What if We Never Cheated?

[MidlandMustang]

If a frog had wings he would bust his [deleted].

[Stallion]

This is really great thumb-sketch of the recruiting violations found in the SWC at the time. Some really great discussions among rival posters who really know where the "bones were buried" at TCU, SMU, UT, A&M and UH. These guys aren't screwing around with half-truths and innuendos-they get right to the dirt at each of those schools in the comments. It includes a discussion of a veritable Who's Who of Bagmen of the SWC. If you look hard enough you might even find the DMN article which blew the lid off UT's Glass House and resulted in their 2 year probation-written by future Dallas Mayor Laura Miller no less.

http://barkingcarnival.fantake.com/2010 ... f-the-swc/

[b_caesar]

SMU is where it is today because of all that has happened in the past. All of it. If the past hadn't happened, there's no telling what things might look like today.

SMU might not even exist as an institution of higher learning at this present moment in time "if we never cheated" in the past - but we'll never know that, will we?

Why don't we move on with what we've got, where we are, and make the most of it?

The only things we can influence are right now, with the hope that those things we do now will make tomorrow better than today.

[Treadway21]

SMU is where it is today because of all that has happened in the past. All of it. If the past hadn't happened, there's no telling what things might look like today.

SMU might not even exist as an institution of higher learning at this present moment in time "if we never cheated" in the past - but we'll never know that, will we?

Kind of like that episode of star trek when they go back to the 30's...
Dr. McCoy: You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?
Spock: He knows, Doctor. He knows.

[Charleston Pony]

If we NEVER cheated? would we have ever been invited to play in the SWC? I will have to defer to the real old timers to know whether we have been cheating since the Doak Walker era...or before that time frame

[Longtime]

The real question is: What if we had never fired Hayden Fry?

Fry was a hell of a coach - look at what he did at North Texas and Iowa. Had he been allowed to stay at SMU for an extended period and continue to build, he might have been able to turn SMU into a perennial SWC contender.

You never see a definitive reason why Fry was fired, I guess he just pi$$ed off the wrong people. But he was a coaching legend and a lot of his former players and assistants went on to be successful head coaches. And we booted him.

Oh, and my Baylor friend: If you want to believe the former UT president's version about why Baylor made the cut for the Big 12, fine. I believe Cunningham said that because he didn't want to admit the truth: politics got Baylor and Tech into the Big 12, period. That Tech and Baylor had the next-largest fan followings after UT and A&M was merely convenient. Tech and Baylor had a lot of clout in the Texas legislature, which held the purse strings on UT and A&M's funding.

It has been well-documented that UT and A&M weren't going anywhere without Tech and Baylor because of Bob Bullock and his buddies in the state capitol. They never looked at fan bases and facilities - just votes in the legislature and who controlled the key funding committees.

SMU isn't considered a vital economic engine for its region, so Dallas-area legislators aren't going to put up a fight for the Mustangs the way West Texas and Waco-area lawmakers will for Tech and Baylor, respectively.

Which begs another "What if?" question: Had the Big 12 been formed when W was governor, could Laura have gotten SMU into the Big 12?

[CalallenStang]

If we NEVER cheated? would we have ever been invited to play in the SWC? I will have to defer to the real old timers to know whether we have been cheating since the Doak Walker era...or before that time frame

If you go back far enough in time, most players in college football were openly paid. There was no rule against it and schools were "hiring" the best players to play on their football teams.

During the first twenty-five years of the 20th century, there was a lot of debate on whether colleges/universities should continue athletic programs or not. Those in favor of athletics argued that exercise contributes to education by promoting a healthy lifestyle, and further arguments were that football contributed to the learning of strategies that could be used, among other things, in war (in fact, Theodore Roosevelt got the Secretary of War to re-start the Army/Navy game during this time period).

In this atmosphere of debate, several schools actually considered dropping football (Harvard) or did drop football altogether.

The final result was the structure of amateur student-athletes promoted (or so they say) by the NCAA today.

[mrydel]

The real question is: What if we had never fired Hayden Fry?

Fry was a hell of a coach - look at what he did at North Texas and Iowa. Had he been allowed to stay at SMU for an extended period and continue to build, he might have been able to turn SMU into a perennial SWC contender.

