Back from the dead, SMU answer to NCAA enforcement riddle

The answer to Bob Knight's question about John Calipari plays its first bowl game in 25 years Thursday evening, and though you aren't likely to watch it, it explains everything about the NCAA.

Southern Methodist plays Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve night, proving superficially that the celebration of the birth of Christ has nothing on Conference USA and the WAC. It is, as near as we can tell, the only sporting event of any real consequence that day, which almost hides its significance.

Twenty five years later, June Jones has Southern Methodist back in a bowl game. (US Presswire)

But SMU's return to any spotlight at all is an important moment, because SMU is the answer to the question, "Why is the NCAA so remorselessly feckless about enforcing its rules to those in the best position to flout them?"

Because the death penalty worked. SMU's football program, once a model of cheating without shame, was blown to smithereens by the NCAA as a deterrent to its other members to straighten up and fly right, and it worked.

Only what it deterred was the NCAA ever being serious about nailing a big program ever again. Its enforcement division is now essentially as effective as a saloon door because (a) it costs more money and effort to catch the modern cheater than it ever did before, (b) the schools' lawyers are typically better than the NCAA's lawyers, and (c) he who kills the cash cow ends up paying higher milk prices.

SMU's death penalty worked so well that the NCAA saw what Hiroshima could do, and never used Nagasaki to drive home the point about disobeying the rules. San Francisco, the basketball program that would be the SMU equivalent, was a self-imposed penalty, and the school has had only brief appearance in the sun since.

And as the NCAA became more and more brazenly about protecting the brand and defending the money stream and negotiating with television networks, it became less and less about defending what little integrity it had. It went from pretending to be a church to proving that it was actually a bank, and if we're going to drive the religious theme home too stridently, let's just say it -- they drove the money-changers into the temple.

Nobody seems bothered by that any more. The programs that do get put on probation are either too small to be an example, or too big for the probation to mean anything. A few scholarships in exchange for being more careful about the paper trail next time? Please.

Knight knows this as surely as anyone because he is a student of history, and he gets how powerful entities work. That's why he has a superficially accurate point about Calipari, but stops short of drawing the logical conclusion. SMU is the logical conclusion, that's why, and playing in relative secret at the Hawaii Bowl after 25 years in the can is the answer he seeks.

But there is one other thing to be mentioned here. This is not just the way the NCAA wants it. This is also the way its customers want it. The armies of fans and supporters, donors and interested alumni, and even media gasbags -- they all like the system as it is because (a) they can bitch about it to their hearts' content, and (b) they can still enjoy the system.

It's how we can complain that the BCS is the essence of corruption while writing reams and speaking volumes about the Texas-Alabama game. It's how we can watch The Blind Side and smile while knowing that the truth isn't that blind. It's how investigations of the slimier aspects of individual programs can make journalists look like Woodward and Bernstein, with the added benefit that Nixon is still available to kick around.

The answer to all of it is SMU -- the exception that enforces the rule.

Now this SMU has nothing to do with that SMU. There is nothing we know about June Jones' program that links it in any way to the Bobby Collins regime that was brought down -- intriguingly, not by the NCAA but by investigations first by the Dallas Times Herald and then by WFAA-TV. It's a small fish in a relatively small pond seemingly swimming happily in its proper environment.

But it is, other than the 1952-53 Kentucky program, the only big-time school ever to get the hot seat for its brazen behavior. The other three are Southwestern Louisiana, now Louisiana-Lafayette, in 1975, Morehouse soccer in 2003, and MacMurray tennis in 2005 -- bantamweights, all.

In addition, the NCAA has given what it generously would consider a near-death experience to Kentucky basketball in 1988, Alabama football in 2002 and Baylor basketball in 2003. Those programs didn't shut down, and as usually happens when money is applied to a program, all three programs were swiftly cured, proving what former Florida president John Lombardi actually said about the SMU case: "SMU taught the committee that the death penalty is too much like the nuclear bomb. It's like what happened after we dropped the [atom] bomb in World War II. The results were so catastrophic that now we'll do anything to avoid dropping another one."

That is to say, they'll avoid dropping another one on schools capable of defending themselves, or whose absence will cost the system any real money. Ask Southwestern Louisiana, Morehouse and MacMurray about that quote and then step back and enjoy the laughter.

So here's to SMU, sticking its head up for the first time in a quarter-century. If nothing else, it straightens out any ambiguities anyone might have about the nature of college athletics -- a program once so corrupt, so venal, so contemptuous of fair play as defined by the laws of the organization that the organization did the only thing it could reasonably do in its defense.

It shot the sheriff.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.