PonyFans.com

When was Forrest Greg hired? How much time passed from the DP to Gregg being hired? Also, what players were committed to SMU in the 87 class who then looked elsewhere because of the DP?

My memory is that scholarships FOR 1987 were cut to the bone or nothing by previous NCAA action that year. I think I used to have a Mustang Club type mailing that named a dozen or so players who had been induced to walk-on that fall before the DP was announced in the hope of maintaining a degre of continuity.

I don't think any of them ever played for SMU.

I hope that Stallion will weigh in on this topic.

EDITED TO MAKE IT CLEAR I WAS REFERING TO NEW SCHOLARSHIPS FOR PLAYERS ENTERING IN 1987.

The NCAA announced the penalties on February 25, 1987. The Forrest Gregg press conference was January 14, 1988.

Dwan wrote:When was Forrest Greg hired? How much time passed from the DP to Gregg being hired? Also, what players were committed to SMU in the 87 class who then looked elsewhere because of the DP?

Because we were on probation, there were no recruited athletes in the 86-87 class of students. But, I think that we had one guy who "walked on" pending getting a scholarship in 87-88. The fact that we had no freshman recruits on campus that year was one of the reasons we "volunteered" to sit out 88-89. We simply didn't have enough players to field any kind of team.

Ultimately, our recruiting looked like this:
86-87 - none
87-88 - none
88-89 - I think we got 15 scholarships
89-90 - I think we got 30 scholarships. I may have the numbers mixed up a bit, but I remember we had something like 45 scholarship players - almost all freshman - when we lined up against UT, A&M, ND, and Houston that year. I think Mitch Glieber was the only holdover left from the 86-87 team.

It may be hard to believe, but the job was considered a "hot" job and we looked at a lot of coaches from top programs. Originally, we hired the alleged Christian in charge of Colorado's team. He was signed sealed and delivered until he went back on his word b/c God told him to stay in Colorado. Instead of coaching our team, he was winning a National Championship in 1990.

His backing out of the deal was one of the reasons it took so long for Gregg to get hired. Essentially, we had to start over and some of the original candidates were no longer available. We were very lucky to get Coach Gregg.