DMN article on SMU firing BB Coach Tubbs

[OldTimer]

Tubbs' firing another SMU error

11:25 AM CDT on Friday, April 7, 2006

As the football-playing Mustangs began trickling back to the Hilltop for practice back in August 1999, their school was suspending an assistant coach, retaining a law firm and notifying the NCAA about some potential rules violations uncovered that summer.

Four months later, SMU fired that assistant – saying he encouraged a recruit to have someone else take his entrance exam for him and offered several hundred dollars in inducements over several years – and flogged itself by, among other things, temporarily cutting a few scholarships.

The university absolved of wrongdoing everyone else in the football program, including head coach Mike Cavan, whom it didn't even charge with lacking control.

Cavan, who was hired in 1997 on a five-year deal that was extended, lasted two more seasons. His tenure, which included the Mustangs lone post-death penalty winning season in 1997, ended after athletic director Jim Copeland announced infamously, "I've seen enough."

Now seven weeks from retirement and a few weeks into recovery from a serious surgery, Copeland isn't that patient or forgiving. On Thursday, he fired men's basketball coach Jimmy Tubbs, whom he hired only two years ago.

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From the archives:

• SMU makes its pick (3/26/04)

• More local interest big goal for new SMU coach (3/27/04)

More: SMU | Colleges

Copeland acted two months after the school informed the NCAA of possible rules violations in Tubbs' program, some of which, The Dallas Morning News reported recently, include allegations that Tubbs gave a player laundry detergent and practiced his team more than the 20 hours per week the NCAA allows.

As Allen Iverson might wonder, "We're talking soap and practice?"

What appears to be a punishment that overwhelms the crime wasn't lost on Copeland.

"The few incidents described in recent media reports are not the sum of the alleged violations in the program," Copeland stated Thursday in a prepared press release. "Those incidents would not, in themselves, warrant significant action on the part of the university."

The really worrisome thing is that we'll have to wait to find out what more SMU has that might warrant the action it just took, because the school just fired a man based on allegations in an investigation that is not yet complete.

That's not right. It's not fair. It doesn't even make sense given that a new athletic director, Steve Orsini, is scheduled to take over in June. Why not let him call the shot after all the information is in?

It suggests that there is some other explanation to firing Tubbs and that the possible rules violations are nothing more than a convenient excuse to get rid of someone the school was never comfortable with anyway.

Had SMU really believed in Tubbs, it would've given him more than a four-year contract to begin with or at least rewarded him with an extra year after he took the losing team he inherited to a .500 record his first season. The football coach has received raises despite not producing a winning season.

Given SMU's history, it is understandable that the school is more sensitive to having its athletic department employees precisely follow every letter of NCAA law. But if SMU is admitting that none of what has been reported would be cause for a firing, why not place Tubbs on some sort of restrictions until the investigation is complete?

After all, if the investigation finds nothing more than what we know, SMU not only erred, but it also shot itself in the hoof.

As it stands, the school probably hurt itself more, no matter the outcome of the investigation, than it damaged Tubbs by putting a dishonorable discharge on his resume.

Tubbs is a one-time state championship Dallas high school coach beloved by many in local and state school coaching circles. Dismissing him in this fashion will shred whatever goodwill the athletic department has re-established between the University Park campus and Dallas proper, especially black Dallas, since the Larry Johnson debacle of the late '80s.

People who know Tubbs even better than I think I do will be hard-pressed to believe he did anything so egregious as to cause him to be fired. Tubbs doesn't strike one as a slickster in the basketball coaching fraternity but as a down-to-earth guy who can be trusted.

Tubbs did, apparently, make one major mistake in his short stay at Moody Coliseum. He gave a scholarship to the grandson of SMU booster and oil man Max Williams, who played basketball on the Hilltop in the '50s.

Williams was one of the last defenders of Bob Hitch, the SMU AD in the early '80s who reportedly was aware of the payments to football players that gave SMU the infamous identity it will never shake.

Williams was one of only a handful of witnesses to the scandal, including several suspended boosters, who refused to be interviewed then by the Bishops' panel that produced the damning investigative report on it all. He went on to employ Hitch after Hitch was defrocked.

But Tubbs extended an opportunity to Williams' grandson Matt, who was a freshman last season. He played very little. Next thing Tubbs knew, granddaddy told school officials he gave Tubbs money to buy some meals for some players, which would be a violation.

The investigation was launched. Now Tubbs' dream job has turned into a nightmare.

Jimmy Tubbs didn't get the time to prove himself a head college coach or an innocent. But his short-time employer is certainly on trial now.

E-mail kblackistone@dallasnews.com

[EagleMBA]

Blakistone always finds a way to imply racial bias; for that reason, I rarely read his spewings. On this occasion I did, because I was interested in the Tubbs situation. Tubbs is a decent coach and I agree that if it's about a cup of laundry detergent or a few Big Macs, the man should have gotten a pass. If there were indeed improprieties (even a 3 or 4 on the Bliss scale) then the man must go. BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE A DAMNED THING TO DO WITH THE PIGMENTATION OF THE MAN'S SKIN!! I resent Blakistone fanning those flames at every opportunity.

[emmitt01]

Blakistone always finds a way to imply racial bias; for that reason, I rarely read his spewings.  On this occasion I did, because I was interested in the Tubbs situation.  Tubbs is a decent coach and I agree that if it's about a cup of laundry detergent or a few Big Macs, the man should have gotten a pass.  If there were indeed improprieties (even a 3 or 4 on the Bliss scale) then the man must go.  BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE A DAMNED THING TO DO WITH THE PIGMENTATION OF THE MAN'S SKIN!!  I resent Blakistone fanning those flames at every opportunity.

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Where is the implication of racial bias in Blackistone's column? Yeah, he mentions that the firing won't go over well with black coaches in Dallas but that's no revelation...there was a separate article by a difference writer spelling out that very thing in today's sports section. I'm no Blackistone apologist and I agree he pulls the "race card" quite a bit but I think he deserves a pass on this one.

[NDT]

Blackistone never has liked Johnny Jones. Yet, he loved Matt Simon and castigated UNT when he left.