Jude Jones... could he be the fairy godmother that turns SMU into a rags to riches football team like back in the glory days of Doak Walker, or will he just be another coach despite amazing efforts could not turn our team around?
He seemed to be just what Hawaii needed to soar back into the college football radar. He had a very succesful year at Hawaii and if he does well at SMU come fall he may very well be known as NCAA's very own turn around coach.
At this point the question I have is, has the death penalty dragged SMU so far down that there will be no hope of ressurection? Should something that happend several decades ago be affecting SMU's football team so much that there will surely be no huge sucess in the near future?
I think out boys deserve a chance to show what they can do and not have mistakes of the past impeading on their efforts. After all, it is not their fault that players were paid in the past. When will the lingering effects of long ago be forgotten?
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I think his name is June, not Jude. Strange name for a man . . . but I digress. I was at SMU back in the day when the players were getting paid, had the phoney jobs, and the free cars. I agree that our players today shouldn't still be suffering the consequences. The deserve a good coach. But speaking of fairy godmothers, SMU was able to find quite a few donors to its athletic program to put together a $10 million package to build up the program, with Jones getting $2 million per year salary. That's a lot of money, isn't it? Priorities at a university should be maybe be on more faculty, more scholarships, more classroom space, better computer labs for the rhetoric classes and so on. I'm just hoping we aren't on the path to deja vue all over again.
At first, I completely agreed with your post. I think that our team shouldn't be suffering from the things that happened in the past, but then again, how can we fix it? Yeah we can put more money into the program, but there is a point when we need to be focusing on other things. My high school won State in football my senior year and it pretty much ruled the school, so I definitely have a love for the sport. However, academics is what we are really here for. Of course, there are going to be people that donate to just the football team, but we should be spend tuition money on better academics so that our degree becomes more valuable. When I graduate in three years (wow scary thought that we are almost done with our first year) I want my degree to be worth every penny my parents have paid to send me here. Since SMU is an academic institution, we should focus on the classroom first, then extracurriculars.
I agree that our football team should not be punished by what happened so long ago, but it is our fault for our unsuccessful football program. Although the death penalty took away our football schlarships for a few years, we have had plenty of time to rebuild our program. Two years ago we went 6-6 and were one win away from a bowl game, and this year we were 1-11. The problem that we have had in the past is not being able to have a coach that could bring in solid high school recruits. With the hiring of June Jones, I believe our program has reached a turning point. The year before Jones took over at Hawaii, their football team had a 1-11 record as well. The year he took over as head coach , he was able to take Hawaii to a bowl game. While I believe our schedule is harder than Hawaii's was, I think that the offensive system and recruits that Jones brought with him are the ingredients that will turn our football program around.
In reponse to cec's post about the money Jones is making, many of SMU's alumni are tired of having a sub par football program. The two alumni i know who donate a considerable amount of money to the school said that they were going to stop donationg unless something drastic happened with the football program. The football program would be a hard thing to come to terms with if during the time spent at SMU they were the powerhouse of college football that they used to be. Going from the best in the country to the worst is something that many donors are not willing to come to terms with and many think that $2 million a year is a small price to pay in order to have a nationally recognized football program again.
Interesting--I'm not surprised about the donors Mustang11 mentions. I guess it is the battle of the donors. Some alumni say they won't give another cent until the football team starts winning while, as I mentioned in class the other day (1:00), a colleague told me that there are other alumni who say they will not donate another cent because a $2 million salary for the football coach shows terrible priorities. As a member of the most underpaid group of faculty, the people teaching writing, I agree with the alumni who think it's obscene for the coach to be making that much.
I agree completely. Tom Coughlin, the coach of the New York Giants, won the super bowl this year and didn't even make $2 million. With the article that was in the Daily Campus about SMU's classes, I think that SMU needs to be spending more money on quality teachers, and spending money in order to keep our quality teachers here.
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