Heeereee's Blacki!!!!!!

[MrMustang1965]

from the DMN:

Kevin Blackistone's column for Friday, April 7, 2006



As the football-playing Mustangs began trickling back to the Hilltop for practice back in August 1999, their school was suspending an assistant coach, retaining a law firm and notifying the NCAA about some potential rules violations uncovered that summer.

Four months later, SMU fired that assistant – saying he encouraged a recruit to have someone else take his entrance exam for him and offered several hundred dollars in inducements over several years – and flogged itself by, among other things, temporarily cutting a few scholarships.

The university absolved of wrongdoing everyone else in the football program, including head coach Mike Cavan, whom it didn't even charge with lacking control.

Cavan, who was hired in 1997 on a five-year deal that was extended, lasted two more seasons. His tenure, which included the Mustangs lone post-death penalty winning season in 1997, ended after athletic director Jim Copeland announced infamously, "I've seen enough."

Now seven weeks from retirement and a few weeks into recovery from a serious surgery, Copeland isn't that patient or forgiving. On Thursday, he fired men's basketball coach Jimmy Tubbs, whom he hired only two years ago.

Copeland acted two months after the school informed the NCAA of possible rules violations in Tubbs' program, some of which, The Dallas Morning News reported recently, include allegations that Tubbs gave a player laundry detergent and practiced his team more than the 20 hours per week the NCAA allows.

As Allen Iverson might wonder, "We're talking soap and practice?"

What appears to be a punishment that overwhelms the crime wasn't lost on Copeland.

"The few incidents described in recent media reports are not the sum of the alleged violations in the program," Copeland stated Thursday in a prepared press release. "Those incidents would not, in themselves, warrant significant action on the part of the university."

The really worrisome thing is that we'll have to wait to find out what more SMU has that might warrant the action it just took, because the school just fired a man based on allegations in an investigation that is not yet complete.

That's not right. It's not fair. It doesn't even make sense given that a new athletic director, Steve Orsini, is scheduled to take over in June. Why not let him call the shot after all the information is in?

It suggests that there is some other explanation to firing Tubbs and that the possible rules violations are nothing more than a convenient excuse to get rid of someone the school was never comfortable with anyway.

Had SMU really believed in Tubbs, it would've given him more than a four-year contract to begin with or at least rewarded him with an extra year after he took the losing team he inherited to a .500 record his first season. The football coach has received raises despite not producing a winning season.

Given SMU's history, it is understandable that the school is more sensitive to having its athletic department employees precisely follow every letter of NCAA law. But if SMU is admitting that none of what has been reported would be cause for a firing, why not place Tubbs on some sort of restrictions until the investigation is complete?

After all, if the investigation finds nothing more than what we know, SMU not only erred, but it also shot itself in the hoof.

As it stands, the school probably hurt itself more, no matter the outcome of the investigation, than it damaged Tubbs by putting a dishonorable discharge on his resume.

Tubbs is a one-time state championship Dallas high school coach beloved by many in local and state school coaching circles. Dismissing him in this fashion will shred whatever goodwill the athletic department has re-established between the University Park campus and Dallas proper, especially black Dallas, since the Larry Johnson debacle of the late '80s.

People who know Tubbs even better than I think I do will be hard-pressed to believe he did anything so egregious as to cause him to be fired. Tubbs doesn't strike one as a slickster in the basketball coaching fraternity but as a down-to-earth guy who can be trusted.

Tubbs did, apparently, make one major mistake in his short stay at Moody Coliseum. He gave a scholarship to the grandson of SMU booster and oil man Max Williams, who played basketball on the Hilltop in the '50s.

Williams was one of the last defenders of Bob Hitch, the SMU AD in the early '80s who reportedly was aware of the payments to football players that gave SMU the infamous identity it will never shake.

Williams was one of only a handful of witnesses to the scandal, including several suspended boosters, who refused to be interviewed then by the Bishops' panel that produced the damning investigative report on it all. He went on to employ Hitch after Hitch was defrocked.

But Tubbs extended an opportunity to Williams' grandson Matt, who was a freshman last season. He played very little. Next thing Tubbs knew, granddaddy told school officials he gave Tubbs money to buy some meals for some players, which would be a violation.

The investigation was launched. Now Tubbs' dream job has turned into a nightmare.

Jimmy Tubbs didn't get the time to prove himself a head college coach or an innocent. But his short-time employer is certainly on trial now.

[Peruna_Ate_My_Rolex]

Tubbs did, apparently, make one major mistake in his short stay at Moody Coliseum. He gave a scholarship to the grandson of SMU booster and oil man Max Williams, who played basketball on the Hilltop in the '50s.

Williams was one of the last defenders of Bob Hitch, the SMU AD in the early '80s who reportedly was aware of the payments to football players that gave SMU the infamous identity it will never shake.

