The Death Penalty

I didn't even bother watching the Heisman presentation last night. I tuned in about a minute to nine and Newton was still going. All I was really interested in finding out about was the voting results. It was as everyone knew, overwhelmingly decisive for Newton. I was particularly curious to find about the results from the west region, which were closer than the other regions, but still Newton won convincingly.

What I was really interested in watching last night was the 30 for 30 documentary that followed the Heisman presentation, "Pony Excess." I've watched most of the 30 for 30's thus and they have been excellent films. I've skipped the ones that I had no interest in like the one about Marion Jones, but other than that I've watched them all. Even the one about the Baltimore Colt's Band, event though in a lot of ways it pissed me off to no end.

The one last night was about the football program at SMU leading up to and after the 'Death Penalty.' I want to discuss the implications of that ruling, whether or not it alone set SMU back 30 years and what would happen to a program if that ruling were made today.

One of my favorites bits in 'Pony Excess' was after the football program was terminated, loads of other college football coaches were down in Dallas, basically picking at the carcass of SMU by trying to get the football players to come to their school. It think that is indicative of how significant and crippling the 'Death Penalty' was. I don't think the NCAA knew how bad their new penalty would be until they had finally issued it.

It's interesting to think about where SMU would be had the 'death penalty' not been issued by the NCAA. It terminated the program for one full year and effectively and terminated the team for a second year. Of course it made SMU start from scratch, but it also made SMU start from scratch at a particularly bad time. The Southwest conference was not going to last much longer and SMU had basically turned from a division 1 power into a high school team. When teams started bolting from the old Southwest Conference, SMU was very unattractive to any of the major conferences because of the stigma and the fact that they weren't anywhere close to winning. They were left to become the doormat of Conference-USA.

Let's say the 'Death Penalty' had never been issued to SMU. Their football probably would have gone through a rough patch due to heavy sanctions from the NCAA. Still, let's assume they still had a football program and that it was about a .500 program. In 1992, when the Southwest Conference fell apart, Texas, Texas A & M, and Texas Tech went to what had been the Big 8 conference. They were joined by Baylor in the new Big 12, but had SMU not been given the 'Death Penalty' would they not be the forth team to join the Big 12 from Texas ahead of Baylor?

So, SMU was left out and went from the prestigious Southwest Conference and was joined Conference USA. That transition was what made the 'Death Penalty' so bad. Had SMU remained in a major conference it would have been a 10-15 year process. Instead they were shifted to Conference USA and became a nobody in a nobody conference, which turned recovery into a 25-30 year process.

We are entering another period of conference realignment. Also, to put it mildly, issues with the amateur status of student-athletes seems to becoming a more rampant problem again*. So, what if a major program were given the 'Death Penalty' today. I'll use USC as the sample program, because they're already in trouble and you never know with Lane Kiffin around.

Let's pretend at some point during the coming offseason, SC is given the death penalty. All sudden all of the talent USC has is gone. Gone to other schools and a lot of them would probably end up at other Pac-10 schools. Southern Cal isn't allowed to have a football program at all in 2011 and in 2012 it'll be so handicapped that it isn't worth playing games. That's two years with no recruitment and absolute of any base of players to build from.

It's hard to say in this hypothetical case, but I doubt USC would be able to get high-level talent for at least 5 years once they emerged from the death penalty and would end up being at the bottom of the new Pac-12 conference. Now, USC is a much stronger brand name than SMU and once some of the initial shock to what had happened wore off and the kids being recruited were to young to really remember what had happened SC would probably see it's recruiting base recover and return to being a competitive 1a program.

I couldn't imagine the NCAA issuing the 'Death Penalty' again though. It is fitting though to have that documentary on after Newton wins the Heisman.

Thanks for reading and please comment.

-Michael
*More likely it is just getting noticed again