Boston Globe Writes About SMU???
Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 8:05 amDALLAS -- The college football spotlight tomorrow will be on Austin, Texas, where No. 2 Texas meets No. 10 Texas Tech. Two weeks ago, the spotlight was on the Cotton Bowl, where the Longhorns defeated the Oklahoma Sooners in their annual clash. Big-time stuff in this football-crazy state.
But for every alpha there is an omega. And for almost 20 years Southern Methodist University has been one of the state's omegas, a campus on which talk of Bowl Championship Series, national championships, and Heisman trophies is not heard.
But that's not the way it has always been at SMU. All you have to do is take a quick look at the memorabilia displayed in Heritage Hall at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in the upscale community of Highland Park, a few miles north of downtown Dallas.
You can read about the 1936 Rose Bowl, in which Stanford beat SMU, 7-0. Or study the exploits of Doak Walker, Raymond Berry, Kyle Rote, Don Meredith, Eric Dickerson, and Craig James and you get a feel for big-time football.
But then you notice something else. The clock seemed to stop after 1987. There are no references since then to championships or bowl victories or great players. The reason? The ''Death Penalty."
That's what SMU football received Feb. 25, 1987, when the NCAA came in and shut the program down because of a series of major violations that were capped by the 1987 case in which boosters paid 13 Mustang players ''thousands of dollars."
SMU did not resume football until 1989 and the program has never been the same.
If SMU were some obscure outpost in the Southwest, the penalty would have been bad enough. But to be in the heart of the old Southwest Conference, in which all the major Texas schools were members and all competed for the same players as well as bragging rights, was a painful blow that still stings nearly 19 years later.
If there are any doubts, just ask Mustang coach Phil Bennett, now in his fourth season running a program that likely will never get up to a speed high enough for some boosters.
''Like starting from scratch," conceded Bennett, who will take his 2-5 Mustangs to Tulsa tomorrow for a Conference USA game, light-years from the high-stakes competition that will unfold at Texas's Memorial Stadium between the No. 2 Longhorns and No. 10 Red Raiders. ''The death penalty was one thing, and then when the SWC broke up [10 years ago], that was a double hit. My friends begged me not to take the job."
The advice given Bennett may have been sound if you looked at the records of Mustang coaches since 1989: Forrest Gregg (1989-90) 3-19; Tom Rossley (1991-96) 15-48-3; and Mike Cavan (1997-2001) 18-18. Bennett is 8-34.
Bennett grew up in Texas, loved football, and went to Texas A&M. He knew the old SWC. He also knew about SMU and its troubles. But he had undergone a personal tragedy that made any football problems insignificant. In August 1999, Bennett, then an assistant on Bill Snyder's staff at Kansas State, received a phone call telling him that his wife, Nancy, had been killed by lightning while out for an afternoon jog. That left Bennett a widower with two children, Sam, 8, and Maddie, 11.
''If I would have folded, my children would have folded, too," said Bennett. ''I wanted to just get out of the business. But Bill Snyder wouldn't let me. He said, 'Take as long as you need, we'll take care of you.' "
Bennett was on the road to recovery when SMU called in 2001 and he heeded the call to go home.
''My first spring here, I had the attitude, I can't be negative, but I can be realistic," said Bennett. ''But there were times when I said to myself, 'What have I done?' "
Bennett says things have gotten better since he arrived, with new facilities and scaled-down expectations.
The death penalty, said Bennett, has had far-reaching consequences that still linger.
''Nobody could foresee the devastation that came with it," he said. ''There was nothing to compare it to."
And the final days of the SWC, says Bennett, were ''a buyer's market," with schools scrambling to find a conference home. ''But the hardest programs hit were SMU and TCU," he said. Coincidently, neither school made the cut to the Big 12 when the SWC and Big Eight merged.
How bad were the old days of the SWC?
''Everyone was so brazen," said Big 12 associate commissioner Dan Beebe, who worked for the NCAA as an investigator 20 years ago. ''It was like the television show 'Dallas,' in which anything goes."
But that was the past; Bennett is only looking forward. ''We're more competitive than any season since I've been here," he said. ''We've got better athletes, not great, but we're getting better. This is a doable thing."
