Page 1 Story on SMU football in today's LA Times Sports

[PonySoprano]

I'm currently out in LA and I picked up today's LA Times (Dec. 28) and there is a story on the front page of the Sports Section on SMU.

The Story is titled "Life After 'Death'" so you can guess the subject matter. However, there is an above the fold photo of the 1936 Rose Bowl game in our National Championship year where we played Stanford.

Nothing ground breaking in the article - we've heard it all before. There are some good quotes from PB and Craig James.

[url]http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-smu28dec28,0,6407581,full.story?coll=la-home-sports[url][/url]

[MrMustang1965]

Just read it. Same ol' song, umpteenth verse. Did not know that PB and Sherwood Blount attend the same church, though.

[EastStang]

I love David Berst, the mouthpiece hired by a UT president to run the NCAA enforcement division, spouting off that we were the worst of the worst and that schools now are much more careful and don't go over the line. What has he been smoking? Bennett's call is much closer to the truth. We were caught the most, we were no better or no worse than any other SWC school covered in doo doo in the 1980's. When you swim in a cesspool you get covered in the stuff that's in the cesspool. Yes, we deserved to get the death penalty, but we weren't and still are not the only one deserving of that fate.

[PlanoStang]

Bennett admits from a first hand point of view that everyone was doing it
just as much as SMU. He knows first hand what was going on at A$M.
He also knows that A$M has as many, or more probations as SMU, but
was not given the DP when they were elgible to receive it in the late 80s,
and early 90s. I'd like to see Berst's tax returns for the 80s, and 90s.

Sadly, the C in NCAA has always stood for corrupt when it comes to the
money sports.

[McClown27]

Funny that SMU gets a page one story in LA. In Dallas, I am sure it is coverage of the Longhorns.

When was the last time SMU got the front page? Calvin's story on Dickerson?

[SWC2010]

.....Bennett's call is much closer to the truth. We were caught the most, we were no better or no worse than any other SWC school covered in doo doo in the 1980's. When you swim in a cesspool you get covered in the stuff that's in the cesspool. Yes, we deserved to get the death penalty, but we weren't and still are not the only one deserving of that fate.

I agree with PB- everybody was doing it.

But I don't agree that we DESERVED DP.

The fact that no other school has EVER been given the DP shows [1] the corruption within the ncaa enforcement group remains perverse (schools as large as OHState con't to get caught without severe penalty), and [2] the DP obviously does not match the crime.

[leopold]

Question:

While I understand why people on this board are quick to go after Dale Hansen for reporting SMU's cheating while there were other schools just as deserving of being told on, why is it that nobody ever mentions David Stanley? As I understand it, Stanley was nothing more than a rat, not only turning in the school that gave a scholarship to play but also a salary, but doing it for no other reason than for attention. So not only was he a rat, he was a sell-out, and cheap one at that.
If I'm wrong on this, and I freely admit I may be - like I said, Stanley's name rarely comes up around here - than please correct me on this, but doesn't he deserve to be the point of so much anger, even more than the popular Dale?

[No Cal Pony]

I just wish we could move away from all of this. Just painful. 2010, jt will probably come on and tell you we deserved it since we got caught, and it was brought upon ourselves.

I just see that so much can go on "unnoticed" at so many other institutions, while SMU was always "caught." The levels of irony behind the ncaa is phenominal. The reality is that much still goes on, but the way it happens has been to drive it down so that the schools can come across as "innocent."

"Payroll to Meet" is a hack job, which doesn't even touch the surface of what was really going on in the SWC back in the day. Not to even mention what went on at ned. okla., and the whole of the sec. Heck, out west "benefits" to student/athletes can easily be dated back to when jackie robinson would be driving around LA in a new car. I'm sure ucla backers had nothing to do with that.

the fact is that ut and a$m ate us up, and spit us out.

Go Ponies!

[Mustang75]

"The scheme unraveled in November 1986, when SMU linebacker David Stanley confessed to a Dallas television station that he had taken $25,000 from boosters"

I pulled out my 1986 Media guide and there is no David Stanley on the team that year. Maybe prior year I don't know. I thought it was a guy name Stoppervich who squeeled like a pig to Hansen.

[No Cal Pony]

no, it was stanley. a potentialy great player who threw away his career. when he realized he was going to go nowhere fast, then he turned on SMU. He was trouble from day one, so it sort of came as no surprise. God, I hated it all. Like some others, I knew way too much, and just hoped we could get through without events happening such as they did.

Go Ponies!

[jtstang]

I just wish we could move away from all of this. Just painful. 2010, jt will probably come on and tell you we deserved it since we got caught, and it was brought upon ourselves.

Well of course I will, because we did. But it's not just because we got caught the last time--it's also because we got caught the 7 times before that and thumbed our noses at the NCAA each and every time. And its because it was known and condoned at every level of the administration from the coaches on up to the Governor of Texas. I don't care if others deserved it and did not get it, that does not change the fact that SMU did deserve what it got.

[SMU Football Blog]

Stanley had not been with the team for at least a year. I think the last year he was on the team was 1985, but it might have been 1984. As an aside, Stanley did offer to keep quiet. The asking price was $200k. That, my friends, is called blackmail.

Stanley was a sorry SOB. I believe the original Hansen story said as much. But that didn't mean what he was saying was not true.

[mrydel]

At the time the investigation was going on, I was screaming for the administraton to stand up to the NCAA and fight them based on the "everybody does it" defense. Only afterwards did I realize the extent of the cover up and who all was involved. In hind sight they should have begged and pleaded for forgiveness but by then with all the previous violations, I think the outcome was decided. We definitely deserved it. I am very early into the reading of "A Payroll to Meet". I found it amusing how when it was beign described as a "everybody does it" game, that it was stated the large State schools had the advantage of getting the kids on campus and then setting up the payouts, whereas the privates had to spend money up front to get the kids to commit and then set up the payouts. It is always a struggle for the little guys, even in the world of cheating.

[EastStang]

I remember Bobby Collins told me that one of the rats (either Stanley or Stoppervich) was like a high school All American that a booster in essence recruited all by himself and that the coaches didn't even know who he was until committment day and when they saw his name they were not happy. He clearly was not in their plans and did not play, got ticked off and went to Hansen.

[Water Pony]

Is the silver lining, that SMU paid for the sins of all? Is the NCAA and college sports better for it? Has the BCS made all of these points mute?

The obvious and persistent outrages are perhaps gone, but now BCS money has made the colleges themselves addicts to the money pit.

Privates, especially in non-BCS conferences, have a permanent handicap. Only Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Boston College, Wake Forest, Baylor (ouch), etc. slipped through with their conference affiliations.