A Payroll to Meet: A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU

if your an smu football fan or just a college football fan you need to read this book... if you hate University of Texas football (sports like i do) then you will love this book and hate TU even more

This is a hard book to track down but I did so a couple of years ago and it was a worthwhile effort. My interest in what happened to SMU was enhanced largely from the recent controversies and issues my favorite college football team, the University of Alabama, has had with the NCAA. From what I understand about Bama's problems, they were nowhere in the ballpark of the corruption that was allowed to infect the SMU football program in the 1970s and 1980s.I remember well how Arkansas and Texas raced far ahead of the rest of the Southwest Conference in the 1960s and 1970s and other programs were left in the dust. It was not uncommon to see teams like TCU, Texas Tech, and SMU on the short end of a 52-7 game. But a curious thing happened. These teams, particularly SMU, suddenly started moving up in the world and became very competitive. But their return to prominence was done in ways that attracted not only fans, but NCAA investigators as well. It seemed like SMU in particular could not escape the scrutiny as they continuously got slapped by the NCAA. Other programs in the Southwest Conference also got slapped but SMU seemed to almost take masochistic delight in getting slapped by the NCAA. Then the NCAA instituted the infamous "death penalty" and even then the school seemed to dare the NCAA to apply it. Interestingly enough, the book recounts how previous deals with players along with SMU's ability to previously hide the depth of its corruption made it almost impossible to clean the program without getting caught one last time. Deals were made to pay players that SMU felt compelled to abide by for fear the players would squeal. Once those players were gone (graduated or otherwise), SMU was working to clean the program. But they had to keep that last vestige of corruption in the closet. Unfortunately, it came out and SMU football was gone for a couple of years. SMU has never fully recovered.I would love to find a couple of other books that are related to this. I would love to find a good book on the demise of the once mighty Southwest Conference. I know the corruption and problems the schools had with the NCAA contributed to the conference's demise but there were other factors as well.A second book I would love to read will be an accounting of the issues surrounding my beloved Alabama Crimson Tide. They, too, got burned by the NCAA but evidence has been surfacing lately that the NCAA investigators may well have been guilty of less than noble practices and there were other aspects of the investigation that could have and should have gotten other schools investigated for misbehavior. Evidence now surfacing seems to support Alabama's claim that they were punished too harshly while others got off with nothing. But such a book, if it is published, will be some time in the future.

and this IS a great book. i read the first 100 pages in a single sitting, only went to bed after midnight on a long day but finished the rest in the morning. the story is great -- and a nice backgrounder on how sports, even collegiate-level, has always generated conflicts about compensation and power. whitford's language is clean, spiced with jewels of description that avoid the overwriting in most books about sports. i stumbled across a copy of this book in a used store in new york and it was worth so very much more than the bargain i got it for. (fyi, david whitford is the brother of west wing actor bradley whitford; it was david's heartfelt profile of his brother for the may 2001 esquire that first brought me to his writing.)

This is a good, not great, book about the SMU football recruiting scandal in the early to mid-1980's which resulted in the NCAA death penalty sanctions. The book is written reasonably well, but it is not a real page turner. The author goes into detail about the actions of key SMU administrators and board members, especially Gov. Clements. I would have liked to have seen more detail about individual recruiting situations and competition in recruiting with other schools. It almost seemed like the goal was to write a fairly short book instead of a great book. In any event, if you're a fan of college football or SMU or interested in the struggle between athletic recruiting versus academics, this book is worth reading.