SMU Football Afterlife Won’t Be Heavenly on Field

Fred Goldsmith is probably a wonderful man, owner of a keen football mind, possessor of family values, etc.

But at this particular moment, a scant 20 days before his Rice University Owls can end the longest current losing streak in Division I-A football, Goldsmith--and how can we put this delicately?--is sort of lying through his pearly whites.

If Goldsmith had his way, he would like America to believe that his team’s season-opening opponent, Southern Methodist University, is scarier than Freddy Krueger, more mysterious than a palm reader, more dangerous than a Hell’s Angel with a 12-pack strapped to his handlebars and a full tank of gas in his Harley.

Instead, he wants sympathy for his scholarly Owls, winless in their last 18 tries against the likes of Notre Dame, a 54-11 winner; and itsy-bitsy Southwestern Louisiana, a 41-16 victor.

In the coaching ranks, this is known as covering one’s posterior.

“It’s not fair,” Goldsmith said. “We’ve lost 18 games in a row and now the pressure is thrown on you right off.”

Save it for the booster club, Fred. SMU is about as fearsome an opponent right now as a clawless kitten. The school hasn’t fielded a football team in two years, thanks to a program so corrupt that the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. ultimately was forced to impose the so-called “death penalty” on the Mustangs.

Time served, parole granted, SMU football returns Sept. 2 to the big time, poorer but wiser, smaller but smarter, it says.

Leading the revival is Forrest Gregg, the former Green Bay Packer all-pro lineman and National Football League coach who answered the call of his alma mater early last year. Gregg inherited a program short on scholarships, playing experience, juniors and seniors, academic loopholes--his choice--and stadium seats.

So it is with quiet amusement that Gregg, seated behind a great wooden desk, flanked by richly paneled office walls, listens to the reports of Goldsmith’s concerns. He is told that Goldsmith is fretting about the first game, that Goldsmith says SMU has a distinct advantage because Gregg has had more than a year to install his offensive and defensive sets.

He is informed that although Goldsmith acknowledges the disparity of scholarship players--95 for Rice, 42 for SMU--the first-year Rice coach also suggests that Gregg can somehow even the gap with his many sideline talents.

“Forrest Gregg didn’t just fall off the back of a turnip truck,” Goldsmith had said.

Maybe not, but as the season approaches, Gregg finds himself faced with more difficulties than Goldsmith will ever know in 1989.

Sure, Gregg has had a year to introduce his system--but to whom? At the end of that first week of practice back in August of 1988, Gregg’s team featured only 18 scholarship players and 42 walk-ons.

This fall, he welcomes 25 more scholarship players, but has less than a month--the same number of days allotted to Goldsmith--to indoctrinate his newcomers.

And only a couple of months ago was Gregg allowed to expand his coaching staff from five assistants to a post-death penalty maximum of nine assistants, plus two graduate assistants and one volunteer coach.

So much for advantages.

Turns out that no matter how hard Goldsmith huffs and puffs and insists that his warnings “aren’t just trite coaching talk,” few followers of Southwest Conference football give SMU much of a chance against Rice--or any of the 10 other opponents, among them Notre Dame, Texas, Texas A&M; and Arkansas--on its ambitious schedule. Even the oddsmakers, who are well aware of Rice’s hapless streak, offer the Mustangs little hope.

“I’d have to make Rice a seven- to 10-point favorite,” said Jimmy Vaccaro, the race and sports director at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.

By the way, Vaccaro said, it will be the first time since 1979--and only the seventh time in the last 15 years--that Rice has been favored to win a game against any team. As for SMU’s game against Notre Dame on Nov. 11, Vaccaro said SMU will be about a 52-point underdog.

And still, Goldsmith seeks sympathy.

“I had a reporter tell me how bad we were going to beat them,” he said. “So I asked him to name our starters. Well, you start listing the names and he got to about four. See, we ain’t exactly a proven winner, either. So listen, I ain’t sitting here feeling sorry for SMU.”

Oddly enough, neither is Gregg, who goes about his business as happily as someone constructing a house from scratch. His foundation is supplied by those 42 scholarship players. His framework comes courtesy of a revamped athletic department. And the roof over his program’s head is supplied by an SMU administration well aware of the struggle ahead.

“I will not suggest the possibility of an unblemished record,” said SMU President A. Kenneth Pye. “My only expectation for the team is that it play as well as it’s capable of playing.”

And do so without drawing the considerable attention of NCAA investigators. Embarrassed by previous rules infractions and a play-for-pay scandal, SMU decision-makers want a team that appears on the scoreboard page, not the police blotter. They want a team that knows that the three R’s don’t stand for runnin’, receivin’ and returnin’.

