A Payroll to Meet
A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU
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Publisher Description
Southern Methodist University in Dallas is one of numerous prestigious universities in Texas. The school’s football team was the pride of the university and the city. Before the late 1970s, however, the relatively small school had trouble recruiting and struggled to keep up with the big-time football universities that were often more than double its size. Under pressure to compete, the SMU football program engaged in ethics, rules, and recruiting violations for years. When the corruption came to light, the NCAA handed out its most serious punishment in the history of college sports—the “death penalty”—which cancelled the team’s entire 1987 schedule.
In A Payroll to Meet, author David Whitford details the Mustangs’ descent into corruption and the fallout when it was discovered. Most egregiously, the football program ran a huge slush fund that was used to pay players from the mid-1970s through 1986. Bill Clements, chairman of the SMU board and soon to be reelected governor of Texas, knew all about the slush fund before the NCAA did. He opted, however, to phase out the payments rather than stop them immediately, for fear that angry players might go public and create still more problems for SMU. Clements and the athletic director Bob Hitch decided that the football program had “a payroll to meet.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Southern Methodist University is the pride of Dallas, and the pride of SMU in the early '80s was its football team. The school's board of governors, who were mostly local business leaders and included Bill Clements, two-time governor of Texas, played a major role in the recruitment of athletes, offering cash bonuses and monthly payments to many students. Long since out of the control of the Methodist Church, SMU had a history of recruiting violations, but it was not until the advent of flamboyant coach Ron Meyers in 1976 that the system of payoffs became institutionalized. After an investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (and much lying by college officials and businessmen), the truth was exposed in 1987 and severe sanctions were imposed on SMU. Whitford, contributing editor for Sports magazine, is a diligent researcher and his well-documented expose is impressive. Photos not seen by PW.
Customer Reviews
Comprehensive and Thorough
The author did an awesome job of making complicated information relevant, engaging, and understandable. A comprehensive documentation of an engaging period of time in history.