The Truth

[When Will This End]

This letter was emailed/sent to Mr. Turner, the President of SMU

I am very disappointed with another early exit from the WAC tournament. SMU did not even show up. With all due respect, I know you are good friends but I think the time has come for Mr. Copeland to be shown the door. "The Commitment" has left us with nothing. Is SMU really committed to athletics? Seems like TCU is and does the things necessary to compete, SMU does not. How do we expect fans to donate and how can they trust the Administration? He has fired how many coaches since he has been here... Where are the real problems? He just made a very unnecessary contract extension to
a coach with a couple of wins in 3 years. When does this end? I am not sure the C-USA is the answer either. It's time to get this back on track or we are going to keep losing games. That is the reality. I would like to see SMU actually have a chance on Selection Sunday or a chance at a bowl game. During our time in the WAC, we have not even been close to a WAC championship in basketball or football
other than 1993. This is getting pretty embarrassing. We need a fresh face in the program. We are in the middle of one of the largest markets in the US yet we cannot rally Dallas behind us. Most people laugh at SMU athletics if you listen to the sports radio stations.


It's time for new basketball facilities which are
extremely outdated. If I had the money
I would donate but unfortunately I do not. I am not sure how we expect to recruit top athletes with outdated facilities. I think Tubbs is a good coach and I hope he can somehow lure the right players to SMU. Basketball is much easier to turn around than football, it only takes 2-3 good recruits.

I wish you luck down this difficult road. I am hoping we will not have to drop to Division II at some point but that is where this is headed.

[DallasDiehard]

I'm as disappointed as you are with the way the season ended, and you have some valid points in it, but I still don't agree with your whole letter. To say the team "didn't show up" isn't quite fair. This was not a deep team at all. Maybe some of the reserves will turn into starters down the road -- a lot of them, after all, are young -- but at the moment, they're reserves for a reason. Pearson was out, and as well as he played at the end of the season, that was huge. In addition to his 3-point shooting, he could have been a quicker, more athletic body to put on Harris, who still would have scored his points, but it would have been much more difficult. Simpson showed up, at least from the sounds of things on the radio. Castro and BHop, it sounded like, had one of those days when nothing was going to go through the hoops (except for the too-little-too-late shooting spurt that Hop had in the second half), but it certainly didn't sound like a lack of effort. As several people have written before, this team "showed up" better than any team we've had in a long time. We won some games and we lost some games, but I can't remember watching the a game this year -- win or lose -- and thinking "these guys are mailing it in." Are there some improvements needed? Absolutely. But to imply that the team called it a year before the season was over, I think, is inaccurate.

And shouldn't this be on the basketball board?