The NCAA Wasn’t Tough on SMU; It Was Wishy-Washy

Long ‘bout now, you can bet the mood is gloomy down on the Southern Methodist campus, a spread now known as the Bar One Ranch.

The NCAA announced Tuesday that it was inviting the SMU football team to set a spell. Take a year off, boys. No football in 1987. And then kind of ease back into it in ‘88, with fewer games, fewer coaches, fewer scholarships and--a body would hope--fewer flagrant rule violations.

The Mustangs can play no football in ’87 and just seven games, all on the road, in ’88.

Too harsh?

No, too wishy-washy.

The NCAA could have, and should have, imposed its new “death penalty,” which is a full two-year ban for a repeat offender. The NCAA evidently decided to ease into this death business. Try a semi-death and see how it works.

It’s the NCAA’s version of cryogenics. Freeze the football program and bring it back to life when someone finds a cure for flagrant cheating.

You have to give the NCAA boys credit for courage. As of late last week it looked as if they might wimp out and give SMU some kind of probation, or mete out a light penalty, like making the players wear their football shoes on the wrong feet.

David Berst, the director of enforcement for the NCAA, is no Wyatt Earp, but at least he didn’t duck out the back door of the saloon when the lead started flying. He did faint when it was all over, but he was on his feet when it counted.

The penalty Berst handed down Tuesday on behalf of the NCAA was as strong as truck-stop coffee. It will deliver a message. But it should have been stronger.

We’re dealing with major league stuff, here. As Sports Illustrated editorialized late last year, “Collectively, the Southwest Conference football programs have been the most investigated, penalized and corrupt in the country, and SMU’s has been the worst offender of all.”

Technically, SMU is the nation’s co -worst offender of all. With its most recent violations, SMU pulled into a tie with Wichita State as the most-penalized school in the NCAA, with seven major violations each.

Nobody likes a tie, but there is no word on whether SMU and Wichita State will be allowed to play a sudden-death playoff.

OK, I know, this is no time to kid around. This is serious business. A lot of people, including even some innocent players, will semi-die with the SMU football program. Many will question whether the NCAA did the right thing in singling out one school, using SMU to deliver the new get-tough message.

Hey, who better?

SMU seems like a great place to start. In 11 of the last 15 years, the Mustang program has been busted by the NCAA for significant rule infractions. The Mustangs don’t get their hand caught in the cookie jar; they get nailed swan-diving into it.

“It’s just unfortunate that I happened to be at a school where the NCAA decided to crack down,” said one SMU football player.

Here is a guy obviously not majoring in history or current events.

In the name of building character and a proud football tradition, people associated with the university have pulled stunts that would make Dallas’ own J.R. Ewing cringe.

To be fair, the school is somewhat of a victim of cultural discrimination. There still exists in Texas some of the renegade, Wild West spirit that helped make Texas the proud, independent state it is, and which us non-Texans don’t always understand.

For instance, there are no laws in Texas against drinking and driving, as long as you’re not drunk. Cities like Houston don’t bother with sissy stuff like zoning laws. It’s the kind of swaggering, mind-yer-own-bizness philosophy that, in some ways, you have to admire.

But when that attitude carries over into the big-time college football programs, which are part of a national system that has these funny rules, you get yourself in a heap o’ trouble.

There are a lot of big-money boys in Texas who are dedicated boosters of the various programs, and there is competition, a sort of my-oil-well-is-bigger-than-your-oil-well attitude. What happens--as we see by the evidence annually bulldozed into huge heaps--is that some of these boosters, and players and coaches and administrators, cheat. Monthly cash payments to some of the players was one of the violations for which SMU got cited.

There’s cheating all over, of course, even around this town from time to time. But if you’re going to take a stand, if you’re going to make even a token effort to clean up college sports in this country, well . . .

Let’s just say, if you’re hungry, you don’t go fishin’ in a goldfish bowl.

And you don’t go semi-fishing. Next time, give them liberty or give them death.