You never see a definitive reason why Fry was fired, I guess he just pi$$ed off the wrong people. But he was a coaching legend and a lot of his former players and assistants went on to be successful head coaches. And we booted him.

Oh, and my Baylor friend: If you want to believe the former UT president's version about why Baylor made the cut for the Big 12, fine. I believe Cunningham said that because he didn't want to admit the truth: politics got Baylor and Tech into the Big 12, period. That Tech and Baylor had the next-largest fan followings after UT and A&M was merely convenient. Tech and Baylor had a lot of clout in the Texas legislature, which held the purse strings on UT and A&M's funding.

It has been well-documented that UT and A&M weren't going anywhere without Tech and Baylor because of Bob Bullock and his buddies in the state capitol. They never looked at fan bases and facilities - just votes in the legislature and who controlled the key funding committees.

SMU isn't considered a vital economic engine for its region, so Dallas-area legislators aren't going to put up a fight for the Mustangs the way West Texas and Waco-area lawmakers will for Tech and Baylor, respectively.

Which begs another "What if?" question: Had the Big 12 been formed when W was governor, could Laura have gotten SMU into the Big 12?

If Fry had not been fired he would have been dead within a few years. The stress of the SWC had totally gotten to him. He would go off on tangents, fire coaches during the games, etc. It was almost like dementia. When he went to NTSU he got a new life without the pressure and was able to rebuild his genius, I know what he was like in his last years at SMU and I know what he was like in his first years at NTSU. A teammate of mine went to NTSU as a grad assistant coach. He had not cared much for Fry at SMU but he had an opportuntiy to coach and continue his education. He called me one night and said that Fry had turned 180 degrees and he was finally able to see what made Fry a great coach. The balance of his career is history. Being fired at SMU was the best thing to happen to him.

[rich59]

The reason Fry was fired was simple. After the 1971 season, he had had two winning seasons in ten years. That is when they decided to fire him but they wanted to wait until after Willis Tate retired to do the deed. Some of the Mustang Club faithful told them they were taking a chance because his schedule was weak in 1972 and there were a lot of good players coming back. If Fry had not screwed up the Virginia Tech game in 72, like he was inclined to do, he would probably have gotten SMU into a bowl and it would have been difficult to fire him. As it was, after 1972, he had three winning seasons in eleven years and there was a lot of bad feelings about firing him.

Possibly, the best thing that ever happened to him was to get fired at SMU. He probably learned something and he certainly did well at Iowa. The interesting thing about Fry was that he always had a knack for hiring talented assistant coaches.

[Sammy 11]

Oh, and my Baylor friend: If you want to believe the former UT president's version about why Baylor made the cut for the Big 12, fine. I believe Cunningham said that because he didn't want to admit the truth: politics got Baylor and Tech into the Big 12, period. That Tech and Baylor had the next-largest fan followings after UT and A&M was merely convenient. Tech and Baylor had a lot of clout in the Texas legislature, which held the purse strings on UT and A&M's funding.

It has been well-documented that UT and A&M weren't going anywhere without Tech and Baylor because of Bob Bullock and his buddies in the state capitol. They never looked at fan bases and facilities - just votes in the legislature and who controlled the key funding committees.

SMU isn't considered a vital economic engine for its region, so Dallas-area legislators aren't going to put up a fight for the Mustangs the way West Texas and Waco-area lawmakers will for Tech and Baylor, respectively.

Which begs another "What if?" question: Had the Big 12 been formed when W was governor, could Laura have gotten SMU into the Big 12?

I never disputed that BU and TT didn't use politics to get in, I merely pointed out that BU and TT were the logical 11 and 12 after UT and A&M and Cunningham certainly felt that way. No doubt politics did help us but after you guys got the death penalty there wasn't a real challenger. UH never had a fanbase and tcu was in really bad shape. We didn't "steal" anyone's spot, TT and BU legislators made 2 more spots.

As for W, who knows? If SMU had been reeling from the DP it probably would not have mattered. We could debate that for days and too many variables make it a moot point although it is interesting to think about.

[Stallion]

I know Fry had winning seasons in 1966, 1968 and was fired with a 7-4 record in 1972 so 3 at least

[rich59]

He was there from 1962 through 1972. That is three winning records in eleven years, but as I said before, the decision to fire him was made after 1971 when he had had two winning seasons in ten years. Most coaches would get fired with that record.