COLLEGE FB PACKAGE: SMU back from dead, closing in on clinching bowl bid

11/22/2006 3:58 PM

By JEFF CARLTON
Associated Press Writer

DALLAS (AP) -SMU has come back to life.

The Mustangs, infamous for institutionalized cheating so egregious that the NCAA shut down the football program for the 1987 season, is bowl eligible but on the bubble. A win Saturday at Rice would clinch a bowl spot for SMU (6-5, 4-3 Conference USA), its first since the 1984 Aloha Bowl.

``There is life after death,'' SMU athletic director Steve Orsini said, ``and we'd like to think it's now at SMU.''

Coach Phil Bennett points to signs of revival off and on the field, beginning with the team winning nine of its last 14 games. The deep pool of Texas high school talent is starting to take SMU seriously. Running back DeMyron Martin had a scholarship offer to Texas A&M.

Quarterback Justin Willis ``can play almost anywhere I've been,'' said Bennett, a former assistant at Kansas State, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and LSU. Willis, who has thrown for 25 touchdowns and four interceptions, is seventh in the nation in quarterback efficiency.

``We have an opportunity ... to achieve something that hasn't been done in 22 years,'' Bennett said.

A bowl-eligible SMU might prove irresistible to the Fort Worth Bowl, played about 40 miles from SMU's Dallas campus. The best-attended game in the bowl's three-year history was in 2003, when hometown TCU lost 34-31 to Boise State in front of about 38,000 fans.

``I would love to be part of their revival,'' said Tom Starr, executive director of the Fort Worth Bowl. ``They are just a great story: Coming back from the death penalty, the long road back, building their program back up.''

There was a time when SMU football wasn't synonymous with rampant cheating and the death penalty. The Mustangs won a national championship in 1935. Doak Walker won the Heisman Trophy in 1948. In the late 1950s, future Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith was a two-time All-American breaking every SMU passing record.

In a wealthy city of big business and big money, SMU mattered, sometimes filling the Cowboys' home, Texas Stadium. The excitement and insanity probably peaked in 1982, when the ``Pony Express'' backfield of Eric Dickerson and Craig James led SMU to an 11-0-1 record and a No. 2 finish behind national champion Penn State.

Meanwhile, SMU boosters were paying players tens of thousands of dollars. The cheating was so ingrained that when boosters met to figure out how to stop the payments, one famously warned the rest, ``You've got a payroll to meet.''

Even former Gov. Bill Clements, then serving as chairman of the school's board of governors between stints as Texas governor, was part of the scandal, having authorized the payments.

The NCAA, citing SMU's extensive history of violations, hit back with an unprecedented and still-unique punishment. It shut down the program for the 1987 season, the so-called ``death penalty,'' and SMU chose not to field a team in 1988.

The program has never fully recovered.

Since returning to the field, SMU is 53-137-3 with one winning season, 6-5 in 1997. There have been low moments that would have seemed impossible 20 years ago: a 95-21 loss to Houston in 1989; relegation to second-tier conference hopping after the collapse of the Southwest Conference; an 0-12 season under Bennett in 2003.

SMU transformed from national power to cautionary tale. Fallout from the death penalty lingers on the field and in the stands, where SMU is averaging about 15,400 fans per game at Gerald J. Ford Stadium, which seats 32,000.

Part of that is a marketing challenge, breaking through the clutter in a pro sports town that features teams in the ``four majors'' - NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball. To that end, Orsini recently announced the hiring of a marketing guru from Southwest Airlines.

But the real solution to increasing attendance is obvious: win more games.

``It's hard for me to believe ... that we can't get 25 or 28,000 a game,'' Bennett said. ``If you play some games that are meaningful, and I hope these next two at home will be, then you will get more interest.''

Bennett's interest in winning is deeper than coaching and attendance figures. He was reportedly close to losing his job last season, but won the last three to finish 5-6. He signed an extension in January that keeps him under contract through 2009.

But that extension came before Orsini arrived in June and made his first splashy hire: former Notre Dame and North Carolina coach Matt Doherty to lead SMU basketball.

``You know and I know if you don't perform, it doesn't matter,'' Bennett said. ``They could buy you out in a day. Steve has a vision for this place, and I know he wants to win. That's my job.''