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SMU suspends QB Willis indefinitely
09:22 PM CDT on Friday, October 6, 2006
By KATE HAIROPOULOS / The Dallas Morning News
SMU starting quarterback Justin Willis will not play against UTEP on Saturday and is suspended indefinitely because of a violation of team rules.
SMU officials would not comment on specifics about the violation.
Junior college transfer Corey Slater is expected to start in Willis' place.
The redshirt quarterback from Denton Ryan traveled to El Paso on the team charter around lunchtime Friday. The decision to suspend Willis was made late Friday afternoon or evening.
Willis practiced with the team this week.
Willis had led the Mustangs (3-2, 1-0 Conference USA) to a three-game winning streak. He is 80-of-118 for 841 yards. His 12 touchdowns are the most for an SMU quarterback since 1996 and the seventh-most in a season.
After Willis helped SMU pull out a 33-28 win at Tulane last week, coach Phil Bennett lauded him for his competitiveness and said he had come "light years" since his first college game in September.
Slater is 7-of-18 for 54 yards. He came to SMU from Dixie State Junior College, where he went 62-of-133 for 963 yards and four touchdowns.

This is really disappointing...

Well alright then.

I guess I wan't catch the game after all. It has to be pretty bad for this to occurr

Someone wake me up. This cannot be true! WTF? Anyone have inside scoop? Tell me it's not a Bomar type thing.

I keep waiting to see the post that says...just kidding.

This ruins my weekend.

Was having such a great start to the weekend, went dinner with my disignated driving preggo wife, had a great buzz, then i come home and read this...... First reaction was to cuss a lot, so i did. then i posted it.......

now i am moving on.......Slater has a good arm and shows a lot of leadership - in his clean up time at least against bad teams.

My biggest fear is that Phil and Rusty will go back to only using the first 2 pages of the play book instead of what we have been doing the last couple of games.

Good news UTEP has been preparing for Willis with no Martin and we are giving them Martin with no Willis....POOR *BASTARDS won't know what hit them! *or batsards

back to cussing now.

wow

unbelievable...I am tired of going to Dallasnews.com just to read bad news about our program

I heard there was a team meeting this morning. I assumed it had to do with Martin coming back. I guess this is what it was for.

All I can say is that the violated team rule had better be something along the lines of "Players shall not rape the daughters of any coaches" or somesuch.

what could this be? any ideas???

What is it with our QBs?

Until kickoff, I'm holding out hope that this is a well-planned conspiracy to throw UTEP off....

Wow! Words can't even begin to express my disappointment. I guess we know why the broke the rb story this morning.

what in the world?

is there any other player on the entire roster
we would miss more?

heck even as important as # 8 is at least we have
won every game since Demyron went down.

the word suspended "indefinitely" really scares me!

this makes me sick to my stomach.

what does SMU have to do to catch a break!

SMU can't catch a break because we don't GIVE ourselves a break. I can't imagine a team rule violation that would justify this. Willis can be punnished in ways that don't hurt the team and fans. Orsini's duty is now clear.

I think the biggest thing we are going to miss is Willis' ability to make plays with his feet.

It seems a little odd to me that he was suspended but still traveled with the team out to El Paso.

I guess Eric Johnson is now our #2 QB.