On the day the football died, Mitchell Glieber felt dirty.
The elaborate pay-for-play scheme uncovered by enterprising reporters and National Collegiate Athletic Association investigators had transformed Southern Methodist University into the ultimate symbol of college sports corruption, a cautionary tale featuring overzealous boosters and complicit administrators. When the college governing body lowered the boom, imposing the so-called "death penalty" on a day forever marked as a dubious milepost in the sport's evolution, Glieber felt a combination of loss and shame - splattered by the indignation of a scandal-weary nation.
"To many people, we'll always be a bunch of outlaws," remarked Glieber, a former Mustangs defensive back who was not implicated in the scandal. "That still hurts."
After many years under the thumb of Texas and Arkansas, SMU stormed to the top of the Southwest Conference in the early 1980s under the direction of head coach Ron Meyer, who built a powerful running game, dubbed "The Pony Express", around future Los Angeles Rams star Eric Dickerson. When Meyer cashed in on his success by moving to the NFL's New England Patriots, former Southern Mississippi head coach Bobby Collins kept the program galloping at full speed. Powerful SMU posted the nation's best record from 1981-84 (41-5-1), falling just three points shy of two perfect seasons as Mustang Mania swept Big D, challenging the Cowboys for the Metroplex's heart.
In time, investigative reporters for WFAA-TV and the Dallas Times Herald discovered that Dallas' favorite college and professional teams were distinguishable only by the size of their contracts. Determined to transform SMU into a national power, a small group of boosters, allegedly led by real estate developer and former Mustangs player Sherwood Blount, traversed Texas and adjoining states buying players with wads of cash and promises. By the time the school's governing board found out about the secret slush fund involving more than a dozen players, the Mustangs were already serving an NCAA probation for a previous recruiting violation. Instead of putting a stop to the practice and self-reporting the infractions to the NCAA, the ruling board - chaired by then-Texas Governor Bill Clements - conspired to continue the illicit payments, gambling that they could phase out the system while keeping it hush-hush. When the details became public, less than two years after image-conscious NCAA presidents had enacted the death penalty legislation in a haze of outrage fomented by a mounting list of scandals - allowing the governing body to suspend an especially flagrant program for up to two years - the scope of SMU's crime and the brazenness of the coverup infused the NCAA with a mandate approaching moral authority. After the officials from Kansas City administered the death penalty for the first, and so far, only, time, thereby canceling SMU's 1987 season, the council of Methodist bishops who oversee the university felt such remorse that they called off the 1988 season as well, essentially doubling the school's punishment. Death, at least partially, by shame.
Five years after starting over, humbled, contrite and constricted by the most devastating blow ever inflicted on a major college team, the SMU program continues to struggle. Even as university officials talk with pride about how the football program has become a model of institutional control and academic integrity, the Mustangs' 9-35 record since the death penalty (including 5-6 last year) attests to how dramatically the punishment altered the landscape along once cocky Mockingbird Drive. Even as they speak with anticipation about the modest goal of posting a winning season and eventually, someday, of competing once more for the Southwest Conference Championship, the school's administrators understand the odds and the perils associated with their unique place in football history.
"We're never going to be able to escape the past," conceded Paul Rogers, the dean of the SMU Law School, who serves as the university's faculty athletic representative. "But I'm not sure we want to."
When the axe fell, the NCAA allowed all of SMU's athletes, facing two years without games, to transfer to other schools. Nearly all left. By the time Forrest Gregg, the former Green Bay Packers and Cincinnati Bengals head coach, arrived to resuscitate his alma mater in January 1988, the program consisted of three holdover players from the Collins regime and precious little else. "I was made the coach of a team that wasn't even there," he said.
Adds Glieber, one of the three who chose to stay: "We were like seeds, left to sprout."
Inside a small Moody Coliseum office adorned mostly by trinkets from Gregg's days as Vince Lombardi's greatest offensive lineman, two footballs resting on a shelf behind his desk help tell the story of SMU's road back from oblivion.
"Those two balls are some of my most prized possessions, because of what they represent," said Gregg, who stepped away from the field two years ago to become athletic director.
