Southern Methodist University Football Scandal - Background

Background

The SMU Mustangs had won the 1935 national championship (as determined by the Dickinson System), 10 Southwest Conference titles, and had attended 11 bowl games. They also had numerous All-Americans including a Heisman Trophy winner (Doak Walker in 1949). From 1980 to 1984, SMU enjoyed its most successful era since the late 1940s and early 1950s. They posted a record of 45-5-1 and won three Southwest Conference titles. They nearly won their second national title in 1982, when they finished the season as the only undefeated team in the nation. However, the team lost its shot at a title when it settled for a tie against Arkansas in the last game of the season in order to lock up the conference title and a spot in the Cotton Bowl, rather than risk a two-point conversion that could have won the game. For most of the first half of the 1980s, the Mustangs played at Texas Stadium, then the home of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys.

SMU was the second-smallest school in the Southwest Conference (only Rice was smaller) and one of the smallest in Division I-A, with a total enrollment of just over 9,000 students in 1986. From the 1950s onward, SMU found it difficult to compete against schools that were double (or more) its size. Prior to the 1980s, SMU had tallied only nine winning seasons since 1949. The effort to keep up with the bigger Southwest Conference schools resulted in SMU straying very close to the ethical line and in many cases going over it. While SMU was not the only SWC school to be sanctioned for recruiting violations— in fact, at one point five of the conference's nine member schools were on some form of probation— SMU's violations seemed to be the most egregious. According to the 2010 ESPN documentary film "Pony Excess", many of these violations took place with the full knowledge of school administrators.

As a result of their attempts to compete with the larger schools in the SWC, SMU's football program was under nearly constant scrutiny from the NCAA from 1974 onward. SMU was placed on probation five times between 1974 and 1985, and had been slapped with probation seven times overall—more than any other school. The latest probation came as the result of an investigation into the recruiting practices of several assistant coaches and team boosters. Sean Stopperich, an offensive lineman from Pennsylvania who was part of the 1983 recruiting class and who had initially given an oral commitment to the University of Pittsburgh Panthers, told investigators that he and his family had received several thousand dollars from SMU boosters and assistant coaches to renege on that commitment and sign with the Mustangs. Stopperich would later go on to drop out of SMU after suffering a series of injuries which ended his football career, as well as a desire to return home to the Pittsburgh area. SMU, which had just come off of a season that saw them finish eighth in the country and win the Aloha Bowl against Notre Dame, was banned from bowl games for 1985 and 1986 and was also kicked off live television for 1986. It appeared that the sanctions had some effect on the Mustangs. They struggled to a 6-5 record in 1985 after entering the season ranked third in the AP Poll. Things didn't get much better in 1986, a season that saw the Mustangs lose four of their final five games after a 5-1 start in 1986 which saw them ranked as high as #18.