Recruiting Scandal SMU Death Penalty

In February nineteen eighty seven was a day that will always be remembered in football that the SMU football team was given the death penalty by the NT double A, which is meaning they would have to forfeit an entire year the sport. Here's a story behind what led to this iconic moment in sports history today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I mean, then, res your guide to a rapid deep dive in sports history every day now did to truly understand what really happened at SMU, we have to go back to the nineteen seventies. At the time, SMU, which is located in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, was the second smallest school in the Southwest Conference. Only Rice was smaller in one of the smallest Division I schools, with an enrollment of just a few thousand in the nineteen seventies. This made it difficult for them to compete in collegiate sports, especially football, and in Texas we all know football is king and it all started when they hired a new coach, Ron Meyer. Ron was a great recruiter who was able to talk almost anybody into joining his team and even talked the school into launching a media campaign to double their attendance from twenty six thousand and seventy seven to fifty two thousand and seventy eight. Although this did not lead to immediate success, it helped garner a recruiting class that would lead them into the national spotlight, as many recruits told them that Coach Meyer may have been the greatest salesman they had ever known. Meyer's recruiting strategy was aggressive, pursuing the best football players in Texas despite being one of the smaller schools competing with schools such as Texas and Texas A and M. But not all his players were recruited in an ethical way. Meyer had been in communication with many boosters and he knew that they could use the money from the boosters to pay the recruits to come to their school. And it all started during a recruiting visit to a local Houston high school where they would give recruiting information to the students and include a ten, include a twenty or fifty dollars bill attached to their letter. Many players started calling SMU recruiters Santa claus At. Every time they showed up there was a gift for them. Numerous players were receiving gifts from the boosters, including Reggie Dunbard, who was a first round pick in the NFL, said he was given money in a car to be a running back at the school. But being such a small school, they hadn't raised any red flags yet, but they made a huge jump that perked up everyone's ears. Nineteen eighty, the SMU Mustangs had finally qualified for their first ever bull It all started to crumble when they went after one of the biggest recruits in the country, Eric Dickerson. Now, Dickerson was one of the top recruits in the nation and he had already committed to Texas A and M. But it said that his grandmother wanted him to stay closer and go to a school like SMU. She also really liked Ron Meyer and Dickerson was getting a little bit on the side. On top of getting money, he had this iconic golden Pontiac trans am that was given to him that he started driving around his senior year high school. Notice because Dickerson didn't come from a lot of money and this was a very fancy car, that's where did it come from. No one says exactly, but he was clearly from SME, and shortly after he decommitted from Texas A and M and committed to go to SMU. This is where the giving out cars may have been the fatal flaw in SMU's recruiting practices, as you can hide money, you can't hide a car. Everyone can see that. But shortly after Dickerson joined Craig James, creating the iconic Pony Express. This is one of their best years, as they qualified for the Holiday Bowl facing off against BYU, losing by just one point. Right after that a SMUs got hit with its first probation. They were given a one year bowl ban in a television band as a result to the recruiting violations they had come across. Despite that, they went on to win their conference championship and be ranked fifth in the nation. But following that year, Ron Meyer decided resigned and took the head coaching job for the New England Patriots. His successor ASMU was Bobby Collins, and he picked up right where Meyer had left off. Unfortunately, he was not the salesman that Meyer was, but he was able to coach them in nineteen eighty two to undefeated season and even one the Cotton Bowl that year, finishing number two in the final polls. That was the highest of heights that they would make. They had lost James and Dickerson to the NFL and continued to get sanctions from NCUBLEA. As they had not changed their practices made it harder to recruit. They weren't getting the same talent as they had been getting before. In nineteen eighty five, the NINTUBLEA called an emergency meeting in New Orleans to deal with the rast of violations that kept getting from SNU dating back to the nineteen seventies. At the meeting, the NCAA Council put in several new rules to combat the problem. Among these decisions was asking to reinforce the shutdown of the athletic program that will repeat offenders. This rule was known as the debt penalty. The new by laws called it the repeat violator rule and had stated if they were found guilty of two violations within five years, they could be barred from competition for up to two years. The rule eventually passed, but there were six schools that voted against it, including SMU. In nineteen eighty six, a news report went out about SMU's recruiting practices and this brought to light even more than investigation into the funds. The NCAA revealed that in nineteen eighty five in eighty six, thirteen players had been played a total of sixty one thousand dollars from a slush fund provided by the boosters. They sanctioned even more penalties on them and said if they didn't stop harsher punishments would come. But that year they still had forty seven thousand dollars have to pay the players. They had promised money to a total of thirteen, and they were going to phase out the payments over that time, wanting to stick to their promises, but the NCAA had had enough. They decided to give the death penalty as they would not stop their practices. The nineteen eighty seven season was canceled and all home games of the eighty eight season were canceled. They were allowed to play seven regular seats and games away to prevent other schools from being athletic financially effected, and the team would be on probation until nineteen ninety and its existing ban on bowl games and televised games was extended to nineteen eighty nine. They lost fifty five scholarships over the next four years and banned the boosters from attending games. The team would also only be allowed to hire five full time assistant coaches instead of the typical nine, and there was no off campus recruiting permitted until nineteen eighty eight and no paid visits to the campus for potential recruits. Now a s m U has come back from these pennties to play football again, but they have never come back to the heights they once were, only being briefly ranked here and there, but never in the top ten again and never experience seeing the chances at a national championship that they had before. This seems very odd in this day and age with the nil rules going into effect and players actually do get paid, but it just shows rules are rules. If you don't follow them, bad things can't happen. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you like this, please come back tomorrow for more Daily sports history after you tell a friend to come join you, and we'll be here tomorrow for more of Daily sports History.