Blackistone's article

[LA_Mustang]

I think Blackistone usually tells it like it is. SMU athletics is at a make it or break it point.


SMU men's track demise latest sign of fading athletic fortunes

11:14 AM CST on Friday, February 20, 2004

UNIVERSITY PARK – In the early '90s, SMU was trying to figure out how to stay with the big boys, Texas and Texas A&M. Then it was with the other leftovers from the ol' SWC, Rice and TCU. Recently, it was just with TCU.

But after Thursday's announcement that it was dropping men's track and field, SMU appeared as if it was just trying to figure out how to keep its membership in college athletics' elite league, Division I, instead of slipping into Division II with, for example, Abilene Christian, Dallas Baptist, Tarleton State or the hyphenated Texas A&M campuses in Commerce and Kingsville. And to think, some connected with SMU have scoffed over the years at someday aligning with North Texas. Could it be that someday it will be North Texas doing the scoffing?

Colleges
Blackistone: SMU men's track demise latest sign of fading athletic fortunes

Editorial: Out of the running (from smudailycampus.com)
After all, it seems as if everything is in retreat at SMU nowadays when it comes to sports. The football team didn't win a game last season, was considered the worst among Division I's 117 teams, and no better than South Carolina State, a Division I-AA school rated 173rd in the country. The men's basketball team appears headed to a losing season for the first time in eight years. Now the school can't afford shorts and spikes for 19 young men, several of whom came from all over the world to train under SMU's championship athletics coach, Dave Wollman. Is this The Great Disappearing Athletic Program?

The decision SMU's athletic director Jim Copeland revealed Thursday after what he said was nearly a year of study left SMU with 17 sports, or the Division I minimum. Lose one more and they can rename the Mustangs the Geldings.

Copeland said he has no intention of allowing the school to fall from Division I. He explained that with a fixed budget from the school, difficult-to-raise outside revenue and less-than-optimum ticket sales, he was left with no more viable options other than to cut one of the school's smaller sports. Continuing to reduce individual sports' budgets across the board, he said, would just about paralyze all the sports.

So it didn't matter that men's track and field was one of the programs on which the school could swell with pride, what with a 2003 WAC title, a national discus champion and several All-America candidates. It didn't matter that this was the program that produced Olympic silver medalist Michael Carter.

Men's track and field erased two problems with one strike of the delete key: It saved money and brought the athletic department closer in line with Title IX, the federal law demanding equal opportunity for men and women in sports.

But don't blame Title IX for killing one of SMU's men's sports. Money, or less than enough of it, killed it.

Some said the Mustang Club, which raises money for SMU athletics, didn't reach its goal. But Copeland complimented the group for scrapping together $1.5 million during its last campaign, which was more than three times as much as it was pulling in when he took over on the Hilltop in '95.

"What is frustrating to me is the number of alumni we have in the Metroplex and how many we have turn out at Ford Stadium," Copeland said. "We should be drawing more in Ford Stadium, and that's been my frustration."

SMU fans continue to be a vocal minority. They raise all manner of excuses for not supporting the teams they profess to love so much. They don't like that big rivals like the Longhorns and the Aggies are history. They don't care for new rivals from Tulsa and Ruston, La. They don't like the lousy atmosphere that SMU creates at basketball games.

And, of course, they don't like that their once proud teams have become easy prey for even the meek. Blah, blah, blah.

What about just supporting your teams through thin? Isn't that what being an alum is all about?

"We are also 0-12, and we haven't had a lot of success in football since the late '80s," Copeland admitted. "We need to be better."

What Copeland needs to do, now that he's done the painfully fashionable by cutting a program, is to make sure the savings from sacrificing a successful team turns the two revenue-generating sports of football and men's basketball into just that, revenue-generating sports. He needs to do everything he can to erase every excuse no-account, lip-smacking SMU alums have for not supporting the football and basketball teams.

And if Copeland's apparently last-ditch plan at the expense of Dave Wollman's championship program fails to inject life back into SMU athletics, then he may as well deep-six his position. Jim Copeland is above being a Division II athletic director at this point in his career.

E-mail kblackistone@dallasnews.com

[LA_Mustang]

What about just supporting your teams through thin? Isn't that what being an alum is all about?

"We are also 0-12, and we haven't had a lot of success in football since the late '80s," Copeland admitted. "We need to be better."

What Copeland needs to do, now that he's done the painfully fashionable by cutting a program, is to make sure the savings from sacrificing a successful team turns the two revenue-generating sports of football and men's basketball into just that, revenue-generating sports. He needs to do everything he can to erase every excuse no-account, lip-smacking SMU alums have for not supporting the football and basketball teams.

And if Copeland's apparently last-ditch plan at the expense of Dave Wollman's championship program fails to inject life back into SMU athletics, then he may as well deep-six his position. Jim Copeland is above being a Division II athletic director at this point in his career.

E-mail kblackistone@dallasnews.com

[giacfsp]

Blackistone often does "tell it like it is" .... much moreso than many local pundits. But this column, laced with unsolicited shots like the "geldings" comment is bush-league at best. His column reads like the spewings the rantings of a graduate of a rival school -- which he is not. This "kick 'em while they're down" column diminishes his reputation immensely.

[emmitt01]

Diminishes his reputation? In whose eyes? Nobody outside of SMU. Again, I'm not trying to flame you guys. I don't know why everytime I post something on this board you think I'm just trying to be an [deleted]...I'm not, I promise. I don't even think UNT should play SMU. Our RPI would suffer. But back on the subject at hand. What did he say that wasn't true? At my police station there were stacks of FREE passes to several of your football games last year. After seeing them sit there for a few days I took a stack of twenty so that myself and some of the other UNT guys could watch live football while Mean Green were on the road. Again, we got in FREE. Hell, I even came to your "tailgating" area before the Fresno State game and talked to the guys who were there from the Ticket. They said, in no uncertain terms, that they were there only because SMU paid them and they would rather be about 32 miles up the road to the north.
Once more for those bent on thinking I hate SMU...I don't. I am just, as is most everyone in DFW and nationwide, tired of hearing the "we were once on top of the world" whining coming from the hilltop. Flame me all you want...you can't insult me enough to change the perception that you are a distant third when it comes to metroplex schools in athletics.