“The big question is, can SMU win without cheating?” Gregg said. “I think you have a set of rules and you play by them. It’s just as simple as that.”

That’s the thing about the supposedly new and improved SMU football program: It isn’t being built for instant success as much as for longevity.

After all, it was only a year ago that Gregg, attending the annual SWC kickoff luncheon, had to endure the cynical laughter of a packed hotel ballroom as an SMU video flickered on the screen. When the narrator of the video spoke of the school’s integrity, that’s when the chuckles began.

Gregg wasn’t amused.

“I’ll say this much, gentlemen and ladies,” he told the audience that day. “This is not a laughing matter. This is serious business for us. We believe in SMU and we believe in what it stands for. And you can be assured of one thing: When SMU fields a team in 1989, those people will go out onto the field for the right reason--to play football and to get an education.”

So serious is SMU about this commitment that Pye reportedly told the school’s Presidential Search Committee that he would immediately submit his resignation if the program was found guilty of wrongdoing again. Pye asked for one stipulation: that he be given 24 hours to fire the athletic director, too.

Pye also has overseen a reconstruction of academic standards for SMU athletes, particularly football players:

--No more special admissions.

--No more Proposition 48 admissions. A score of at least 900--200 points higher than the NCAA’s minimum--is required on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for acceptance.

--All players are required to take PE 1191, a physical education class that features not a single lesson in theory of football. Instead, its working title is “Current Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics.” Guest lecturer Doug Single, SMU’s athletic director, makes at least one appearance each semester and begins his speech with, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the most corrupt business in America.”

And players no longer are hired hands, there to major in football and nothing else. Under SMU’s new rules, a player must live on campus his freshman, sophomore and junior years. The goal is to integrate the athlete into the university experience, not isolate him.

Gregg interviewed every potential SMU player. If a recruit expressed an interest in, say, engineering, Gregg arranged a visit between the player and an engineering professor. Curricula were discussed. Life after football was a popular topic.

“All the other (recruiters) said, ‘Academics first,’ but I don’t know if they really meant it,” said linebacker Michael Henderson, one of SMU’s prized 1989 recruits.

The results are evident enough. Glance at the Mustang roster and you will find 21 National Honor Society members, 12 honor roll students, 15 Who’s Who Among American High School Students, one summa cum laude, one cum laude, one double major, one academic all-star, one geometry student of the year and one author of poetry.

It is a brainy group, these Mustangs, well versed in slide rules and Pythagorean theories. But can they win a football game this season?

Max Emfinger, who operates a national high school recruiting service, isn’t so sure. Standing on the Texas Stadium sidelines during the recent Texas high school all-star game, Emfinger complimented SMU on its latest recruiting class. “Very solid,” he said. “A lot of players who can play.”

But last’s year’s effort wasn’t as successful, he said. In fact, Emfinger figures that in 1988, SMU signed only three legitimate players.

“Notre Dame could start their freshmen team and beat (SMU),” Emfinger said.

Such talk annoys Gregg, but what can he do? Only three of his players have ever appeared in a college game.

So he grits his teeth and makes no promises, except to say that his Mustangs will play hard.

He dismisses the prevailing idea that the team will be devastated by injuries before it reaches November and that ballyhooed date with Notre Dame in South Bend.

He asks for no pity.

“I don’t think our risk is any greater than anyone else’s,” he said.

Nor is he too worried about morale.

“I think they know they’re facing a tremendous challenge,” he said. “But I think they look forward to it.”

Wide receiver Mitchell Glieber, the only scholarship letterman remaining from the 1986 team, has counted the moments until SMU football resumed.

As fate would have it, Glieber’s choice of schools as a high school senior came down to SMU and Rice. And when Glieber considered transferring after SMU received the death penalty, he all but begged Northwestern to accept him. Duly impressed, Northwestern’s athletic director approved the transfer, only to have Glieber change his mind and remain in Dallas.

That Northwestern athletic director? SMU Athletic Director Doug Single.

“I basically shafted him,” Glieber said. “When I saw him here I said, ‘You must think I was an idiot.’ ”

Not so. Single complimented him on his loyalty.

Glieber has heard the dire forecasts of a winless SMU season. He has listened to the concerns about his physical well-being, what with the abuse he and his teammates are bound to take. And in a way, Glieber understands.

“Every coach and team is going to be looking past us,” he said. “I can’t blame them.”

Neither can quarterback Mike Romo, who was bound for Brigham Young University, Purdue, Rice or one of the service academies when he suffered a knee injury during his senior year of high school.

