Dale Hanson Reappraised

[No Quarter]

Dale Hansen is taken to task (again) in another thread.

I can't say that I like Hansen and I'll get criticized for the following, but wonder if after twenty-two years some discussion can be undertaken on any or all of the following.

1. Was Hansen fair or unfair to SMU football?

2. Was Hansen's report good journalism or bad?

3. Did you see Hansen's report live or on a rerun, or what is your point of reference?

4. Would football I at SMU have come to an end if Hansen had not been on the scene?

5. What individual or specific event was most responsible for the end of football I at SMU?

Others might have more questions.

[mr. pony]

Hansen loved the cartoon, if that's what you're talking about.

[ponyboy]

He says he did. But that's different from actually liking it.

[Mexmustang]

1. Unfair. As this was basically his only big story, he won't let go. At every chance, even after 20 years he won't let go. He has never attempted to put it in perspective of the other SEC and SWC schools at the time, nor even tried to explore the degree of money changing hands in college basketball today.
2. As I remember, the story came to him via an ex-player, he did not "uncover" it. You be the judge, even a "blind hog finds an acorn".
3. Live
4. If we had gone one more year, we probably could have avoided getting caught. But, too many of us were well aware of the cheating and too many were personally involved...we were amatuers (delivering cash by mail in an SMU atletic dept. envelope!) unlike A&M, LSU and Alabama.
5. Clements, had we just admitted our problems we would have gotten a much, much lighter penalty. Had we just stopped paying players after we first got caught by the NCAA, but Clements felt we had an obligation to complete the payments to those already promised. We look stupid now, and paying a former player reportedly on "drugs" that was off the team and out of school even more stupid.

Of course, I failed to mention we were wrong. SMU had been paying players, like everyone else for years, we just upped the ante
during the Meyer years as we got tired of being outbid by the other schools. Doesn't make it right, but we were just playing the game as we saw it in the SWC and SEC during those years (and maybe at many schools even today).

[couch 'em]

Hansen was a traitor to the city of Dallas for attacking SMU, but that just makes him a typical self-serving ambitious journalist. His behavior since then, however, is what makes him a [deleted].

[Stallion]

Hansen was 100% correct for what he did. SMU was 100% guilty and run by unparalleled morons. Hansen has broken several other stories on local teams including off the top of my head the very memorable A&M story by Gerry Oher on Kevin Murray("oh my gosh-let me see that"), he helped break the stories on Jim Wacker and the OU story on the the guy that transferred to SHSU or whatever. This board is filled with the biggest bunch of homers who can't deal with the truth. WE WERE CHEATING OUR ASSES OFF AND DESERVE EVERYTHING WE GOT. See above and I'm sure below for examples of fans who have completely lost touch with reality on this issue. There has never been any case that I'm aware of that comes close to the lack of institutional control exhibited by SMU under Clements, Cox and the rest of his merry band of idiots.

[KnuckleStang]

Agree with Stallion. [deleted] or no, the breaking of the SMU scandal was good investigative journalism. The look on Hitch, Henry Lee Parker, and Collins' faces at the incriminating envelope was priceless. If the people running our program had not been so stupid and arrogant at the time, Hansen would have had nothing to report.

[jtstang]

Any journalist worth his salt would have done the exact same thing had Stanley come to them with this giftwrapped expose'. SMU did this to itself, Dale Hansen did not do anything unwarranted to SMU.

BTW, does anybody have a link to the video showing the three stooges Knucklestang mentioned?

[KnuckleStang]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spe/2004/feb25football/hansen.html

[Mexmustang]

Stallion I agree with most of what you wrote on this...but, the story was handed to him, he did not uncover it. Second, after over twenty years he still refers to SMU with a "history of cheating" in the JJ interview I believe. After 20+ years of squeeky clean it is time to get over it! Hansen is not a great journalist. He is simply a reporter.

[jtstang]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spe/2004/feb25football/hansen.html

Let me dig my glasses out from under my sweater vest and look at this....

[Bergermeister]

DESERVE EVERYTHING WE GOT.

you're wrong on that point

[Stallion]

OK we didn't deserve Kenneth Pye but we clearly deserved everything we got from the NCAA. It was a slam dunk "lack of institutional control" case even BEFORE you consider that SMU was put on probation about 5 time in a little over a decade. As a Lawyer I can't imagine and easier slam dunk, "smoking-gun" case than Bill Clements and his henchmen handed to the NCAA. SMU was horribly served by its own Board of Govenors-actually the ad hoc Committee who ran the Board of Govenors to be more fairly precise..

[CalallenStang]

We deserved what we got from the NCAA; at least a dozen other schools also deserved it, but Hansen wasn't a reporter in that city.

Hansen was right for breaking the story; he is wrong for bringing it up each and every time he says the three letters S,M, and U in that order.

[jtstang]

We deserved what we got from the NCAA; at least a dozen other schools also deserved it, but Hansen wasn't a reporter in that city.

No that's wrong. There is no evidence which demonstrates any other school whose violations were as repetitive and egregious from top to bottom as SMU's were in from the late 70s to the mid-80s. We practically invented the term lack of institutional control. SMU's conduct is the standard for deserving the death penalty, and nobody else has done what SMU did.