Slight consolation
Here's a fact SMU fans can savor: Three of the Mustangs' former SWC brethren -- Texas, TCU, and Texas Tech -- have a combined record of 18-1, with the one loss being SMU's 21-10 victory over TCU in September . . . For those who want to pick on the BCS computers, here's some more ammunition. In the first week's rankings, Texas Tech was No. 7, fair enough considering the Red Raiders' unbeaten record. But look at Texas Tech's opponents: Florida International, Sam Houston State, Indiana State, Kansas, Nebraska, and Kansas State. Michigan State (4-2) is ranked 24th, but the Spartans have zero computer points and they've played Kent State, Hawaii, Illinois, Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State. We're not saying Michigan State is better than Texas Tech, but how can the Spartans get zero points from the computers? . . . Here's another one: Two of the computers failed to give Notre Dame a point . . . Injuries are always a factor, especially at crunch time, but this has been a tough year for quarterbacks. Arizona State will have to do without Sam Keller, who has been sidelined by hand, shoulder, and ankle injuries. Connecticut coach Randy Holtz is working on his third starting QB, Dennis Brown, after injuries sidelined Matt Bonislawski and D.J. Hernandez . . . Penn State will have to readjust to playing without freshman wide receiver Derrick Williams, who suffered a broken arm in the Nittany Lions' 27-25 loss to Michigan last week and is out for the season . . . Coaches can find excuses for losses and poor play in the strangest places. Utah coach Kyle Wittingham, trying to explain the Utes' three-game losing streak, says his players might be ''up all night playing PlayStation," which he claims has resulted in poor rest, missed classes, and not enough attention to football . . . Nebraska is a quiet 5-1 and has done it with defense, holding its last three opponents to less than 100 yards rushing . . . Hard to believe: Texas is 3-0 in the Big 12 for the first time in school history . . . Repairs have begun on the New Orleans Superdome, but officials say it might take 12-16 months to get it functional again after the damage suffered in Hurricane Katrina . . . In the aftermath of the wild ending to last week's Southern Cal-Notre Dame game, television cameras caught a USC assistant coach calling for a timeout when the Trojans had none left. Unlike basketball when the officials call a technical foul on the team that makes that mistake, the football rule is clear: Officials simply ignore the signal. That presumes that the officials have an accurate count of the timeouts left for each team.
Material from wire services was used in this report.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/f ... e_for_smu/
But for every alpha there is an omega. And for almost 20 years Southern Methodist University has been one of the state's omegas, a campus on which talk of Bowl Championship Series, national championships, and Heisman trophies is not heard.
But that's not the way it has always been at SMU. All you have to do is take a quick look at the memorabilia displayed in Heritage Hall at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in the upscale community of Highland Park, a few miles north of downtown Dallas.
You can read about the 1936 Rose Bowl, in which Stanford beat SMU, 7-0. Or study the exploits of Doak Walker, Raymond Berry, Kyle Rote, Don Meredith, Eric Dickerson, and Craig James and you get a feel for big-time football.
But then you notice something else. The clock seemed to stop after 1987. There are no references since then to championships or bowl victories or great players. The reason? The ''Death Penalty."
That's what SMU football received Feb. 25, 1987, when the NCAA came in and shut the program down because of a series of major violations that were capped by the 1987 case in which boosters paid 13 Mustang players ''thousands of dollars."
SMU did not resume football until 1989 and the program has never been the same.
If SMU were some obscure outpost in the Southwest, the penalty would have been bad enough. But to be in the heart of the old Southwest Conference, in which all the major Texas schools were members and all competed for the same players as well as bragging rights, was a painful blow that still stings nearly 19 years later.
If there are any doubts, just ask Mustang coach Phil Bennett, now in his fourth season running a program that likely will never get up to a speed high enough for some boosters.
''Like starting from scratch," conceded Bennett, who will take his 2-5 Mustangs to Tulsa tomorrow for a Conference USA game, light-years from the high-stakes competition that will unfold at Texas's Memorial Stadium between the No. 2 Longhorns and No. 10 Red Raiders. ''The death penalty was one thing, and then when the SWC broke up [10 years ago], that was a double hit. My friends begged me not to take the job."
The advice given Bennett may have been sound if you looked at the records of Mustang coaches since 1989: Forrest Gregg (1989-90) 3-19; Tom Rossley (1991-96) 15-48-3; and Mike Cavan (1997-2001) 18-18. Bennett is 8-34.
