SMU had to know what it was getting when it hired Brown in 2012: a winner who probably wouldn’t stick around too long and has had some trouble with the NCAA. Four years later, that’s exactly what SMU got.
It was fun. And then it was ugly. Then it was fun again. It ended on a clumsy note. And it was worth every bit. Turning SMU, a moribund program for 20 years, into a winner was worth the consequences it brought.
Brown inherited a team in Conference-USA that attracted so few fans at its home games that players joked that they used to sit on the bench and count the fans in the upper bowl of Moody Coliseum.