Hlas: After 43 years, Hayden Fry and SMU reconcile

Over four decades after getting fired as head football coach from Southern Methodist University, former Iowa coach Hayden Fry was embraced warmly at the Dallas school last Saturday.

'They fired me with a 7-4 record in 1972 and nearly all my team and a great coaching staff coming back,” Fry said this week by phone from his home in Mesquite, Nev.

'They fired me and never told me why. Now they've honored me.”

Fry, 86, received SMU's inaugural Legends Award. recognizing someone who made extraordinary contributions to the success and legacy of the school's athletics program that fall outside the realm of athletic success.

Fry's overall record in 11 seasons at SMU was 49-66-1, which wasn't terrible when you consider the private school had uphill battles against the powerhouses of Texas, Arkansas and Texas A&M in the Southwest Conference. His 1966 team was the only SMU club to win a SWC title in a 33-year period.

But his tenure transcended taking his football team to the Cotton Bowl. Fry recruited wide receiver Jerry LeVias, who was the first African-American scholarship athlete in the conference. With that, and subsequent recruiting of more black players, came a lot of bigotry-fueled hate directed toward those players and their coach.

'It was unbelievable what we went through,” Fry said. 'I never shared all the bad things.

'But when we started winning, it was like what one guy said: Every time LeVias scores a touchdown he gets whiter and whiter.

'It was a terrible environment, but we opened the door for other African-Americans to at least have a choice where they could go to school.”

Fry was a 32-year-old offensive coordinator at Arkansas when SMU approached him. He says he told them he had to be able to recruit African-Americans to accept that job, and was originally rebuffed.

'We were at the Sugar Bowl getting ready to play Bear Bryant's Alabama team in the Sugar Bowl,” he said. 'I was the offensive coordinator at Arkansas. During the pregame warm-up, a maintenance man said there was an emergency call for me at the phone under the stands.

'A gentleman said ‘Coach Fry, this is LaMar Hunt (who founded and owned the Kansas City Chiefs) representing SMU. If you'll change your mind you can recruit one black player.' ”

That player was LeVias, who eventually became an All-American. He and Fry entered the College Football Hall of Fame in 2003.

(For some blunt talk from LeVias on his days at SMU, check out this Houston Chronicle story of 2013.)

In his 1999 book 'Hayden Fry: A High Porch Picnic,” Fry wrote the reason he thinks he was fired is some of SMU's big-money boosters wanted him to use their money to 'buy” players, and Fry refused.

In 1987, SMU football got the 'death penalty” from the NCAA primarily because of a slush fund for players from a school booster. An investigation by SMU's Board of Governors revealed Mustang players had been paid to play since the mid-1970s.

Fry went on to coach North Texas State for six years, then began his 20 seasons as Iowa's coach in 1979. He has been honored in many ways at Iowa. It took a lot longer at SMU.

'There were over 500 people there (Saturday),” Fry said. 'My ex-players, coaches, fans. That really surprised me. Tickets were $200 apiece.

'Dan McCarney (former Iowa assistant coach for Fry and current North Texas head coach) was there. I had a lot of Iowa people there. That was really rewarding to me.”

Being on the right side of history is, well, right. SMU football was basically wrecked for decades because of those NCAA penalties in the year's following Fry's firing. Bringing African-American athletes in to the Southwest Conference was the act of someone who had long thought segregation was senseless.

'When I was growing up in west Texas I lived on what was called the wrong side of the tracks,” Fry said. 'All my neighbors were black or Hispanic. I played football with them on empty lots or streets, which weren't paved. They were the best athletes in town, but they couldn't go to our school because of their heritage.

'When I was in ninth- or 10th-grade I decided if I was ever in a position to help my friends, I was going to do it.”

A half-century later, some people at SMU who never saw Fry coach a game there recognized what he did at the school. Best of all, it wasn't recognized too late.

'I think that's why the good Lord let me live through nine cancer surgeries,” said Fry. 'I've been really fortunate.”

Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com

Facebook: 'Mike Hlas - The Gazette”

Twitter: @Hlas