DMN: SMU is lucky to have June Jones - he's going to win

[Rebel10]

Does anyone think this media battle will backfire on June?

[GiddyUp]

Right Stallion, he is just making excuses now..

[ponyinNC]

Does anyone think this media battle will backfire on June?

It would have been better to do this behind closed doors where we would be limited in our response or grassroots ability to make our voices heard.

you'd think they would have learned this after the ASU fiasco - deal was made in private, but when it leaked out publicly, the backlash from ASU fans derailed the deal.

Steinberg is a moron.

[Treadway21]

Why can't anyone outside of Ponyfans call it like it is and write an article about how we were competitive with our SWC brothers for a decent amount of 80 years.

I'm sorry but we weren't.

We were competitive through the 40's, and then had little sustained success until we went out and openly bought players, making us the dirtiest program in NCAA football history, which led only to about a five year run of success. When Hayden Fry had a LITTLE success here he quickly jumped ship. Shoot, anybody remember when Cavan went 6-5 and everybody thought he was going to go to Ole Miss? I do. He was going to leave, too. And of course, Ron Meyer left as soon as HE could.
By in large we were run over decade after decade by the 'horns, pigs, aggies, and later on the cougs when they joined. We consistently fought Baylor, Rice, and TCU for the bottom. I'm sorry but it's true - look up our records through the SWC years.

From the time SMU entered the SWC in 1918 until the DP in 1986 (that's 69 years), the only two SWC schools* with had a higher winning percentage than SMU were UT & Arkansas.

* - had to be a SWC member for more than 12 years to qualify.

Oh, and for you or any other poster that wants to single out SMU for cheating during the Pony Express days, that gold Trans-Am was originally the property of A&M, not SMU.

Thank you for correcting revisionist history. You can't pick and choose the baseline. Yes we had periods of mediocrity but those periods coincided with bad choices for our Fball coaches. I am not saying Jibes is bad, but when the right coach was in place we won championships.

[PerunaPunch]

17 Category C commitments in June Jones' first full recruiting class. 15 got in which we have beaten to death. The other 2 were offered delayed admission. The academic standards were cleared for June Jones which he admitted immediately. There have only been minor tweaks and changes since he came here which affect only a sliver of the recruiting pool. Look if we are wrong why don't you do an investigative report by interviewing SMU athletic and administrative officials. Ask for the numbers or a profile of those going before the Committee. What you will find are a bunch of kids flagged but most all were admitted.

I actually think this is a great idea. Maybe it will cause some more chips to fall.

I do believe the playing field has been mostly leveled. I don't think, for example, Cavan could even has sniffed at admitting a guy like Levingston. I don't know that for sure, because I don't know what his grades were and all that crap. But reading between the lines, I think it's a safe assumption.

I do think it's interesting that what June was quoted as saying today and what's in your signature do sound a bit contradictory.

I think the truth may lie in the fact the recruiting is so unbelievably competitive –– it's like nuclear escalation. We build a 50 mill. stadium so TCU does a $160 million renovation and Houston (me too, me too!) builds a $100 million stadium. Kids have a tough time choosing, so any barriers or additional hoops they have to jump through are enough to tip the scale in favor of another school.

The fact that we can't seem to overcome whatever those objections are is a different question and one I wouldn't dare argue with you on.

[Rebel10]

Does anyone think this media battle will backfire on June?

It would have been better to do this behind closed doors where we would be limited in our response or grassroots ability to make our voices heard.

you'd think they would have learned this after the ASU fiasco - deal was made in private, but when it leaked out publicly, the backlash from ASU fans derailed the deal.

Steinberg is a moron.

I guess we will see.

[Stallion]

Its very unusal for a kid to return from California for Spring term classes when he has already flunked out. In fact, under NCAA rules the usual time guys are flushed out of a program is at the end of the Spring term because that's when the mandatory APR standards must be met. If forgot exactly but a 2nd year recruit has to pass something like 24 hours by end of 2nd year or he's gone. 3rd and 4th years must make similiar progress. More likely a kid could be on academic probation like Darius Johnson and others. But that's not flunking out and not in any way unusual at a Division 1A school. We usually find out about academic probations during Spring practice. Kids all across the country miss spring practice due to academic probation

[leopold]

Why can't anyone outside of Ponyfans call it like it is and write an article about how we were competitive with our SWC brothers for a decent amount of 80 years.

From the time SMU entered the SWC in 1918 until the DP in 1986 (that's 69 years), the only two SWC schools* with had a higher winning percentage than SMU were UT & Arkansas.

* - had to be a SWC member for more than 12 years to qualify.

Oh, and for you or any other poster that wants to single out SMU for cheating during the Pony Express days, that gold Trans-Am was originally the property of A&M, not SMU.

Thank you for correcting revisionist history. You can't pick and choose the baseline. Yes we had periods of mediocrity but those periods coincided with bad choices for our Fball coaches. I am not saying Jibes is bad, but when the right coach was in place we won championships.

During the 1950's, 60's, and 70's we averaged about two and half winning seasons a year, with half of our conference being small private schools. Here is a link to the score of everyfootball game we ever played:
http://www.jhowell.net/cf/scores/SouthernMethodist.htm

So, okay, we were competitve within the SWC - you are right on that. But after UT and Arky there was really nobody in the SWC that was consistently great. We were a decent team within a mediocre conference, one everybody knew was destined to break up.

Oh, and it was shown time and again when we had the right coach he left as soon as he could. Fry had, I think, one winning season and left. Meyer, two. Cavan had one and was looking to go to Ole Miss. That means the program has issues, not just the coaches.

[PerunaPunch]

Could be that academic probation is a bigger issue in spring term because it affects the necessity to attend summer school and/or whether or not you can play in the fall. Not sure whether being on probation in Dec would effect your ability to participate in spring practice.

[bubba pony]

FYI Haden Fry was fired from SMU. My memory recalls he lost to Virginia Tech when VT was a cupcake and the alumni wanted him fired right after the game. someone with a better memory, feel free to clarify.

[MV pony]

Last summer someone on here reported that SMU was going to announce a new degree program for athletes. Did this happen? The current recruiting problem may be the lack of a compelling degree program for the highly talented athlete whose only goal is the NFL.

[ponyboy]

But, clearly, you know much better than the rest of us.

I'm not trying to be cute with this post. Forgive if it comes across that way.

We could go out and gather sufficient data rather than feelings about a certain slices of it. Or we can rely on Sagarin, which already takes into account opponent strength of schedule and is as close to an objective measure of performance as exists out there. In other words, when someone says that Coach X hasn't beaten the good teams, well duh. If he had beaten them, he'd been ranked higher.

Look to final Sagarin for any particular team if you want to see the quality of that team. The teams in your general area in those rankings will have on average "not beaten good teams," i.e. the teams that are ahead of them in the rankings and therefore the better teams.

[stc9]

Going back to recruiting a moment. As I recall when JJ first got here the SMU coaches would have traveling football clinics in the summer. I don't recall hearing about these in the past couple of years. Do we still do these? If not, when did they end and was a reason ever given?

[ponyboy]

I just figured out how to summarize it.

EVERYONE but that one team who wins the national championship after going undefeated on the year DID NOT BEAT THE BETTER TEAMS.

Or else they did something maybe even worse. They beat better teams but then lost to lesser teams.

[sbsmith]

The current recruiting problem may be the lack of a compelling degree program for the highly talented athlete whose only goal is the NFL.

The current recruiting problem is that the coaching staff has no interest in recruiting. You really think a Gen Studies major or something similar will make up for that?