John Sparks has never been to a football game in Ford Stadium since breaking the story that got SMU the NCAA death penalty. A University of Texas graduate, Sparks refuses to let himself feel guilty for what has become one of the greatest sport tragedies in America.

“I was fielding calls all day from people who were pretty upset, but most of the time after I finished talking to them they understood why it had to be done,” Sparks said about the comments he received the day after the story broke. “I asked them, ‘How could I not have done the story having discovered what I had found out?’ They didn’t like it, but they did come around to understand it.”

A story too big to ignore, Sparks led the investigation, working with WFAA sports reporter Dale Hansen to break the story in an extended 1986 news show.

Sparks was a producer at ABC’s Dallas affiliate, WFAA in 1983 when he received a tip from a former staff member of The Daily Campus about a player receiving money under the table at SMU. Sparks’s research led him to David Stanley, a linebacker at SMU for the 1983-84 season, before he succumbed to a cocaine addiction and underwent an appendectomy in 1985.

Stanley told Sparks he was paid $25,000 to sign with the Mustangs in 1983, receiving monthly payments of $750 from SMU’s recruiting coordinator, Henry Lee Parker. It was through the monthly payments from SMU that Stanley was able to support his drug habit.

“In college my freshman year, I guess was when I got involved with cocaine,” Stanley told WFAA in a 1986 interview. Stanley admits that the athletic department paid for the drugs, giving him up to seven or eight thousand dollars.

“I told Bobby (the head coach at the time) I was doing it, and I told our faculty representative and president I was doing it,” said Hitch, the athletic director, about the accusation. “We were trying to help David’s family work out of his problems, and it concerns me now David is trying to hurt our program.”

Sparks went to Parker next, armed with postmarked letters from Parker addressed to Stanley’s family. Dated Oct. 25, 1985, SMU was already on probation for recruiting violations; the letters were a direct violation of NCAA rules, putting SMU back on the chopping block for violating probation.

Despite Parker and Hitch, denying accusations, a handwriting expert was able to match the writing on the letter to that of Parker.

As the investigation continued, the NCAA revealed that between 1985-86, 13 players, including Stanley, had received $61,000 from a booster-funded slushpool with payments ranging from $50 to $750 a month. The latest payment was instilled only one month after SMU was hit with the most recent probation.

It was later discovered that the payments were distributed with the approval of the SMU Athletic Department. Hitch even went on to admit he knew since 1981 that there was a slush fund being distributed to a group of football players. By the end of the 1986 season, SMU President L. Donald Shields, Hitch and head coach Bobby Collins resigned.

On Feb. 6, 1987, a report was delivered to the NCAA recommending an extension of the school’s probation an extra four years until 1990. The report proposed the university would only be allowed to hire six assistant coaches, four of which could assist in off-campus recruiting. The committee also accepted the request to ban the team from playing in bowl games and appearing on live TV broadcasts.

On Feb. 25, the committee met again, canceling the team’s 1987 season in a unanimous vote, and allowing only seven games to be played in 1988. During 1987, only conditioning drills would be permitted. Other penalties included the loss of 55 scholarships over a four year period, eight boosters being banned from all contact with the program and no off-campus recruiting until August 1988.

For the first time in the history of the NCAA, a school was banned from playing football for an entire season. The NCAA cited the penalties towards SMU to “eliminate a program that was built on a legacy of wrongdoing, deceit and rule violations.”

Fortunately for SMU, the NCAA failed to deliver the full sentence, stopping short of canceling the program for as long as two seasons if the team was found guilty of major violations twice in a five-year period.

In addition to the cancelled 1987 season, all practices and scholarships were discontinued for the 1987-89 academic year. In the 1988 season, the NCAA permitted SMU to play in only seven games, none of which were to be considered “home” games. Scholarships, coaching positions and television games were also limited through the end of the team’s probation on Sept. 1, 1990.

“It was such a devastating blow to SMU that I don’t think [the NCAA] will ever do it again,” Sparks said. “I don’t even think [the NCAA] wanted to do something like that. The program was devastated, the university was devastated and because of the economic impact and the devastation it did I don’t think there’s ever been close to what the program was and I don’t think there ever will be another school to receive the death penalty.”

Despite the impact, Sparks admits that given another chance, he would still break the story, and feels if he had not uncovered the scandal, someone else would.

Since 1989, SMU’s first season back after the death penalty, the program has only defeated two nationally-ranked teams and only has one winning season. In the 21 years, SMU is currently 58-153-3.

“SMU taught the committee that the death penalty is too much like the nuclear bomb,” John Lombardi, the Louisiana State University System President said. “It’s like what happened after we dropped the (atom) bomb in World War II. The results were so catastrophic that now we’ll do anything to avoid dropping another one.”