Grade Fixing?

[JesuitPony]

Disclaimer: Not SMU related

Looks like Auburn may be in a little bit of hot water over a directed reading sociology course:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/sport ... 0&emc=eta1

[AusTxPony]

I find this deplorable. We just ought to let kids turn pro at age 19 instead of 'keeping" (babysitting) them in BCS colleges so that they can make their team a Top 20 school. Stop the hypocracy!!

[NavyCrimson]

as long as the bcs-bs is around, nothing will ever happen, so as michael savage says, next topic, please -

[FordtoTolbert]

...OhioState plays 3 or 4 games before school even starts....sure the are focused on one thing...after school starts, I am sure they turn total attention to the class room.

[EastStang]

This is Auburn right? They'll get wrist slapped and told to tighten things up. If this was SMU we'd be banned again.

[JesuitPony]

Yeah, I think that Auburn had some pretty serious NCAA violations when Terry Bowden was coach, but I don't recall them getting much of a punishment.

[mr. pony]

People seem to tire of hearing this, but it's official: --- WE GOT SCREWED!

The DP was wrong, despicable - whatever you want to call it. And this needs to be pointed out and stuck in everybody's face each and every time a story like this comes up.

Ft. Worth Star-Telegram columnist Randy Galloway had it exactly right years ago when he called the death penalty the greatest injustice ever handed down by the NCAA.

Its unfairness is amplified with each passing year and each passing slap on the wrist of a 'big boy.'

GO MUSTANGS!! RISE AGAIN!!

[jtstang]

People seem to tire of hearing this, but it's official: --- WE GOT SCREWED!!!

By people in our own organization. They basically froced the NCAA to come down on us.

[Stallion]

It was despicable? What is dispicable is a football program on probation 5 times in 15 years with bankroll funded, administered and approved by the Chairmain of the Board of Govenors and his henchmen on the Board that ran the scheme. The dispicable thing is that we had losers like Clements, Cox, Blount running the program into the ground. What is dispicable is a university and a Govenor tossing his school under the bus to get reelected Govenor.. No one has ever cited a single case coming anywhere close to that scenario in modern NCAA History. That's why SMU greatly deserved the Death Penalty.Now Mr. Pony continuing arguing your incessant ignorant and irrelevant comparisons to other schools. Oh BTW jtstang during the 5 probations in 15 years the SMU administration never told the truth behind the reasons for the probation either. In fact they haven't to this day even under Pye protecting the big donor fatcats who were involved.

[mr. pony]

Whatever you say, big guy.

Thanks for the review. My gosh, I feel so dirty.

A&M, Alabama, Arkansas ..... and many others have walked. Why? They met the rigorous requirements, too.

If 'death' is not going to doled out equally across the board, I say we're due reparations, buddy. I think 10 mil is a good place to start.

See comments in 'General' under Dale Hansen thread.

[Danny Noonan]

Whatever you say, big guy.

Thanks for the review. My gosh, I feel so dirty.

A&M, Alabama, Arkansas ..... and many others have walked. Why? They met the rigorous requirements, too.

If 'death' is not going to doled out equally across the board, I say we're due reparations, buddy. I think 10 mil is a good place to start.

See comments in 'General' under Dale Hansen thread.

Explain how any of these schools came close to doing what we did? I see you throw out Alabama and Arkansas all the time when you cry. Especially Arkansas. They had a four year investigation and all they could find was a few guy got overpaid a couple hundered bucks on a summer job. Not even in the same ballpark. Not even close.

[mrydel]

I can assure you that if Arkansas or Alabama was to be given the death penalty that within 5 years they would be competitive again in the SEC. First, the DP was well deserved, but second, the after effects issued by the administration assured that we would never be competitive on the same level as before. We are just now beginning to loosen up those edicts that kept us hamstrung for so long. Just think how depressed you would be to see Alabama get the DP and 5 years later they are competing for a BCS bowl while we are still wallowing in the Ivy League frame of mind. It might be enough to make mr. pony stop posting. HMMMMMM!

[SoCal_Pony]

Stallion and especially JT think we deserved what we got. While I will agree with them that we were more callous/sloppy/overt in our cheating, the fact remains that 90%+ schools were breaking NCAA rules in regards to paying their athletes, so in the bigger picture it matters little as to HOW we paid our players, of much more importance is that virtually EVERY school was cheating. Litigate this Stallion and are you really proposing that Boards at every other school take the Ken Lay / Sergeant Shultz defense of “I know nothing?”…because I sit on Boards of corporations, I have been sued personally and jointly because of these affiliations, I have met with opposing counsel and I can tell you first hand the “I know nothing” defense, especially in this situation, would be torn to shreds by a good attorney.

Some other Comments:

Danny Noonan is incredibly naïve. SMU, with its small fan base, has never ever set the standard for what athletes were paid; no one particular school ever has. SMU merely competed as best it could. Please read this article and tell me these ‘schools’ are only paying a few hundred dollars… http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58965-2005Feb2.html

Mrydel, the problem with your analysis is the TIMING of the Death Penalty. It happened at the worst possible moment for SMU athletics and contributed to our exclusion from the BCS. Once out of that club, you can never ever fully recover.

Mr. Pony, you are right with one exception. The starting place for reparations is not $10M, but more like $250M.

[jtstang]

I do not care what other schools did, I did no go there and did not have to lose two years of football during my college experience as a result of what other schools did. I not saying other schools haven't deserved the death penalty, I'm just saying SMU surely did. To suggest otherwise is either to be a poor judge of facts or to display an ignorance of the history of SMU's documented cheating throughout the decade prior. Either way, you an mr. pony are wrong.

Can I assume you agree with mr. pony that the reason we continue to suck twenty years post-DP is that the Dallas Morning News doesn't feature SMU on page one of Sports Day obove the fold on a daily basis as well?

[PonySoprano]

SMU's self-punishment was worse than anything the NCAA did. Because the Pye administration did not commit to Divison 1A athletics after the DP in both football AND basketball, that did more harm to the University than the NCAA punishment.

The fact is that when Pye came in, we had a total void of vision and leadership at the University. We could have bounced back quickly from the DP if we had some visionaries in leadership positions at the University. Instead, we chose to suffer in our own misery and hoped that people would take sympathy on us. It was the wrong move and we still suffer from it.

If you want reparations, go to the estates of Blount, Clements, and Ken Pye. They are the ones that really screwed us. And also go to the members of the Board who were the idiots to hire Ken Pye as president. Talk about the definition of an empty suit.

Can we quit crying like little girls about this and move on?