SMU Mustangs: What's Wrong with College Football

What's wrong with College Football?

Let's start with SMU.

You all know SMU. It is the only school in NCAA history to be given the 'death penalty.'

It was a harsh penalty but one that was probably deserved for a program that was cheating continually and didn't seem to want to change its ways.

That was then, this is now.

I will admit, I have rooted for SMU to return to respectability for years, but after reading what the Mustangs have recently done to a recruit, I am having second thoughts.

Every year recruits orally commit to a program only to later be told, no, we are not going to hold a scholarship for you. It is never right when that is done, but players do the same thing, so let bygones be bygones.

No, what SMU has done just takes the cake. Ralston Dews, a 6-1, 335-pound lineman from Tyler Lee, Tex., was excited about playing college football for SMU. Now he might not have the option to play college football anywhere because most programs are already full.

Dews verbally committed to SMU back in September while Phil Bennett was the head coach.

Bennett was fired and in the interim time-frame before a new coach was hired, Athletic Director Steve Orsini sent a form letter out to all recruits stating that when a new head coach was hired he would not be bound by Bennett's recruits.

He sent this information in a FORM letter BEFORE a new coach was hired.

It took SMU 71 days to hire a new coach, in January, just a short time before national signing day is upon us.

Dews never heard anything from SMU after that form letter indicating that his scholarship would be revoked.

It took his father CALLING SMU to find out that he would no longer have a scholarship waiting for him. He only discovered this pivotal information in the past week.

What is wrong with a college football program is when it changes its mind on a recruit after offering him a scholarship, and more importantly fails to even give him the common courtesy of a phone call that he will no longer have a place in their program.

I am sorry SMU; you just lost one college football fan who was rooting for you to succeed.