Junior wrote:Dwan wrote:We did not get the death penalty for what we did. We got the death penalty for repeatedly ignoring the warnings and sanctions by the NCAA. Our transgressions were no worse than anybody else, in fact, they were probably tame compared to UT and A&M...but the NCAA kept on telling us to clean it up and we kept on doing it. Telling the NCAA to F-off is what got us the DP.
I agree with this. Also, the fact that the highest levels of university leadership were involved at SMU.
The Presidents of universities don't want to know what is going on. SMU taught them an important lesson. If they don't know and cooperate they can keep their jobs. Their programs are punished, but they survive. Willful ignorance.
The old SWC was notorious for the corruption. The NCAA wanted to send a message to the entire conference. When they got SMU they dropped the hammer as hard as they could to send a message. Was SMU worse than anybody else? Probably not. But every member of the SWC cleaned up their act (or learned discretion). After they saw the damage they did to the school, the entire school, nobody is going to get the DP again.