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SMU, Texas Tech football teams honored
09:39 PM CDT on Friday, June 10, 2005

SMU and Texas Tech were among 25 teams recognized by the American Football Coaches Association for graduating 70 percent or more of their football players. The others: Ball State, Boston College, Colorado, Connecticut, Duke, East Carolina, Hawaii, Iowa, Kent State, Miami (Ohio), Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Northern Illinois, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio, Penn State, Southern Mississippi, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest and Western Michigan.

I am pretty down on SMU football lately. So I would like to thank the Faculty Senate and the rest of the Administration for placing academic restrictions on the football program that put us in the same peer group as Texas Tech, Boston College, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Miami (Ohio), Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Northern Illinois, Notre Dame and Southern Mississippi. The only difference, of course, is that those teams seemed to be able to mix in a bowl game in the last year or so.

By the way, that better than 70% marker exceeds the university as a whole. SMU only graduates 69% of its students in four or five years (look it up). Again, way to go.

The answer is not to lower our standards but to raise the performance of most everyone else. SMU is not the problem, the BCS model is.

"Follow the money", Deep Throat

Water Pony wrote:The answer is not to lower our standards but to raise the performance of most everyone else. SMU is not the problem, the BCS model is.

"Follow the money", Deep Throat

What a nonsensical post.

Mark Felt, the real Deep Throat (well, sort of), never said "follow the money." It isn't in the Washington Post articles, it isn't in the Book All the Presidents' Men. It is only in the movie- a creation of William Goldman, whose other writing credits include Maverick.

But I digress. I will point out again, our standards are idiotic. Our standards for athletes leads to a graduation rate that exceeds that of the student body as a whole. And what standards for the student body can we possibly claim when we accept two out of every three people that apply. In the years post-death penalty, when these academic standards were being put in place, we had a 90%+ acceptance rate. Pye, so concerned with recruiting only Rhodes Scholars to play football, was admitting 9 out of 10 people who applied to this school. And I will again point out that the only time anyone ever accused SMU of academic impropriety was ten years after the death penalty.

I would absolutely love for someone to explain to me how the above paragraph makes any sense.

Further, the BCS has nothing to do with this. While you can make an argument that the BCS puts money in some schools pockets which helps them compete, the fact is there are many schools on and off that list that are not BCS schools that somehow manage to be competitive. Of the schools, I pointed out, several are non-BCS schools. So it at least appears that you can not be in the BCS, can have academic integrity and can be competitive all at the same time. We have had a .500 or below conference record for the past 7 years in our conference; what does the BCS have to do with that? Rice has beaten us three years in a row and TCU has been to 6 bowl games to our none post-BCS; what does the BCS have to do with that?

Finally, perhaps it is time to examine our standards. I have listed several schools that have academic integrity and success on the field. A feet we seem unable to accomplish. Perhaps we are doing the right thing in the wrong way. Perhaps we should look to them as a "model" as opposed to always looking down our nose at everyone else while looking up from the cellar of the standings at the same time.

And again, don't talk to me about standards when we admit 2 out of every 3 people that apply, used to admit 9 out of 10, and the school graduates a lesser percentage than the football team.

Period. End of story.

And another thing. If Bennett won nine games every year, but graduated 58% of his players (the average), would you want him fired? Do you thing the university would fire him?

Of course, not. Don't talk about standards.

You're not implying, Dooby, that to improve our onfield success we need to purposefully *not* graduate as many footballers, are you? I find the grad rate commendable but irrelevent.

Water Pony wrote:The answer is not to lower our standards but to raise the performance of most everyone else. SMU is not the problem, the BCS model is.

Given our 16-year performance, the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by the BCS machine and your frequency of postings on this board, I must say WP, that is an extraordinarily naïve post on your part.

I doubt even the great Ken Pye would buy your nonsense.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy….Sunshine almost always makes me high!!

To be specific

Non-BCS (11):

- MAC: Ball State, Kent State, Miami (Ohio), Northern Ill, Western Michigan, Ohio (6)

- CUSA: East Carolina, Southern Mississippi, Tulane (3)

- WAC: Hawaii and SMU (2)

BCS (14):

- Independent: Notre Dame (1)

- BE/ACC: Boston College, Connecticut (2)

- BIG XII: Colorado, Nebraska, Texas Tech (3)

- ACC: Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest (3)

- Big Ten: Iowa, Northwestern, Penn State (3)

- SEC: Mississippi, Vanderbilt (2)

This proves (?) that the MAC is the best in protecting its Student Athletes and the PAC 10, MWC, Sunbelt and the BE do the worst. And the above teams are the dominant one in their conferences? Don't blame our standards, when others don't aren't concerned with minimium graduation performance (e.g. 35-45% graduation rates). Plus, if we graduate 70% or better VS 69%of student athletes, where is the gap?

You either dumb it down or say to recruits, graduation is not necessarily our goal for you.

We are arguing about our history. Give it up. I still say, follow the money, if you want to compare performances, win/loss, bowl bids, etc.

BCS schools at the highest levels are not on the list and neither are the recent non-BCS stars, Boise, Fresno, Utah, TCU, Louisville, Toledo, Bowling Green, etc. Both of our arguements make little difference, but the standards discussion is ancient history.

I was going to let the ridiculousness of this post go, but I just can’t. I tried, but I can’t.

Of the 12 non-BCS teams, nine have been to bowl games in the past 10 years. Thank goodness for Kent State and Ohio or else SMU would be the only one. Everybody else has been bowling at some time. Even Ball State managed to go to the Las Vegas Bowl in 1996.

So I am looking at 25 teams that manage to graduate 70% of their players and 20+ can find some measure of success.

I don’t know how a conference is capable of “protecting” student athletes. If I thought that sentence made any sense, I would respond. The issue isn’t conferences and the issue isn’t whether they dominate their conference. The issue is winning football games, which we can’t seem to do these days. Some of the cause of that is that we put academic restrictions on our athletes prior to admittance. I want to point out that we do no better academically than these other schools that also happen to win-some in other conferences, some in the one we left and some in the one we are joining and some of those teams have kicked our tail on more than one occasion.

Seventy-plus percent minus sixty-nine percent is greater than zero. The difference is called a gap. It is a fact that the football team graduates students at a greater percentage than the student body as a whole. I think it is a fair question to ask if that makes sense.

You don’t have to dumb it down or tell recruits that graduation is not our goal. Miami (Ohio) is ranked higher according to US News and went to two straight bowl games and managed to make the list; Tulane is ranked higher according to US News and went to a bowl game in 2002 and managed to make the list (and will probably beat the tar out of us in 2005). Neither are BCS. Yet listening to you would suggest this is impossible.

I am not arguing about our history. I am arguing about the present. I assure you the standards discussion is not ancient history; it is reality. I am pretty sure Bennett will tell you the same thing to your face if you ask.

There are schools that are successful and graduate their players. Isn’t that what we strive for? We should emulate them. Not all of them are in the BCS, so that is not an excuse.

I’ll say it again: If Bennett won nine games every year, but graduated 58% of his players (the average), would you want him fired? Do you thing the university would fire him?

Of course, not. Don't talk about standards.