Snubbed Schools/SMU

[50's PONY]

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HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: College Sports

Feb. 28, 2004, 1:51PM


SMU



·Where they were:
Southwest Conference, 1918-1996.

·Where they are:
WAC.

·Where they're going:
Conference USA in fall 2005.

·What they've done:
Continued success -- if not domination -- in WAC swimming and diving, plus multiple championships in soccer and track and field and a 2000 conference title in women's basketball.

·What they haven't:
The football team has only one winning season and hasn't played in a bowl game since 1984, two years before the school was hit with the NCAA death penalty. The men's basketball team had done well until this year at Moody Coliseum, but it hasn't made the NCAA Tournament since 1993, and on Friday that cost coach Mike Dement his job. The firing came with three regular-season games remaining for the Mustangs, who had lost 12 of their last 16. That move came on the heels of the school announcing 10 days ago that it will drop men's track and field and cross country.

·Since the SWC:
SMU spent $57 million, including a $20 million donation from alumnus Gerald J. Ford, on the Gerald J. Ford Stadium/Paul B. Loyd Jr. All-Sports Center complex. That allowed the school to bring football games back to campus in 2000 for the first time in nine years.
However, the portion of the complex that houses the men's track and field and cross country programs will be vacated this spring. Athletic director Jim Copeland said dropping the programs would save at least $5.4 million over the next four years. The move reduces the number of SMU's intercollegiate sports from 20 to 17.

The Mustangs rank well above the state average for student-athlete graduation rates at 73 percent for 1996-97 entering freshmen and finished 41st in the NACDA Director's Cup standings for the 2002-03 school year.

-- DAVID BARRON



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HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: College Sports
This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/2425452