SMU buries the painful ‘death penalty’ aftermath for good as its ACC debut draws near

DALLAS (AP) — SMU athletic director Rick Hart gets goosebumps pretty easily these days.

Whether it’s reflecting on the nearly year-old celebration of getting into the Atlantic Coast Conference or what’s about to happen on the football field his office overlooks, Hart’s emotions flow freely.

Even then, Hart says he can’t really relate to the donors who spent nearly four decades waiting for the Mustangs to regain relevance after the devastating effects of the only so-called death penalty administered by the NCAA. He wasn’t around in 1987, or the 25 years that followed.

Hart didn’t know about the alumni who shunned the program out of embarrassment in the wake of the recruiting violations, or the reaction almost a decade later when SMU wasn’t invited to the Big 12 party that led to the breakup of the Southwest Conference.

So, when the Mustangs open the season Saturday at Nevada — and when they play their first ACC game, at home Sept. 28 against No. 10 Florida State — there will be plenty of folks who wondered if such days would ever come.

Not that they’re necessarily expecting a return to the Pony Express days of running backs Eric Dickerson and Craig James and quarterback Lance Mcllhenney, but a seat at the big table sure is nice.

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“I can’t even predict what that’s going to look like, feel like,” Hart said. “Just for the people who do have the point of view and perspective.”

David Miller, chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees, is one of them. Even though the former SMU basketball player lived in Denver when his alma mater’s 1987-88 football seasons were wiped out, Miller was never that far removed.

Now he’s high on the list — if not at the top — of those responsible for SMU’s return to a power conference.

“This is a transformational opportunity for SMU,” Miller said. “It’s an opportunity not only to enhance our athletic programs. It’s an opportunity to, I think, reposition the university’s overall brand.”

The NCAA’s blow

The death penalty badly damaged that brand. The pay-for-play scandal went all the way to the office of the late Texas Gov. Bill Clements, an SMU alum who led the trustees during the time the NCAA said the Mustangs were repeat offenders. Gone was the 1987 season and the school canceled the following season amid the sanctions.

Miller was angry at his alma mater back then, a stance that softened as he came to accept the widely held belief that plenty of schools in the old SWC were up to many of the same tricks. Nearly the entire board of trustees quit, and the university president was fired. Enrollment suffered, as did morale.

“There’s no question the priority coming out of the death penalty had to be re-establishing the university’s, what I’m going to call, academic integrity,” Miller said. “And athletics took a back seat. We’re talking about three decades.”

Three mostly brutal decades for the football program. The Mustangs won 13 games total in their seven remaining SWC seasons. They lost 95-21 at Houston that first year back. They didn’t have a winning season again until 1997.

The demise of the mostly Texas-based league led to nine seasons in the Western Athletic Conference and eight in Conference USA before a relative boost in the American Athletic, where SMU spent 11 seasons.

Even against weaker competition, SMU had a winning record just once in the first 20 seasons after the death penalty. June Jones changed that, and took the Mustangs to four consecutive bowl games before the program lost its momentum.

Hart arrived in the middle of Jones’ six-plus seasons, and even though one of the pioneers in pass-happy college offenses quit two games into a 1-11 season in 2014, Jones gets plenty of credit from Dickerson and others for the U-turn in the long road back.

Slow revival

Dickerson, a Pro Football Hall of Fame running back who finished third in Heisman Trophy voting when Georgia’s Herschel Walker won it in 1982, was essentially estranged from his alma mater after the death penalty.

The five-time NFL All-Pro questioned his school’s commitment to football, and didn’t shield university President R. Gerald Turner from criticism. Turner — who took over in 1995, just as the SWC disbanded — was another key figure in conversations that led to an ACC invitation.

Dickerson said he and his friends saw a commitment to buildings on campus — he cited the presidential library for George W. Bush on the Dallas campus — but neglect toward the athletic department.

“I think Dr. Turner now sees that his legacy, he’s got a great legacy of the university being a top university, of the buildings and all that kind of stuff,” Dickerson said. “You want to have the whole gamut, especially when you’ve got the money to do it.”

Aah, the money.

Financial resources never seemed to be a question at a small private college known for producing power brokers in business. The 73-year-old Miller is the perfect example.

He’s the billionaire founder of EnCap Investments, an oil and gas private equity firm. Miller’s name is on the basketball court at Moody Coliseum, which he called home as a player from 1968-72 after choosing the scholarship offer from SMU over others because of the education he figured he would get.

While fundraising was a problem in the years after the death penalty, time must heal wounds. In the week after the ACC announcement last Sept. 1, SMU raised $100 million to help fund the transition.

Miller said most of those pledges were already in place as the school closed in on the formal ACC invitation, and he’s confident the money will keep flowing even as SMU forgoes media rights in its new league for essentially the next decade.

Of the $270 million the athletic department needs over that time, almost half is in place. A year ago, the school said it has a $2 billion endowment and about 12,000 students.

“We don’t want to just be competitive,” Miller said. “We want to be successful and compete for championships. And that’s going to require further investment. Four or five years down the road, it’s a given that we’ll have another substantial campaign to support our competitiveness in the ACC. And who knows what the landscape looks like in four or five years.”

Change in college athletics

The landscape is already dramatically different from the 1980s, starting with athletes being able to accept money for endorsements and use of their name, image or likeness.

SMU has confidence in its collective, called “The Boulevard” in reference to the tailgating scene near Ford Stadium, where officials hope the fans now have more reason to make the walk instead of letting pre-game festivities carry on past kickoff.

The Mustangs also feel strongly about their ability to recruit despite this year’s entrance of Texas and Oklahoma into the Southeastern Conference, which opened the doors to recruit-rich Texas even more widely for the football powers.

There’s also the momentum of the first conference title since 1984 in SMU’s final American Athletic season, regardless of the obvious step up in class with ACC competition.

“We love where we’re positioned,” Hart said. “We’ve already demonstrated that we shouldn’t pick and choose our spots. We should expect that we can recruit alongside anybody else in Texas.”

SMU has been criticized for giving up those media rights, with Hart and Miller countering the argument that the school essentially bought its way into the ACC by saying that was money the school never would have seen in the American Athletic.

The specter of more instability — Clemson and Florida State are in litigation with the ACC over financial concerns — doesn’t worry Hart.

“Maybe that’s foolish, but I’d like to think that’s because we’ve fought our way back from being pronounced dead,” Hart said. “We’re going to seize this moment. And I have the utmost belief and confidence that we’re going to position ourselves to compete at the highest level of athletics.”

The Mustangs won’t waste any time testing themselves. When the Seminoles visit, it’s possible, maybe even likely, Florida State will be on a 21-game winning streak in the regular season.

“I keep telling my friends, ‘Can you imagine? Florida State has to come to Dallas,’” said SMU safety Isaiah Nwokobia, who grew up in the city. “It’s pretty cool. It makes you excited.”

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