I have been a critic of the SMU athletic department for a number of years. I am a former student athlete and graduate (SMU ’74; MBA ‘76). I was reasonably successful as an athlete. Former SMU great Eric Dickerson and other critics have been vilified by the likes of Kevin Blackistone in the Dallas Morning News for our criticisms of SMU. Mr. Blackistone felt we should just give our money to the program and shut up. Of course, the Morning News was one of SMU’s principal cheerleading vehicles even though there was serious grumblings in the Black community about the troubling state of race relations in the athletic program.

Unproven NCAA violations allegations aside, Jimmy Tubbs firing was not unexpected. I talked to Tubbs shortly before he actually took the job. I expressed to him at that time I did not feel SMU understood diversity well enough to support him in his quest to bring back winning basketball to the campus. Tubbs then made some critical mistakes. First, he did not win. Second, he did not sign any Black player from the DISD. Third, he did not hire a Black assistant from the DISD. And fourth, Tubbs had little or no relationship with the Black political community in Dallas thus failing to understand at the collegiate level, politics are sometimes as important as winning.

No matter what SMU President, Gerald Turner, and Athletic Director, Jim Copeland, told Tubbs, they expected him to win right away. Unfortunately, Tubbs did not understand the nature of SMU’s sordid history with the Black community here. From ignoring former Black athletes who have no role at the university to insulting former Black alumni by only referencing them when they are trying to recruit in the Black community, SMU was a text book case on what not to do with Black athletes, a public school district, and Black alumni.

SMU, fumbling maybe its last chance to connect with the local Black community, finds itself searching for a new basketball coach while the Black community fumes. SMU has proven they have no clue as to how to create an environment where African-American athletes, coaches, and alumni will feel comfortable. SMU has now earned the “death penalty” and not from the NCAA, but from the Dallas Black community. Why would anyone send a good Black athlete to SMU? And if they did, given SMU’s horrible history with the Black community, would an athlete come under suspicion from the NCAA? Would not the perception be why go to a school with SMU’s reputation in the Black community unless you got paid to go?

There are some fine people associated with Southern Methodist University. Unfortunately, I don’t believe they are the ones in charge at SMU. Is it racism? Do they just not really care for Black people? Or is it that kind of arrogance that makes Anglos feel they really know Black people when they really don’t know us at all? Whatever the answer, the university will now suffer from another deadly athletic disease: apathy. When the Black community no longer cares what the university does, the institution becomes dead to us. At least that is how I see it from South of The Trinity.

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