Big East Expansion: Does SMU's Big East Invitation End the Death Penalty Curse?

SMU is reportedly one of the six schools—along with Air Force, Boise State, Central Florida, Houston and Navy—that has been invited to the decimated Big East conference.

Whether the Mustangs choose to accept the offer still remains to be seen. But just to see this program, which has gone through so much rebuilding over the last few decades, finally get an invitation to a BCS conference says enough.

After becoming the first football program in the history of major college athletics to receive the dreaded “Death Penalty” back in 1987, it took SMU 20 years to work its way back to respectability.

That’s what’s made the job that coach June Jones has done all the more remarkable.

Jones arrived in 2008, and in just his second season managed to guide the Mustangs to a winning campaign and their first bowl game since 1984. He then repeated the feat a year later, guiding SMU to the Armed Forces Bowl last season.

Jones has managed to turn around a program that seemingly nobody wanted a part of. Now, SMU has become a desirable attraction for a BCS conference like the Big East because of its recent success and its proximity to the Dallas-Fort Worth television market.

SMU athletic director Steve Orsini has made it clear that he wants his football program to belong to a BCS conference. While Orsini would obviously rather join a conference like the Big 12, where the Mustangs could match up with some of their old Southwest Conference rivals, an invitation to the Big East is not something that should be taken lightly.

It remains to be seen what move the Mustangs ultimately make. The fact that they received the invitation in the first place shows that this is a program that is headed in the right direction under June Jones, and one that could finally shake the “Death Penalty" curse that has plagued it for the last two miserable decades.