Williams was one of only a handful of witnesses to the scandal, including several suspended boosters, who refused to be interviewed then by the Bishops' panel that produced the damning investigative report on it all. He went on to employ Hitch after Hitch was defrocked.

Doesn't anyone else find it interesting that Williams wouldn't talk to the NCAA during all the happenings of the 80s but yet he was more than willing to talk them about what was happening with his grandson? I guess he was willing to talk when it was convenient for him. Sure really makes you wonder about his intentions. Then again, like some people think...maybe he was really doing it to save the program.

[MrMustang1965]

Max Williams and Sherwood Blount. Two peas in a pod.

[MFFL02]

I am stunned. I am embarrassed to be an SMU Fan right now. I am in disgust especially seeing what the players have said, especially our two phenomenal freshman, Fall might leave and Morris was too upset to even speak. Blackistone breaks up great points, why not just let the investigation finish and then determine what is what. I am very upset about this and I don't think the next few years of SMU Basketball will be as bright with Tubbs gone.

[RGV Pony]

I don't entirely disagree with your comment, MM1965.

FWIW, though, I don't consider myself to be an anti-Sherwood. There's many Sherwood Blounts involved with every other school in America right now about whom nothing is said.

Blacki, meanwhile....I didn't know you cared! One would think you actually pay attention to SMU athletics from the content of your article. I'm probably going to spend the rest of the day wondering what the asst fb coach (what was his name? Malin?) has to do with Tubbs. Apples and oranges. If Tubbs was fired for the actions of one of his assts, ok. But he wasn't.

And the signature Blacki quote is right there, in paragraph 17...."...especially black Dallas." Nice to see journalists segregating a city all on their own. Where is white Dallas, Blacki?

IMO, that article reeks of racism. Larry Johnson? c'mon.

[jtstang]

And the signature Blacki quote is right there, in paragraph 17...."...especially black Dallas." Nice to see journalists segregating a city all on their own. Where is white Dallas, Blacki?

IMO, that article reeks of racism. Larry Johnson? c'mon.

Sorry to disappoint you, but it was not racist in the least bit. As for the "Black Dallas" comment, if you don't see the accuracy of that statement, you are being wilfully blind. Read the article quoting the local HS coaches I linked yesterday.

[Danny Noonan]

I've got no real problem with this article, however,

Assuming (and I know its a big assumption for some) that multilple violations were uncovered, and Copeland didn't flat out lie in the press release, I don't think you wait until the investigation is formally completed to fire JT. I think you pull the trigger as fast as you. No one wants to start a coaching search months after the season. That never bodes well.

Also, while we would all love for SMU to say what the violations were right now, they're not going to. They probably should to save face, but they may not know the full extent of the violations yet. They may know enough that it became clear JT needed to be dismissed, but aren't prepared to release a categorized list of what happened.

I do agree, however, that they need to reveal much more than they have before this things gets even worse.

[dcpony]

Here's my stream of conciousness rant:

Blackistone is right. Orsini should have made the call on Tubbs.
SMU was not really comfortable with hiring Tubbs.

Come on!! Indiana just hired Kelvin Sampson and the NCAA actually found more serious violations in his program.

DISD coaches will not steer their guys toward us. I know we weren't getting any of their guys in the first place even with Tubbs. But now we won't even get to sniff those kids.

Quotes from the DISD story that highlight the joke that is SMU athletics:

"I'm very disturbed by it [Tubbs' firing]," said James Mays II, the South Oak Cliff coach who left the news conference announcing Tubbs' hiring in 2004 wearing an SMU hat. "He was on the verge of starting to breakthrough."


"It's going to set them back 10 years or more with the black community," Johnson said. "I don't feel he got a fair shake. That's not sitting well with young coaches."

Mays said Tubbs' firing is a major setback in SMU's relationship with inner-city schools.


Johnson said he wanted Kimball star senior George Odufuwa to attend SMU. He said Odufuwa, who signed with Arizona State, liked Tubbs, but said he didn't think SMU was serious about basketball. -----THIS QUOTE MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL. THANKS COPELAND. PLEASE LEAVE NOW!

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Copeland should have kept Rossley. He fired Shumate a year or two after the Mustangs made the NCAA tournament and won the SWC. Our successful mens track and field program was dropped

The jury is still out on Phil Bennett. If Bennett doesn't coach the Mustangs to a bowl game with the lame [deleted] schedule he has in 2006. Then I'll expect Orsini to give Bennett the axe.

Copeland hired Cavan and Dement and fired Tubbs way to soon.

Besides the stadium Copeland leaves the SMU Athletic dept. in shambles. Nice legacy Copeland.

We're a joke! We're the F'ing keystone cops of D-1 college athletics!

When I hear the words SMU Athletic Department...The first thing that enters my mind is the ....Benny Hill theme music.

Get your heads out of your a$$e$ SMU!!!! I'm so f 'ing pissed right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!