Most Stupid Decision Ever Award

[Dukie]

It’s well before my time, but I understand among Duke circles that Pye was well known as a virulent opponent of big-time athletics. The record was definitely there to be found.

[SMU93]

OMG, nobody can cry about past injustices like SMU fans.
I was teased at recess in first grade. Can we break down the unfairness of that, too?
Seriously, people, move on.

[EastStang]

At Duke he was the law school dean. Probably had little to nothing to do with athletics. That period was early in Coach K's reign, and their football was bad. I remember one of my law school classmates was a former All American tight end at Duke and was not happy about the state of the football program.

[Dukie]

At Duke he was the law school dean. Probably had little to nothing to do with athletics. That period was early in Coach K's reign, and their football was bad. I remember one of my law school classmates was a former All American tight end at Duke and was not happy about the state of the football program.

You should research more before opining. He was law school dean twice, but also university chancellor twice and “university counselor” once, all for longer than he was law school dean. He was never law school dean after Coach K arrived in 1980.

[EastStang]

Shouldn't rely on my foggy memory. Thanks for the history lesson.

[Mexmustang]

SMU should have just ridden out the one-year penalty. Most of our players would have stayed.

Hiring Pye, he had no experience running a university and was only the head of Duke's Law School

He promised those of us on a powerless board, that in two years he would destroy big time football at SMU. He delivered.

Changing the governance of SMU. Eliminating the Board of Governors whereby the President is accountable to the board and replacing it with little more than a board of Visitors, appointed by the President for fundraising potential. As a result the Board reports to the President.

Turning down Texas Instruments offer to effectively fund a new school of engineering. Instead TI endowed UT at Dallas.

Allowing fans to believe they were supportive of really bringing football back, but simply going through the motions for twenty years, by paying below market salaries to head coaches and worse, the assistants. Watching our Athletic Admissions committee initiate ridiculous rules to recruitment. First, they insisted that an athlete had to be admitted to the school before they could be recruited. Then they changed the rules, but often didn't provide their decisions until after signing day. A practice that destroyed our relationships with high school coaches Never were the admission standards of the NCAA good enough. Even when June gave up, he had nine qualifiers in his last class that were turned down.

The last one many of you may disagree with, but the firing of our AD (Orsini) who started the Circle of Champions to pay our coaches "market" and fought the SMU system and replaced him with a man that has a PE degree and still shops in the boy's department!

[Topper]

What school wins the Most Stupid Decision Ever Award?

I vote Tulane for voluntarily leaving the SEC. Your thoughts.

GA Tech would be a co-winner. Sewanee (University of the South) left as well, but it was (and is) too small to ever be competitive in D1.

Can you imagine an SEC game in that little stadium at Sewanee? It is a beautiful place but Gator or Bulldog fans would trash it.

[Charleston Pony]

It’s well before my time, but I understand among Duke circles that Pye was well known as a virulent opponent of big-time athletics. The record was definitely there to be found.

I moved to Durham in 1987 right after the death penalty and when Pye was hired, the tennis coach at Duke who was a neighbor at the time, expressed his condolences telling me SMU would regret that hire unless they really wanted to completely abandon any pursuit of D-1 athletics. He told me Pye advocated for D-3 with no scholarships for athletes but would have preferred only intramural sports on campus because he felt some general academic scholarship funds would be diverted to undeserving students simply because they were good athletes and were being recruited by coaches.

The only thing I heard was that Pye did away with any "special admissions" for athletes (Larry Johnson immediately comes to mind) and did not want to give athletes priority registration for classes which made it difficult for Coach Gregg to have all his players at every practice because there were some conflicts between practices and some players' class schedules