Posted by bambi2godzilla on 4/6/2008, 1:13 pm
63.249.102.18
Jones ready to ‘Pony Up’ at SMU
Mark Wangrin
Special to the Star-Bulletin
DALLAS » June Jones' new office has a view -- a view of the back of a large stand of aging aluminum bleachers. His other window at Southern Methodist does afford a better sightline -- of the corner of a running track, which is just as often filled with sweaty, overweight professors as sprightly coeds.
Still, the sweet spring air is filled with sunshine, salt air, the sounds of mynahs chirping and surf hitting the beach at Waikiki ... aw, who are we kidding? SMU is built on the banks of the Crosstown Expressway, which bombards you with the hum of 18-wheelers and the roar of motorcycles. You want exotic birds? You've got pigeons. You want an ocean breeze? You get smog and an ozone alert.
It was 70 degrees and sunny in Dallas on Jan. 7, the day that Jones was introduced as SMU coach. Some omen. Then the first day of spring practice gets snowed out. So does the second. The next week a practice gets washed out by a rainstorm of near-biblical proportions. The only question seemingly then facing Jones was when the locusts would arrive.
In the grand scheme of things, all that was incidental, simply a nuisance. The former Hawaii coach's new mission -- which is to revive a team that went 1-11 last year, was once wiped out by the NCAA's infamous Death Penalty and has had only one winning season in the last 19 -- wasn't going to be derailed so easily. Even if it is a far cry from what Jones gave up -- being 12-1, BCS-worthy and deified, up there close to Kane, Ku and Lono.
Chances are you don't know any of that, though, because the Mustangs are buried in a market where a Dallas Cowboys backup center's pedicure is likely to incite more media attention than a has-been, once-cheating college program.
To top it off, there ain't a palm tree in sight.
Paradise lost? Depends on your point of view. For the 55-year-old Jones, this is nirvana. This is the ideal place for a guy who nearly died in a horrific car crash in 2001; who's using the run-and shoot, an offense most football cognoscenti think is part dinosaur, part gimmick; and, who's trying to revive a program that didn't even play for two years in the late 1980s because of the severest sanctions the NCAA has ever handed down.
It's a guy given up for dead, using an offense given up for dead trying to breathe life into a football program given up for dead.
In other words, it's perfect.
Eric Dickerson sounded almost apologetic, as if he was bound by duty to inquire to his old friend in early December if he'd consider entering the bottomless pit that was SMU football.
But he just had to ask.
As Dickerson would later tell SMU athletic director Steve Orsini, "I run with Marcus Allen, Ronnie Lott, all those SC guys. They're killing me. They keep saying, 'What'd the Mustangs do today?' "
Dickerson wanted a better answer than the one he had been stuck with the last 20 years.
So, June, Dickerson began, you think maybe you'd be interested in the SMU job?
The answer was a quick yes.
But it came with a caveat. Hawaii was preparing for the Sugar Bowl against Georgia, its first ever BCS appearance, and if word got out Jones was trolling the waters ... well, we'll talk later.
Hawaii lost the Sugar Bowl to a more talented Georgia team, 41-10. Word had leaked that Jones was being wooed. A whole state mobilized to keep Jones, but they didn't know in his heart he'd already decided. He didn't need money, a new locker room, a swankier office, more trinkets and baubles.
June Jones, as always, wanted a challenge.
SMU offered him just that.
Boy, did it ever.
SMU is a leafy, serene campus with wide boulevards and tall steeples -- a place that seems to have cornered the market on red brick and colonial columns. It's rich with pretty coeds, BMWs and, of course, money.
What it lacks is big-time football.
Used to be a time, in the early '80s, when the Mustangs won big.
There was a national title in 1935; Doak Walker's Heisman in '48. They nearly won it all with the famed Pony Express tag-team backfield of Craig James and Eric Dickerson. They were, for a time, the best team in the state. And they weren't shy about it. The Beamers would flaunt bumper stickers that read, "My maid went to Texas."
Those were the good times. Those were the days before the big-pocketed boosters were ratted out to the NCAA, before rivers of improper payoffs to fund everything from new sports cars to abortions were uncovered.
The governor of Texas, Bill Clements, was a member of the school's Board of Governors when he was questioned about the board's role in the payoffs. First, he lied, but then came clean about his role in improper payoffs to players even as the Ponies were already saddled with a major probation and facing the NCAA Death Penalty. Asked why he lied, Clements said, "There wasn't a Bible in the room." SMU students proudly began wearing T-shirts that read, "Polos, Ponies, Porsches and Probation ... only at SMU."
Facing such chutzpah, the NCAA made SMU an example. It shut down the program.
History shows two A-bombs were used to subdue Japan. In the 22 years it's been applicable, the NCAA has levied only one "Death Penalty." Few in the NCAA, including those who put the noose around the Ponies' necks back in '87, can imagine it ever being applied to a major college football program again.
The damage, though, was done.
SMU sat out 1987 because of the NCAA violations and voluntarily scratched the next season. The Methodist Bishops, stung by the bad publicity, eliminated the Board of Governors, cleaned house and then ratcheted up entrance requirements and recruiting limitations. A prospect needed to be admitted before he could even make an official visit to the school.
Try selling that on the street...
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