Justice: SMU made Miami look like small potatoes | Richard Justice: Columnist | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
...So they came up with the most sophisticated pay-for-play program of all time. For instance, I had this conversation with a big-time SMU booster one time. "You'll never figure it out," he said.
He was not bragging. He believed that every school was cheating — who can argue? - and that his school had a foolproof system.
He told me SMU boosters were opening annuities for star players and throwing gobs of money into the accounts. Players could write checks out of the accounts, and eventually their NFL money would go in there, too.
"Untraceable," he said.
But please don't compare what happened at Miami to what happened at SMU. SMU got the death penalty because it was placed on probation five times in a 13-year period, because even after getting caught, it kept paying players. And everyone was involved. Coaches. Adminis-trators. Boosters. Politicians.
There have been other dirty programs since SMU got the death penalty in 1987, and there'll be plenty more. But there hasn't been another like SMU.
Miami can't begin to cheat the way SMU cheated.