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Coach recalls "wild" free agent pursuit at SMU. Penn State next?
Published: 7/25/2012 7:47 PM
Last Modified: 7/25/2012 7:47 PM

“I didn’t feel guilty. But I sure felt weird.”

The words come courtesy of former University of Tulsa football coach Dave Rader, who I thought of this week when I learned that Penn State’s signees and players had been declared free agents by the NCAA. The Penn State kids are free to go to any other school and play immediately. If you think coaches at other programs aren’t scheming to cherry-pick the roster, you’re crazy.

This is why the Penn State news made me think of Rader: When the NCAA dealt SMU the “death penalty” in the late 1980s, the SMU players -- just like in the Penn State situation -- became free agents. It was open season on Mustangs and then-TU head coach George Henshaw dispatched a crew of Golden Hurricane assistants to Dallas in hopes of bagging a few Ponies. Rader, then a TU assistant, was among the horse whisperers. Maybe you spotted him on old film footage during ESPN’s “Pony Excess” documentary.

I called Rader and asked him if he felt guilty about scavenging for SMU players. “It was a weird deal,” he said. “Does that make sense?”

Then-Oklahoma State coach Pat Jones sent headhunters to SMU, too, and had previously hired a former SMU assistant, Ken Pope. “We didn’t hire Kenny because we thought he could help us get some of his old players,” Jones once said. “But it seems like one of Kenny’s first assignments was to go back down there and see if he could bring any Mustangs back to Stillwater.”

Pope came back with two: Kim Johnson (who had only one year of eligibility remaining, but was worth taking) and Kenneth Grant.

Rader said the headhunting atmosphere at SMU was wild. “There were no rules,” he said.

Rader guessed there were perhaps 100 coaches from 40 programs on SMU’s campus. The coaches lingered mostly around the football facilities, but some met players at their apartments -- and it was unusual for players to live in apartments during that era, so you can draw the obvious conclusion.

Rader compared the mob scene to paparazzi waiting on a celebrity. Coaches were in the paparazzi role. “But they didn’t know how big a celebrity that they had,” Rader said, noting that there was no way to identify kids who were walking around on campus. “Someone would say there is (so-and-so). And you would go ‘who is he? what did he play?’ There was no internet.”

Some coaches carried programs to help with the identification process. Their task would have been easier if players had simply worn jerseys around campus.

“There were a few players that everybody knew and they were trying to land them,” Rader said. “But every team has good players who are young that are not that well-known, so everybody was trying to find out who they were and where they were going.”

Rader said schools recruited (and made sales pitches) based on need. One of the players TU pursued was a quarterback. The rest of the story? Said Rader, “Because the quarterback didn’t come to Tulsa, T.J. Rubley started as a freshman.” Rubley became TU’s all-time passing leader.

Tulsa’s coaches didn’t come back empty-handed. On page 38 of the Golden Hurricane’s 1988 football media guide is a headline that reads “SMU Transfers.” And four players -- senior fullback Cobby Morrison, freshman defensive back David Clark, junior split end Elmer Thomas and sophomore defensive back Roderick Wilson -- were profiled underneath the headline.

Morrison was TU’s second-leading rusher in ‘88. “He was a pleasant young man and added to our team,” Rader said.

By 1989, when Rader, was elevated to head coach, all of the ex-Ponies were gone.

Jones said he didn’t feel guilty about plucking SMU players. What option did they have other than transferring? Their football program was vanishing. In a way, this was a Jerry Maguire (help me help you) mission.

Rader was asked if he would feel guilty about raiding Penn State for players.

“I think that would be really, really different,” he said. “It depends on the situation you are in with your own school and it would depend on the relationship you have with Penn State coaches and it depends on the relationships you had with the young men you are trying to pursue. Some coaches going in there recruited these kids out of high school and probably still have their cell numbers.”

If other programs snare enough of Penn State’s players, the Nittany Lions might not have enough bodies to field a team. Poachers would have to feel guilty about that, right?

“I think that’s the way some of them will feel,” Rader said. But he said coaches also will factor this into the equation: If adding Penn State players will help me win and keep my job, then I have to do it.

Rader still has eyes and ears in the coaching world. He said he was told coaches from other programs made home visits to Penn State players Tuesday night. And, by home visits, that could be interpreted as meeting with players at their apartments.

“The contact I had said (Penn State’s) players and coaches are all waiting to see what the key players are going to do,” Rader said. “The general thought is if the key players stay at Penn State, then everybody is going to stay... I think the main key is that running back (Silas Redd, who is being courted by USC). Everybody understands that if they have him, they have a better chance to win.”

So, if Redd goes, could the scene could be deja vu all over again? Keep an eye out for the "paparazzi."


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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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