One commemorates SMU's 31-30 come-from-behind victory over Division 1-AA Connecticut in 1989, when the entire team consisted of 18 scholarship players and four dozen walkons without previous college football experience. "To be totally out-manned as we were, and to win, I can't explain how significant that game was to me," said Gregg, who helped the Packers win five NFL championships.
The other ball marks last year's 41-16 victory over Houston, a more complex milepost on the comeback trail, colored by revenge, pride and surging confidence. In 1989, when SMU was at its weakest, John Jenkins' powerful Cougars, masters of the Run 'n Shoot, showed no mercy. The 95-21 rout was painful to watch. Last year's victory, even though it was accomplished over a much less potent Houston team, struck a blow "for the kids who had to endure that first season." It also demonstrated a certain amount of quantifiable progress. "That game meant we were back in a way we couldn't say we were before," Gregg said. If Russell Anderson's 30-yard field goal in the waning moments against Tulane had not veered wide, the Mustangs would have accomplished the unthinkable: A winning season.
Key losses on both sides of the ball will make the task tougher this season. The Mustangs must replace the entire offensive line, every linebacker, much of the secondary...and field an inexperienced quarterback. But thanks to three strong recruiting classes, this year's team is more talented, if less experienced. "Depth is no longer a strike against us," said third-year head coach Tom Rossley. "For the first time, we can line up against anyone and know we have a good chance."
After being cast for three years as the ultimate David in a world of Goliaths, last year's Mustangs "learned how to win...learned how to believe," said fifth-year senior cornerback Marcus Malonson.
"When I first came here, we were starting over and the goals were very modest," Malonson said. "Now the guys on this team believe we can make this a successful program and do it the right way."
The internal evaluation of the program conducted after the death penalty sentencing prompted various changes. In addition to instituting numerous safeguards against future financial abuses, the university significantly increased its academic standards for athletes. "The talent pool we can draw our athletes from us smaller," Rossley said. "But that doesn't mean we can't succeed. It just makes our job tougher."
Even as achieving a winning season anytime soon seems unlikely, the program's leadership dares to dream big. "We intend to get back to the Cotton Bowl," Gregg said. "There's no reason why we can't win the national championship in time."
Two years ago, the program dodged another bullet. With red ink mounting, SMU President A. Kenneth Pye appointed a task force to study the possibility of de-emphasizing football. Leaving Division I-A to compete at a lower level could have saved the school several million dollars per year and, presumably, forever closed the door on future scandals in the pursuit of victories.
"It was primarily an issue of money," said Rogers, the law dean widely credited with rebuilding the athletic program. "But when the Mustang Club agreed to raise $1.2 million a year to support the program, that made the decision [to remain in Division 1-A] much easier."
Giving the alumni such an important role in the financing of the program strikes some as inherently dangerous. It's a huge leap from school-managed contributions to the kind of illicit slush fund activities that once caused the program to implode, but the linkage represents a departure from the administration's post-death penalty assurances. SMU officials insist this compromise in pursuit of the program's survival can be successfully modulated.
"There's always a concern that it could get out of hand," Rogers said. "But the control is much tighter than it was."
Rogers is quick to point out that one of the major problems of the old SMU program was the complicity of some athletic officials in various wrongdoing. Gregg, widely considered a man of integrity, has staked his reputation on running a clean program. His employment contract includes a provision allowing his dismissal if he is involved in any NCAA violations - and so do the contracts of every member of the football coaching staff.
Like all major college programs across America, SMU could not exist without the symbiotic relationship with its alumni, and like all the rest, SMU remains vulnerable to the rouge booster whose desperation to win causes him to cross a line. As it rises from the ashes of its own overheated ambition, the SMU program is defined by a delicate balancing act: How to create success and passionate interest without manufacturing a new generation of ethically challenged boosters and coaches.
"There's a dependence that we can't ignore," Gregg said. "But I make it very clear every time I speak to an alumni group that we want their help within our rules."
Even as SMU officials talk with pride about their program as a new sort of model, they know their future is constantly under siege by their past. "We don't want to forget," Rogers said. "We don't want it to happen again, so we can't forget."
Copyright 1993 by Keith Dunnavant