SMU Trustees Put Up $1.7 Million

Members of the Southern Methodist University board of trustees announced Friday that they, as individuals, would donate $1.7 million to the school to pay for the contract buyouts of three former athletic department officials and to pay other football scandal expenses, including legal fees, the cost of an internal investigation and an investigation by a bishops’ committee of the United Methodist Church.

The resolution was approved unanimously by the 30 trustees at the special meeting in University Park, Tex.

Board Chairman Ray Hunt said that $600,000 of the funds will be used to reimburse the school for the contracts of former football coach Bobby Collins, Athletic Director Bob Hitch and his former administrative assistant, Henry Lee Parker. The buyouts cost the school $863,000, some of which has already been reimbursed.

Hitch, Collins and Parker resigned a year ago because of revelations that players continued to receive payments after the school had been put on probation by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Two months after they left, the NCAA, citing continued rules violations, canceled the school’s 1987 football schedule and put the program on probation until 1990. The university later canceled the 1988 season as well.

Former school President L. Donald Shields also resigned. Kenneth Pye, a former Duke University administrator, was hired as SMU president in May.

Pye said: “What the board has done today is give the university a big Christmas present.” Pye also pledged that he would continue to cooperate with an investigation by Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox. The attorney general’s office has said that more than $10,000 is missing from the school’s athletic department.