Southern Methodist University Football Scandal - Aftermath

Aftermath

SMU returned to football in 1989 under coach Forrest Gregg, a former Hall of Fame lineman with the NFL's Green Bay Packers who had been a star at SMU in the early 1950s. He was hired in the spring of 1988 and inherited a team made up mostly of freshmen and walk-ons. Gregg's new charges were mostly undersized and underweight; he was taller and heavier than all but a few of the players on the 70-man squad. The new squad was particularly short on offensive linemen; Gregg had to make several prospective wide receivers bulk up and move to the line. By nearly all accounts, it would have been unthinkable for SMU to have allowed such a roster to play a competitive schedule in 1988.

Games were moved to Ownby Stadium, a 23,000-seat on-campus facility. It had to be heavily renovated to meet Division I-A standards; SMU had not played there regularly since 1947 and had not played any games on campus at all since 1948. The Mustangs played there until 1994, when they moved to the Cotton Bowl, the scene of SMU's first glory era in the 1940s and 1950s. Since 2000, the Mustangs have played at Gerald J. Ford Stadium, which was built at the location of the razed Ownby Stadium.

The scandal devastated what had consistently been a top 20-ranked team. SMU's players were younger, smaller, and less experienced than their opponents; one team captain later stated that he questioned whether some of his teammates had played high school football. The new team was, as the Associated Press later reported, "scared, almost terrified" to leave the locker room to play number one-ranked Notre Dame on 11 November 1989. Opposing coach Lou Holtz reportedly was kind to SMU, only defeating the Mustangs by a score of 59-6. This was better than the Mustangs' 95-21 loss to Houston several weeks earlier, during which future Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware threw six touchdown passes against SMU in the first half. 13 players needed knee surgery after the 1989 season compared to the normal three or four. Gregg, who left coaching to become SMU's athletic director in 1991, later said

I never coached a group of kids that had more courage ... They thought that they could play with anyone. They were quality people. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences in my football life. Period.

Next to the cancellation of two seasons, the most severe sanction in the long term was the loss of 55 scholarships over four years. As a result, the Mustangs did not have a full complement of scholarships until 1992, and it was another year before they fielded a team entirely made up of players unaffected by the scandal. Additionally, in the wake of the scandal, school officials opted to significantly increase the admissions standards for prospective athletes, effectively removing them from contention for the kinds of players they attracted in the 1980s. Since 1989, SMU has had a record of 66-169-3.

Clements' political career was ruined by the scandal. He apologized for his role in continuing the payments in March 1987. He said that the board had "reluctantly and uncomfortably" decided to continue the payments, feeling it had to honor previous commitments. However, he said, in hindsight "we should have stopped (the payments) immediately" rather than merely phase the fund out. He faced calls for his impeachment as a result of admitting his role in the payments; two state legislators argued that he would have never been elected had he honestly addressed his role in the scandal. While none of these efforts materialized, the scandal effectively ended Clements' political career; he did not run for re-election in 1990.

Collins was not sanctioned by the NCAA for any role in the events leading up to the "death penalty," though the final report criticized him for not providing a convincing explanation for why players were still being paid after the school assured the NCAA that the payments had stopped. Nonetheless, his reputation was ruined. While he was a finalist for an opening at Mississippi State in 1990 (which eventually went to Jackie Sherrill), he has not returned to the collegiate ranks in any capacity since leaving SMU.

The Southwest Conference suffered greatly as a result of the scandal. It already had a dubious reputation with the number of NCAA violations at its member schools (at one point, only three of its nine members - Arkansas, Baylor and Rice - were not on probation), and the discovery of the scandal was a blow from which the conference never recovered. The SWC dissolved in 1996, and SMU moved initially to the Western Athletic Conference along with former SWC rival TCU. The Mustangs eventually transferred to Conference USA along with Rice in 2005, joining former SWC rival and C-USA charter member Houston. The team continues to compete in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision despite having an undergraduate enrollment of about 6,000 students—one of the smallest in the division.

Prior to joining Conference USA, SMU had only one winning season since returning from the "death penalty," in 1997. In 2009, the Mustangs made their first bowl appearance since 1984, a 45-10 victory over Nevada in the Hawaiʻi Bowl. They succeeded in winning the C-USA West Division in 2010, giving them their first shot at winning a conference since 1984, but they lost in the Conference USA Championship to UCF. They did receive a second consecutive bowl bid, however. SMU was invited to participate in that year's Armed Forces Bowl to face Army in what amounted to another home game for SMU: because of construction at the game's primary site, Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, the game was held at SMU's Gerald J. Ford Stadium. They would end losing this game despite playing it on home turf with a score of 16-14. In 2011, the Mustangs were invited to the BBVA Compass Bowl in Birmingham, Alabama—the first time they'd made three consecutive bowl appearances since the glory years of the early 1980s. The game was played on January 7, 2012, the first January bowl game for SMU since their appearance in the Cotton Bowl in 1983. By coincidence, they played Pittsburgh, the team they had defeated in that Cotton Bowl game, in the BBVA Compass Bowl and defeated them 28-6 for their second bowl win in three seasons. They will move to the American Athletic Conference in 2013.

The far-reaching effects that resulted from enacting the "death penalty" on SMU has reportedly made the NCAA reluctant to issue another one. Since 1987, 31 schools have committed two major violations within a five-year period, thus making them eligible for the "death penalty." However, the NCAA has seriously considered shutting down a Division I sport only three times since then—against Kentucky men's basketball in 1989, Penn State football in 2012 and Texas Southern University football and men's basketball in 2012. It has actually handed down a "death penalty" only twice, both against smaller schools—Division II Morehouse College men's soccer in 2003 and Division III MacMurray College men's tennis in 2005.

In 2002, John Lombardi, then president of the University of Florida and now president of the Louisiana State University System, expressed the sentiment of many college officials when he said:

SMU taught the committee that the death penalty is too much like the nuclear bomb. It's like what happened after we dropped the (atom) bomb in World War II. The results were so catastrophic that now we'll do anything to avoid dropping another one.