Bennett grew up in Texas, loved football, and went to Texas A&M. He knew the old SWC. He also knew about SMU and its troubles. But he had undergone a personal tragedy that made any football problems insignificant. In August 1999, Bennett, then an assistant on Bill Snyder's staff at Kansas State, received a phone call telling him that his wife, Nancy, had been killed by lightning while out for an afternoon jog. That left Bennett a widower with two children, Sam, 8, and Maddie, 11.
''If I would have folded, my children would have folded, too," said Bennett. ''I wanted to just get out of the business. But Bill Snyder wouldn't let me. He said, 'Take as long as you need, we'll take care of you.' "
Bennett was on the road to recovery when SMU called in 2001 and he heeded the call to go home.
''My first spring here, I had the attitude, I can't be negative, but I can be realistic," said Bennett. ''But there were times when I said to myself, 'What have I done?' "
Bennett says things have gotten better since he arrived, with new facilities and scaled-down expectations.
The death penalty, said Bennett, has had far-reaching consequences that still linger.
''Nobody could foresee the devastation that came with it," he said. ''There was nothing to compare it to."
And the final days of the SWC, says Bennett, were ''a buyer's market," with schools scrambling to find a conference home. ''But the hardest programs hit were SMU and TCU," he said. Coincidently, neither school made the cut to the Big 12 when the SWC and Big Eight merged.
How bad were the old days of the SWC?
''Everyone was so brazen," said Big 12 associate commissioner Dan Beebe, who worked for the NCAA as an investigator 20 years ago. ''It was like the television show 'Dallas,' in which anything goes."
But that was the past; Bennett is only looking forward. ''We're more competitive than any season since I've been here," he said. ''We've got better athletes, not great, but we're getting better. This is a doable thing."
Slight consolation
Here's a fact SMU fans can savor: Three of the Mustangs' former SWC brethren -- Texas, TCU, and Texas Tech -- have a combined record of 18-1, with the one loss being SMU's 21-10 victory over TCU in September . . . For those who want to pick on the BCS computers, here's some more ammunition. In the first week's rankings, Texas Tech was No. 7, fair enough considering the Red Raiders' unbeaten record. But look at Texas Tech's opponents: Florida International, Sam Houston State, Indiana State, Kansas, Nebraska, and Kansas State. Michigan State (4-2) is ranked 24th, but the Spartans have zero computer points and they've played Kent State, Hawaii, Illinois, Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State. We're not saying Michigan State is better than Texas Tech, but how can the Spartans get zero points from the computers? . . . Here's another one: Two of the computers failed to give Notre Dame a point . . . Injuries are always a factor, especially at crunch time, but this has been a tough year for quarterbacks. Arizona State will have to do without Sam Keller, who has been sidelined by hand, shoulder, and ankle injuries. Connecticut coach Randy Holtz is working on his third starting QB, Dennis Brown, after injuries sidelined Matt Bonislawski and D.J. Hernandez . . . Penn State will have to readjust to playing without freshman wide receiver Derrick Williams, who suffered a broken arm in the Nittany Lions' 27-25 loss to Michigan last week and is out for the season . . . Coaches can find excuses for losses and poor play in the strangest places. Utah coach Kyle Wittingham, trying to explain the Utes' three-game losing streak, says his players might be ''up all night playing PlayStation," which he claims has resulted in poor rest, missed classes, and not enough attention to football . . . Nebraska is a quiet 5-1 and has done it with defense, holding its last three opponents to less than 100 yards rushing . . . Hard to believe: Texas is 3-0 in the Big 12 for the first time in school history . . . Repairs have begun on the New Orleans Superdome, but officials say it might take 12-16 months to get it functional again after the damage suffered in Hurricane Katrina . . . In the aftermath of the wild ending to last week's Southern Cal-Notre Dame game, television cameras caught a USC assistant coach calling for a timeout when the Trojans had none left. Unlike basketball when the officials call a technical foul on the team that makes that mistake, the football rule is clear: Officials simply ignore the signal. That presumes that the officials have an accurate count of the timeouts left for each team.
Material from wire services was used in this report.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/f ... e_for_smu/