fans don't show up and support the program because its been tooouugghhh. We are very probably the Centre College or Chicago U. of the future if we don't understand that our College Football future window might be closing. You guys want some validations for your fewlings and I'm trying to say WAKE UP--we are about to get left behind again. See Rice. We will be judged against our AAC competitors (UCF, UH, USF, Cincinnati, Memphis, UCONN, BYU, Boise, Colorado St. and SDSU and we don't measure up. College Football is 75% recruiting-75% of games are basically decided on signing date, No recruit ever gave a damn about a university president but they damn sure want to play in front of a great college atmosphere. "We" meaning the fanbase are a much bigger problem in building the football program than the President of the University

BOTTOM LINE: Stop [deleted] about your feelings about SMU's distant past and start focusing on the specific factors and deficiencies than need to be addressed to move past our competitors in the next expansion. Turner has checked off most of the Facility upgrades. Our fanbase hasn't even put a dent in our attendance problem even when we are bowl eligible.

Now back to your regularly scheduled parade of excuse-makers for why a competitive AAC football team has 8,000 real fans


You do realize that none of the current AAC schools have a snowball's chance in any kind of realignment right? TV money will be dwindling for all but the SEC. We are well positioned in the AAC and should be thankful for it. None of our conference mates are going to be called up to the big time. Deep down you know this but far be it from me from stopping you taking every opportunity to verbally defecate on SMU fans.




SMT..........you are 100% correct. Our one and ONLY chance was to be the TCU of 2011 and receive
the phone call instead of them from the B12. Any expectations of P5 membership at this point is a
pipe dream ! I feel that we are very fortunate to be in a strong , up and coming conference.
one am grateful for our membership in the AAC.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby Charleston Pony » Fri Dec 29, 2017 5:42 pm

ponyinNC wrote:Does anyone care to list our "sister" institutions within the AAC, and opine whether we are better/equal/worse in the pecking order? SMU, Tulsa, Tulane have basically the same profile. Does anyone really think these schools are targets for expansion? No.


Bingo...and if the AAC doesn't hold together and we someday lose the larger public schools to the next realignment, we are going to be fused at the hip with Tulsa and Tulane and most likely will be competing in the same conference as UNT, La Tech. Arky State and similar programs
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby 78pony » Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:09 pm

Stallion wrote:Because he's attacking a straw-man in Turner who he blames on multiple SMU boards for every single problem that has ever existed in SMU athletics. Turner really isn't responsible for the W-L record of either the Bowl bound Football team or the NCAA Tournament Basketball team. Turner deserves plenty of blame for taking too long to clear academic barriers that remained until 2008 admittedly but that required changing school administrative regulations, appointing new faculty and leadership and building a brand new College of Education at substantial expenses to the university. He did successfully destroy the last remaining remnants of a long list of academic restraints in the SMU Academic Model which made it impossible for SMU to compete with its natural and traditional rivals.

Turner is responsible for 3 straight great hires in Larry Brown, Chad Morris and Jankovich and now one that quite frankly is rather yawn inducing. I think its fair to say many thought he pulled a coup in signing June Jones-although I personally think they were looking at all the wrong criteria for a successful coach at a private school in Dallas. June Jones is responsible for being a lazy, incompetent recruiter which literally set this program back for half a decade. Now at least SMU seems to be more properly focused on the proper traits that are required to be a successful program in Dallas, Texas.

Turner is responsible for fund raising for school and athletic improvements. Despite the [deleted] he has been quite successful in raising oh I dunno lets throw out $275,000,000 (unadjusted for annual inflation-so much much more in 2017 dollars) for athletic facility improvements since 2000-which is 1/4 of our school endowment. Athletic improvements 1954-2000 essentially nothing worthwhile or worth mentioning.

Turner isn't responsible when only 8,000 fans want to attend our games, he's not responsible for the fact it took 3 years rather than a few months to obtain funding for the IPF. The real problem since 2008 has not been Turner--its been SMU's alumni, family and friends don't care too damn terribly much about College Football. SMU fans are tying our Coaches' hands behind their back in recruiting by their apathetic support of the football team on game day which chases off more top football prospects than you can imagine. The Pony Express never would have existed without Mustang Mania which filled the stands prior to the date they signed their Letters of Intent.


Tucker, Ferrari and Boschini at tcu have known turner as their counterpart at smu and to a degree, each of the three at tcu figured out how to move past the 8,000. Says a lot about these men, and conversely, a lot about turner.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby SMU_Alum11 » Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:25 pm

Puckhead48E wrote:Holy [deleted]... This crap fest devolved into a realignment thread. And to think I didn't believe it could get any worse.


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:lol:
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby Julian Grendel » Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:28 pm

It's ponyfans. As a multi year interested observer, I'm confident it can.
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Re: RGTurner & MexMustang

Postby Charleston Pony » Fri Dec 29, 2017 9:16 pm

attendance, realignment & uniforms can always find a way into any discussion
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