“Otherwise, I doubt I would have ended up here,” he said.

But here he is, part of a roster that features all sorts of longshots and dreamers.

“There are a lot of people like me--too small, too short, a 10th of a second too slow,” he said. “You just go out there and play. There’s really no pressure on us because no one expects anything from us. But I’ve got good feelings about this. I think we can be competitive, though I won’t say we’re going to the Cotton Bowl this year.”

Instead, the Mustangs will have to settle for road games and cozy Ownby Stadium, the school’s 23,615-seat campus facility that hasn’t been used for football since 1948. No other team in a major conference--the Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern, Pacific 10 or Southwest--plays in a stadium smaller than Ownby. In football-crazed Texas, there are high school stadiums that approach SMU’s in seating capacity.

Gregg used to practice at Ownby when he played for SMU in the mid-1950s, but the team traveled to the Cotton Bowl for home games. And from 1979-1986, SMU played at Texas Stadium, a dismal place for college football, Glieber said.

“The place would echo,” he said. “It’s not a college atmosphere over there. It’s too high-tech.”

Ownby is low-tech. There will be no Jumbotron or DiamondVision screens, just an electronic board that features down, distance and score. Wooden bleachers can be found in the East stands. The visitors’ locker room is across the street.

The stadium press box is Spartan, so much so that Ed Wisneski, the sports information director, sent a memorandum to Single, asking that the toilet facilities be doubled--from one stall to two.

There are no luxury boxes, which explains why Pye probably will make Division I-A history by occupying a bleacher seat come Sept. 2.

“It’s a very interesting experiment,” Pye said. “First, if we can play competitive football. Secondly, if the media can exist in an un-air-conditioned press box.”

Pye will find out soon enough: 200 media requests are expected for a facility that can seat 42 writers.

Despite SMU’s football status, there are signs of community and fan support.

Donations to the Mustang Club, the athletic department’s booster organization, are up 73% from the last fiscal year. Admission application requests are up, a statistic Pye said he believes is tied partly to the existence of a football program. “Cornerstone” ticket sales, a five-year, $625-per seat preferred package, have reached the 5,000 level. Mustang Club membership has steadily increased, from 1,390 in 1988 to about 2,150 now.

“We’re selling something that’s unique to all college football, kind of a throwback athletic program,” said Steve Wilensky, an SMU alumnus who left a successful corporate law practice two years ago to become the university’s associate athletic director in charge of external affairs. “We’re selling what we are and what we’re going to be.”

The downside is that SMU wasn’t expecting this sort of acceptance. Wilensky said he thinks the game against Rice is a sellout, but he doesn’t know for sure since there’s only one person working the ticket office.

“Our ticket situation is the absolute worst nightmare I’ve ever been associated with,” he said. “A high school program is better staffed than we are.”

So busy is Wilensky that his wife recently stopped him as he left the house for another long workday. “You do have two daughters, you know,” she said.

As Sept. 2 approaches, Gregg finds himself wandering out to nearby Ownby every day simply to look at the field. He is never alone, since a few curiosity-seekers are always in the bleachers doing the same thing that he is, watching and waiting.

Romo said he thinks of the touchdowns he might throw and Glieber of the passes he might catch.

Almost gone are the sightings of anti-SMU T-shirts, which featured biting humor and strong messages.

“SMU Football ‘87,” read one with a dead cartoon pony on the front. On the back of the shirt, it said, “Undefeated.”

Another shirt was kind enough to feature last year’s schedule: “SMU vs. SMU, SMU vs. SMU, SMU vs. SMU . . . “

And still another shirt read: “SMU--Ponies, Porsches and Payoffs.”

You get the idea.

Now comes this one: “SMU: A Quality Program Since 1989.”

No word on sales yet.

So this is where SMU stands, at the brink of rejoining the rat race that is major college football. But this time, warn its administrators, SMU will abide by the rules. It has no choice.

“We are the cigarette smoker, the two-pack-a-day smoker, and we just had to go in for a cancer operation,” Wilensky said. “And damn if they didn’t get it all. But if we smoke again, we’re done.”

Or as Pye carefully put it, the overseers of SMU’s football program “should not confuse importance with necessity.”

Meanwhile, favored Rice University awaits, as does the supposedly worried Goldsmith.

A game will be played and it seems safe to say that Gregg’s little band of Mustangs will do better against the Owls than the 1916 SMU team fared. That was the year a local sportswriter dubbed the SMU team the Parsons, because of the many theological students on the roster. Final score: Rice 146, SMU 3.