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Not to beat a dead horse, but....

I saw today's Sporting News and on the cover is a picture of Michael Jordan wearing a Portland Trailblazers jersey with the title "What If? A Revisionist History..", bringing up a number of possible alternative senerios to past historical sporting events.
I opened it up and sure enough there was everybody's favorite open sore:
What if SMU hadn't gotten the death penalty?

Answer: The Southwest Conference doesn't implode from internal strife and expands to add Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, and Colorado. The new SWC becomes the nation's most profitable conference, and Big Eight holdover becomes the Big Ten's 12th team.

Just in case anybody was ever curious....

And we'd be right in the middle of it.

Only if...Only if...*sighs*

Hey!! Sporting News is stealing my stuff off of here. Didn't I just say something like that a week or 2 ago. I'm not as dumb as I look.

And the Pye restrictions never happen. Although it was overreaction on the part of the NCAA, you can thank Sherwood more than Ken for our current state of affairs. Here's one guy, though, who believes that Phil Bennett will take us back to respectability. Too little, too late? Perhaps.

GO MUSTANGS!

What if SMU loses again under Bennett? Do we pull the trigger?

If we dont win a game next season for sure. You dont go 0-23 in your 2nd and 3rd year of being with the program!

Bennett needs 4 or 5 wins next year or he starts collecting unemployment just after Dement's ends. Copeland is ruthless.

4 or 5 is a little high as a "stays or goes" mark, because so much of the talent is so young. That's not to say the older guys can't play, but the guys we'll count on in the future -- the big OLs, the super-fast skill guys -- are largely redshirt freshmen and true freshmen, and we're also going to a new offense. If we win 3 or maybe even 2 games next year, but show significant improvement, he'll survive. 2005 is the year when a serious jump in wins is required.

I agree. Our 2-deep OL this year will feature only one senior. 2005 will be judgment year for coach Bennett. If we are going to pick up our recruiting, though, it's critical that we win some games we aren't supposed to in 2004.

Quiet hope is what we are living on at this time. My sense is that Phil is doing it right. Our winless season was painful but not necessarily surprising given our rebuilding with youth strategy.

Another winless or 1 or 2 victory would jeaporadize this approach, but anything better than that means Phil's game plan is working with a breakout in 2005!