SMU Football's Second Coming

After two-plus decades of incompetence, the Southern Methodist University football team, with a 6-3 record, seems primed for its third-straight bowl appearance, a result that might tempt sportswriters to reach into the deep well of the trade’s clichés and call it a “resurrection.” In a manner of speaking, the team has returned from the grave. In 1987, after the Mustangs’ flagrant violations of National Collegiate Athletic Assn. regulations were exposed, SMU became the first and only football program to be slapped with what is colloquially known as the death penalty.

But the story of SMU’s second coming, like its earlier fall, is more about money than miracles. To build an early-1980s juggernaut—which included an undefeated season in 1983—SMU’s boosters set up a slush fund to pay players. The illicit payments continued even after the school was placed on probation and happened with the full knowledge and encouragement of university officials (including then Texas Governor Bill Clements, who served on SMU’s board). When the NCAA’s guillotine fell, SMU’s 1987 season was canceled and the number of athletic scholarships the school could bestow for the five following years was severely limited. Over the next 20 years, SMU mustered only one winning season. “It was a very harsh penalty for a very egregious case,” says NCAA spokesman Bob Williams.