Does Sherwood get unfair blame?

[PerunaPunch]

The scary thing is that I can totally empathize with Sherwood.

Being a competitive person by nature, I get it. Being surrounded by friends and business peers whose schools were cheating like mad, wouldn't you want to beat them at their own game? On a fundamental level, that's not much different than hiring more and better coaches, providing better facilities, etc.

Further, Sherwood was an ex-Mustang who hit the bigtime. I'm sure he had a fraternal bond with the current players of the day, and as an athlete probably knew what it was like to get by on the small stipend that scholarship players get to live on.

It's a slippery slope to start down on. Because I'm sure before he knew it, he was in a situation where there was no workable exit strategy.

I'm not trying to justify what he did, I'm just saying I can see how easy it would be to dig that hole and then realize "crap, I'm in a hole and there's no way out." I also wonder if Sherwood isn't a bit of a scapegoat.

Really, the ONLY way to handle it is how SMU does it currently, and that's to avoid anything that could even be remotely construed as impropriety, to self-police, and report everything (including laundry detergent and cheeseburgers) to the NCAA.

[rich59]

PP, good post. One observation and one question.

I agree that SMU should continue to " do it right" However, doing it right means that we will never compete with the "Big Dogs" the likes of Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, LSU. etc. The reason is that they don't go by all the rules like we do, academically or otherwise. Consequently, we need to factor that into our expectations. I just read in the Denver Post an interesting article. As you probably know, CSU used to have pretty good football teams. They used to beat SMU several years ago regularly. They have fallen on hard times recently and their long time coach, Sonny (?) I can't remember his last name, was fired and a new guy hired. They still have been losing a lot more than winning and the administration just made an announcement that from now on, a certain number of athletes and musicians who otherwise did not meet the academic standards of CSU were going to be admitted because their particular talents were of great use to the university, in spite of their academic shortcomings. That is one way to approach the problem.

You mentioned cheeseburgers. During my brief college football career, most big college football programs had an athletic dorm and training table and we ate high on the hog there. SMU, I believe has no A dorm and no training table. Do the players get an allowance for meals and living quarters or what?

[Get_Some_Ponies]

This has been said but it's unreal how open people are about this now that the film has run. Also: not every athlete or academic scholarship winner is broke or from an impoverished family. I had a deal with my dad that if I got a full ride he would buy me a new car. Yeah cheating goes on, but it's a lot easier to lease your kid a BMW for $299 month than it is to write a $45000 check each year. I be a lot of parents buy their athlete kids cars.

[gostangs]

Can you even imagine putting your hard earned cash into an envelope and handing it to a kid the likes of David Stanley? Or anyone player for that matter.

I understand that in life there are often issues that are grey. I just dont think that happens to be one of them. Love of school and competitive nature and all that are just excuses made for unethical people - because you happened to enjoy the result - not because it was o.k.

I think Mr Jones is about to prove you can do it within the rules - and believe me - I am all for pushing all the rules to their maximum - i just dont think its all that fuzzy when it comes to handing out cash or buying cars. When it gets to that level it is just a sad reflection on that person's character.

[ponyboy]

Yes.

[peruna81]

"what is wrong is wrong...whether everyone is doing it or not" -MOM

"the world is a d$mn hard place to live if you are a criminal, and even harder if you are a stupid, careless one" -DAD

"We run a basically clean program.." -Coach Meyer


so, all said and done, do we ever welcome back/forgive/recognize folks from that era now, or is it just a period of our history that is forever muted?

Seems to me that this national re-hashing through Thad's medium is a great place to start figuring that question out...not just here on a chat board, but University-wide.

[Charleston Pony]

This has been said but it's unreal how open people are about this now that the film has run. Also: not every athlete or academic scholarship winner is broke or from an impoverished family. I had a deal with my dad that if I got a full ride he would buy me a new car. Yeah cheating goes on, but it's a lot easier to lease your kid a BMW for $299 month than it is to write a $45000 check each year. I be a lot of parents buy their athlete kids cars.

So true; I had a "deal" with my kids that if they got and maintained their academic scholarships to Clemson (saved me $5,000-$7,500/yr for each of them), that I would give them their own cars...but of course, they didn't drive "luxury" vehicles.

[PerunaPunch]

You mentioned cheeseburgers. During my brief college football career, most big college football programs had an athletic dorm and training table and we ate high on the hog there. SMU, I believe has no A dorm and no training table. Do the players get an allowance for meals and living quarters or what?

I mentioned cheeseburgers because we once had a coach who was allegedly fired for buying on of his players a cheeseburger.

My dad lived in Letterman Hall while he was at SMU. It was an A dorm back then. When I was there in the '80s, athletes were scattered around the dormitories all over campus. about 5 years ago, Letterman Hall (behind Wescott Field / Morrison Bell Track) was flattened to make room for the parking garage located there now.

As far as I know, SMU never had a training table. Back in the '80s, the athletes ate in the cafeteria in McElveny (sp) Hall, which was a dorm for freshmen girls. Maybe that's the source of the "freshman 15". McElveny did serve better food than the regular cafeteria. We now have The Hall of Champions in the Lloyd All-Sports Center, where I believe they serve team meals.

[CalallenStang]

straight athletic dorms are now against NCAA rules. Regarding training table, I think there are strict NCAA rules about how many meals per week can be provided at one. To my knowledge, SMU athletes do not have a separate dining room for training table, but may partake in "training table" meals at Umphrey Lee. I think the rule is something like 1 meal per day or something like that.

[Samurai Stang]

straight athletic dorms are now against NCAA rules. Regarding training table, I think there are strict NCAA rules about how many meals per week can be provided at one. To my knowledge, SMU athletes do not have a separate dining room for training table, but may partake in "training table" meals at Umphrey Lee. I think the rule is something like 1 meal per day or something like that.

It would be most excellent to have a training table. They provide an excellent selling point to recruits.

[texasmustang10]

His son is a freshman here but not his daughter.

[No Quarter]

I am pretty sure I remember talk about the training table in the middle fifties. No idea how many meals per day or week. Rayburn?

[mrydel]

We had an athletic dining hall in the basement of the A dorm mentioned above. We ate all of our meals there. Thus was 1968-1972. Shortly after that they discontinued and the athletes ate in the cafeteria. We did, during that time room with the normal human beings in the dorms.

[Mitch McConnell]

There's a part of me that wonders if Blount now regrets not talking about this. He has his reasons I'm sure.

[RunPeruna]

We were and perhaps still are the most penalized school in the history of the NCAA.

No worries mrydel. No longer are we the leaders...Hallelujah!

http://chronicle.com/blogs/players/with ... lead/27927