>
>      David Naghski in his post earlier today brought up Southern Methodist's
> football death penalty as an example of punishments affecting players.  SMU
> players were allowed to transfer to any other school WITHOUT having to sit out
> a year, as other transfers in Div. I must.  And, to the best of my knowledge,
> anyone wishing to remain at SMU could keep their scholarship (though I may be
> inaccurate on this point).  Granted, a player could not both play football and
>attend SMU, but he could do either, which I believe wouldn't constitute "penal-
> izing" the players who didn't take money.
[deleted]
>
> --Chris Paine
> pleased Red Wings fan
>
  As a current SMU student, I have a unique view on this from all others on the
list.  Although all this scandal happened when I was just a little Jr. High
student in Bangor, ME, it is still very easy to see the ramifications of this
death penalty here today, almost ten years later.  SMU has gone from being a
national football powerhouse to a joke (last year SI picked them 102 out of
106 1-A teams).  The additional awareness of the rules has caused other players
to be swiftly punished rather than take the chance that the NCAA would get
the chance, and the basketball team was informed that they could not sign an
eager high school graduate (Larry Johnson) because his SAT scores were
considered to possibly be dubious.  This has also effected the other, less
popular, sports which SMU is a frequent national championship contender.
Sports such as Soccer and Swimming will be hurt by the poor showing of the
football and basketball teams causing an inability to get SMU to join the
Big Eight.  This loss causes a major difficulty to SMU in its ability to
be competitive, and it is becoming harder to convince the trustees that we
should keep a division 1 program, or even athletics at all.  In other words,
the improprieties of a few have harmed all atheletes at the university from
that point until the present.
 
        Alex Relyea