With the announcement last week that the SMU football team would be sporting “new” uniforms, I felt the need to bring up the Mustangs’ schizophrenic handling of the color blue.  Now I’m not old enough to remember, but I can’t recall ever seeing the SMU athletic teams wearing anything but royal before the mid to late 1990s. But navy was the preferred hue of blue that the football team adopted in 2003. And there seems to be no explanation for this at all. For a school with as rich an atheltic heritage in the city of Dallas as SMU, it is a sad tale how much apathy has surrounded its programs since the NCAA dropped the Death Penalty on them in 1987.

Look at the school’s official colors and you’ll see that they are “Harvard Red and Yale Blue.” WHY?  That automatically dooms the Mustangs to aspire to be a copy of another school, AT BEST!  I’m sure schools with such strong ties to their colors as the University of Texas look at SMU and just laugh.  Who can tell me where the non-official usage of navy came from?

Its not just the football team, either.  In recent years the soccer teams, basketball teams, and even the cheerleaders have been seen clad in navy. Let’s hope with the introduction of these new football duds, which hearken back to the Pony Express days of Eric Dickerson and Craig James, we are now seeing the abandonment of navy, which is not even a sanctioned school color.  Oh, and by the way, with the new June Jones-era unis the school has introduced are in a shade called “SMU Blue.”

Looks like hoops are back in royal now, though.

Why oh why SMU do you play fast and loose with your colors?  What other sports team, at any level, does this?  Southern Methodist University — pick one color and stick with it. Please.  Maybe you’ll see that people care about your teams when they think that you actually do.

What do you think? Please tell me what you think in the comments.

Thanks to hombre de steel for the vintage banner photos.

From the Dallas Morning News. SMU’s record-setting junior quarterback Justin Willis has been suspended from spring practice and his name has been removed from the roster on the school’s official website.  Safety Bryce Hudman has also been suspended – both for violations related to academics and missing team functions.

Do you know how hard it is to find pics of Jon Koncak where he is not merely a background participant or getting completely schooled? Here he is able to save some kind of face by standing next to Luc Longley.

Six years and $13 million dollars. Those were the terms that the Atlanta Hawks agreed to in 1989 when they signed 7’0″ center Jon Koncak to a backup role. The figure may not sound like much by today’s terms, but Koncak contract is largely responsible for that fact as it threw the NBA salary scale completely out of whack. Consider this: Koncak’s signing meant that the Hawks were paying him a salary on par at the time with guys named Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, or Magic Johnson. For a straight scrub. Imagine how the Kevin Willises of the world lit up with joy when they learned that NBA GMs could be swayed by the precedent that had been set. Pro basketball has never been the same.

The legacy of “Jon Contract” lives on to this day — sports broadcasters still use his surname to refer to terrible “Koncaks” that bonehead franchises unwittingly offer to non-star talent.

With that history lesson out of the way, it’s time to get to some news. I don’t know how I missed this, but Koncak’s (and my) alma mater, Southern Methodist University, announced on Friday that they will be enshrining his number later this month. I can think of very few things that signal how much that the athletics department at SMU is struggling than the fact that we are actually planning to honor this schmo.  I just wrote this story and I still can’t believe it. We’re counting more and more on June Jones to rescue this sinking ship.

Let’s hope that this deal gets done and that this horrible distraction will go away.  Furthermore, I’m looking forward to see how Jones’ advanced offensive tactics will be suited for talented SMU quarterback Justin Willis.  Good luck Mustangs!

***UPDATE***

SMU will sign June Jones as their head coach.  ESPN article here. Forbes.com article.