Former Mustang reflects on SMU’s rise from the ashes

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com

Ricky Roden is the answer to a depressing trivia question but didn’t realize it until reminded Thursday.

Perhaps he was too busy celebrating a more uplifting current event.

The SMU Mustangs are headed to the Hawaii Bowl, their first post-season football appearance in 25 years.

A quarter-century ago, the Mustangs were regulars in post-season activity with players such as Eric Dickerson and Craig James.

They were also mired in corruption, which the NCAA recognized by sentencing the program to the so-called “death penalty.”

The Mustangs enjoyed a moderately successful 6-5 season in 1986 under coach Bobby Collins.

They wouldn’t play again until 1989, when SMU alum and NFL great Forrest Gregg was hired as coach to clean up and reinvent the program.

That’s the quick version of Mustang Mania. Roden lived it in slow motion.

The Mustangs’ last scholarship football signee before the “death penalty” — thus the unlikely answer to the trivia question — Roden still thinks about what was and what might have been at the Dallas school.

“We had some shady characters in the program,” Roden said. “There’s no doubt we were breaking rules. We did a lot of things we weren’t supposed to be doing, but they were things everybody else was doing, too. We were trying to get the best players in Texas at the same time the other schools were. I think the NCAA felt SMU would be an easy target. There’s no doubt players were getting paid, but if they hadn’t gotten paid by SMU, they would have gotten paid by someone else.

“I heard a lot about cheating back then. I haven’t heard as much since then. If it’s still going on, it’s not as blatant. But, you know, it’s hard to tell a 70-year-old millionaire in Highland Park what to do with his money. He’s going to spend it however he wants.”

A kid living in poverty may be inclined to take what’s offered, Roden said.

“A lot of kids get to college and don’t have anything,” he said. “It’s hard for them to fit in at SMU. It was hard for me. I was driving a used GMC pickup truck. I didn’t see many other used GMC pickups on that campus.”

Roden said he was never offered anything illegal by SMU.

“Maybe I wasn’t quite good enough to get anything else, but I had some friends who did.”

Roden, a Godley resident and businessman, had stellar football seasons as a big, fast Godley tailback in 1983-84. He was regarded as one of the top recruits in North Texas, if not the state.

Then he injured a knee in a scrimmage against Kennedale before his ’85 senior season.

“I tried to play five or six games, and the knee wasn’t right,” Roden said. “I stopped playing. The [surgeon] did reconstructive surgery, which was not as good then as it is now. Back then, you were out six or seven months.”

The avalanche of recruiting letters dropped to zilch. Recruiters stopped calling as soon as they heard about Roden’s knee.

And then SMU called — out of the blue.

“It was in December of ’85,” Roden said. “They had seven scholarships they had to give before Jan. 1. They ended up signing five junior college players and another high school player, Trey Giller from Richardson. We were roommates. I was proud to be there. I was the last of the seven to sign. So I was the last SMU football recruit before the death penalty.”

To enroll at SMU in January, Roden had to graduate from Godley at mid-term. He had the credits.

Within two weeks, he was a Mustang. SMU was in the midst of a three-year probation for recruiting violations.

“Collins and his staff still had some great players in ’86,” Roden said. “Jerry Ball played for the Lions and Vikings. David Richards, who was from Highland Park, played for the Falcons and Chargers. We had a good team.”

Further NCAA probes revealed that 21 players had continued receiving illegal cash payments from a booster’s slush fund.

The NCAA said SMU officials lied about when payments ended.

Former governor Bill Clements, on SMU’s board of governors, was implicated in the scandal.

The NCAA dropped the hammer, wiping out the ’87 season and allowing only road games in ’88. SMU opted to cancel the ’88 season as well.

The Mustangs were devoid of bodies by then. They’d lost 55 scholarship positions in four years.

The majority of the undergraduates elected to move on when the NCAA ruled they could transfer without sitting out a year. Richards, among them, became an immediate star at UCLA.

“The recruiting was crazy,” Roden said. “There were coaches from all over the country. I was quoted in The New York Times as saying they were like a bunch of vultures after prey. I had friends go to places like Hawaii and Michigan State.”

Roden stayed. He’d already decided an SMU diploma would be worth more than a few downs of football, assuming his knee ever healed.

“There were about seven of us who stayed,” Roden said. “I still had the knee problem and hadn’t proven myself. SMU announced it would honor all the scholarships. I realized what a good deal I had. I thought I’d start up again with the new program after a year, but then the program was down for two years.”

Roden’s playing days were complete.

“Coach Gregg was hired,” Roden said. “We had four or five sophomores and juniors and 75 freshmen. After my physical, Coach Gregg told me they weren’t going to let me play. He told me he’d seen too many people play longer than they should have. So I ended up on his staff as a graduate assistant coach. It wasn’t the same as playing, but I had a good time. I have great memories about our game at Notre Dame. Coach Gregg is a great man. SMU couldn’t have picked a better person. He was all about character.”

Roden has fewer fond memories of Collins, the SMU coach when the death knell sounded.

“We didn’t hear from him when the word came down,” Roden said. “It seems like it was the strength coach who met with us to tell us. I don’t think Collins could get out of town fast enough.”

Roden was never interviewed by NCAA investigators, he said.

“I wasn’t. I’m sure some other players were.”

Players weren’t the only ones affected, Roden said.

“What was crazy is a lot of freshmen transferred just because we didn’t have a football team. I know of girls who left school because we didn’t have football anymore. It was a big deal on campus. It hurt us. It still hurts.”

SMU learned a lesson from the NCAA. Presumably, other football powers learned a lesson through SMU.

“When Texas and A&M; and SMU and TCU were all battling over No. 1 recruits, it got pretty heated,” Roden said. “There was so much competition for athletes in the Southwest Conference that rampant cheating went on. We were pretty in-your-face about it at SMU. Then SMU stepped back and said, ‘We’re not going to be part of that anymore. We’re going to be an academic institution first. We’re going to do the right thing. And if we can’t do the right thing, we’ll disband the program.’

“In retrospect, maybe the NCAA did the right thing in shutting SMU down. We had some good guys go through the program [under Gregg], and I’d say 90 percent of them got their degrees.”

Roden is elated over SMU’s bowl bid.

He and old Mustang friends have been reconnecting in recent days.

“We’ve been down for so many seasons that it’s about time we went to a bowl,” he said with a grin. ‘The whole school is excited but cautious. We hope we’re not a one-year wonder. I don’t think SMU will ever return to national prominence in football. All I ask is that they be competitive. My kids and their friends will say something about SMU and laugh. They don’t realize we were pretty good, back in the day.”

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