2008 marks the 20th season since SMU (re-)added football. And 20 straight seasons of having no more than 6 wins.

in 2005 and 2006, SMU finally appeared to be heading in the right direction, with records of 5-6 and 6-6. But then in 2007, SMU lost 11 games and fired Phil Bennett.

June Jones, despite turning Hawaii into a mid-major powerhouse, has not fared much better as coach, starting out 1-8 this year. Overall, SMU has lost 14 straight conference games (dating back to the 2006 Rice game).

Now, I think, is the time for SMU to fight back, by filing a class-action lawsuit against both the NCAA and WFAA-TV for "intentionally trying to turn the SMU football team into a cupcake program". If it weren't for those two organizations, SMU could be in the Big 12 now.

Another way to help SMU FB is to have them play football at the FCS (1-AA) Level for a while, to help get better.

Who agrees with either of my 2 ideas?

If SMU had a legal leg to stand on, they should have taken on the NCAA back when the "death penalty" was imposed.

Seems like they were caught red-handed on a number of severe violations which occured back during the Eric thingyerson / Craig James era of the early 1980s.

So coming out of the death penalty, they were essentially reduced to a start-up program, however they had decent facilities in place. Other schools (UConn, USF, FAU, etc.) have come along since then, and done just fine, due to successful management of their programs.

What's the story with the TV station ? Are they the ones that exposed SMU way back when ? Unless they reported something that was untrue, you'd have to say that SMU is responsible for SMU's situation. Anyway, if you sue somebody, you might get monetary rewards, but that isn't going to fix your football program.

I guess June Jones left Hawaii for more money. Maybe he realized that once Colt Brennan left, Hawaii was due for a setback and he hadn't recruited enough talent to sustain the program. The only way any college coach is going to be highly successful ANYWHERE is to focus hard on recruiting. It'll be interesting to see if Jones can turn this around in about 3 years, or if he is just raking in $$$ rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

If long-term, SMU wants to be an FBS program, they do not want to pull out of C-USA and go FCS now. C-USA will replace them, not hold an opening indefinitely. LaTech would jump on a C-USA opening instantly. But maybe SMU is only prepared to function at the FCS level, if so, they could drop down to the Southland, perhaps. ThHey have to think about their other sports, not JUST football, with regard to confrence affiliation....

Southland wouldn't be too bad. Especially if Southland plans to jump to FBS. SFA has added a few sports and is now up to 17 sports. That move only makes sense if the future was FBS.

There is too much money nowadays to kill any big name program.

SMU's violations were also MUCH more severe than Miami, Oklahoma, the entire SEC minus Vandy, etc. To paraphrase the Radiohead song, "You did it to yourself, just you, and that's what really hurts...."

Actually, what might be more likely had SMU never done anything to recieve sanctions would be that the SWC not only stays intact, but adds the Oklahoma schools and possibly Nebraska or steal LSU from the SEC than SMU getting into the Big 12 (Tech was going to get in regardless because of being the other state school, and Baylor had the political clout that TCU and SMU didn't have, and that's what got them in).

As far as dropping down is concerned, you do that you pretty much mortally wound your program. There's a reason why Temple languished as an independent instead of dropping to I-AA. Usually what happens when a program drops back down is that instead of becoming more competitive at the lower level, they tend to sink and become bottom feeders at that level as well. Even Birmingham Southern has had a rocky time in D-III since moving down.

June Jones probably did move for money, but I honestly think he'd have taken less money had UH shown serious commitment to fixing their facilities (which made national news for not even having enough soap half the time). It took them having trouble finding a suitable replacement for them to realize they absolutely had to upgrade it. The big difference between UH and SMU, though, is that you can still get kids to come to Hawaii because it's Hawaii. You can't really do that in Texas.