The Age of Flanigan

DENTON, Tex. – Ramon Flanigan saw plenty during his quarterbacking days at SMU. And a lot of it involved heartache, injury and tumultuous change. Yet Flanigan last week summed up those days this way: “It was the best time of my life,” he said.

“With the ups and downs, the highs and lows, if I could go back and repeat any part of my life, it would be my time spent at SMU.”

After leading the Southwest Conference in total offense in 1994, Flanigan's hip was dislocated in the first eight seconds of the 1995 season opener against Arkansas. "It changed everything," Flanigan said. Photo credit: SMU Athletics

The dual-threat Flanigan was a Mustang for six seasons (1992-1997), including two medical redshirt years for injuries suffered as a true freshman (throwing thumb) and a junior (hip).

In the four years and a smidgen he played, Flanigan set school records for career total offense yardage (7,437) and plays from scrimmage (1,398) that still stand. His career passing yardage, attempts and completions are fourth behind SMU greats Chuck Hixson, Mike Romo and Mike Ford.

Flanigan’s 57 career rushing and passing touchdown are equaled only by Justin Willis and his 27 rushing TDs are fourth behind three Big Ds of SMU rushing royalty: Dickerson, as in Eric, Dupard, as in Reggie and Doak, as in Heisman.

(Who couldn’t do all that in four-plus years, you say? Consider that Flanigan’s medical redshirts garnered him the equivalent of one extra game, or 2.5 percent of his total yards and plays. Flanigan also shared time with Chris Sanders his senior year.)

Craig Swann, All-Southwest Conference linebacker and teammate of Flanigan’s, said Flanigan could spark the team. “If he was ‘on,’ then there was nobody we couldn’t play with. And we showed that several times against Texas A&M and UCLA, [ Arkansas and Wisconsin].”

Former SMU coach Tom Rossley, now quarterbacks coach at Texas A&M, called Flanigan “a fighter” and “a leader.” “I wish we could have surrounded him with more good players and we could have won a lot of games, I think.”

As a senior, Flanigan had a hand in SMU’s only winning season since the death penalty and a five-game winning streak that’s still the school’s longest since ‘84.

“I was part of some guys that changed the program a little bit,” said Flanigan, 34. “The program was in better shape when we left it than when we got there.”

One Offer

Only SMU offered a scholarship to Flanigan, a skinny, six-foot quarterback out of Rider High in Wichita Falls, Texas. “I took one recruiting visit,” Flanigan said. “Coach Rossley offered me a scholarship and he could barely get it out of his mouth before my mom accepted.”

“I wanted SMU as much as they wanted me,” Flanigan said, “probably more so, just because of the academics.”

He’s still not sure what SMU saw in him. “In 11 games my [high school] senior year, we threw the ball 74 times, which is not exactly lighting it up every weekend,” Flanigan said. “The game that SMU saw me play in person, I threw the ball four times.”

That game was at Keller, near Dallas, on a cold, rainy evening. SMU assistant Billy Kidd was there to watch his brother Brannon, a future Mustang, play for Keller when he noticed Flanigan.

“[Flanigan] was very athletic,” Rossley said. “And when he did throw he looked like he had good snap in his ball and was pretty accurate. We liked the way he competed.”

“Coach Rossley gave me a chance when 114 other schools, at the time, wouldn’t even look at me twice,” Flanigan said. “I was and will always be hugely indebted to him.”

Flanigan also credits his parents for preparing him for the opportunity. Said Rossley of meeting Flanigan’s parents, “You could tell [Flanigan] was going to be successful in whatever he did.”

‘No-Win Situation’

After graduating SMU with a degree in economics, Flanigan played football in Germany for one year before becoming coach Darrell Dickey’s offensive coordinator at North Texas in ‘98.

Flanigan screamed back into SMU’s consciousness in ’06 when the Mean Green stunned the Mustangs, 24-6, in Denton, in the first meeting between the schools in 14 years. The loss rocked SMU coach Phil Bennett’s world and ultimately cost the Mustangs a bowl game.

“It was probably one of the toughest days of my life – easily - because it was a no-win situation for me,” Flanigan said.

Still, Flanigan appeared to enjoy this one afterward. “After that game, I got excited, just like I was after any other game [we won,]” he said. “I read some things. ‘It was because I wanted to stick it to SMU,’ which was the furthest thing from the truth. I just like to win.”

Flanigan, though, said he’d been turned down for a place on Bennett’s staff, making it a “personal” game for him.

“I knew Coach Bennett personally,” Flanigan said, “and I knew that he’s an attacking guy. He’d get personally involved in games. We researched it. If you ever hit him for a big play, he’s going to blitz shortly after that, basically, saying, ‘How dare you?’ And I used that.”

Emotion got the better of Flanigan too, he said, on two plays: a deep pass from a heavy run formation for a completion on North Texas’ first play, and a quarterback draw that went for a touchdown – run by a kid wearing number 8, Flanigan’s number at SMU.

Flanigan said benching Willis, SMU’s redshirt freshman quarterback, before his hometown fans, was a mistake. “I think that’s one of the things that may have gotten him gun-shy for the rest of the season.”

Losing running back DeMyron Martin early to injury also hurt the Mustangs, Flanigan said, though he’s not sure SMU would have used him correctly anyway. “I don’t know if they would have been patient enough to just pound us to death, because it wouldn’t look sexy.”

Flanigan doesn’t think North Texas’ faithful sufficiently appreciated the win. “For us to beat [SMU] was either, one, we did a good job recruiting, which we did, or, two, we did a very good job of coaching, which we did. And neither two of those things …. came out of that win.” Dickey and his staff were fired before season’s end. They stayed on to finish 3-9.

Highlights and Heartbreak

Flanigan’s SMU years included some of the more tortuous endings in Mustang lore: the ’94 squeaker losses to No. 13 UCLA and No. 18 North Carolina; the ’96 late loss to Utah, SMU’s first WAC game; and the ’97 OT loss to No. 23 BYU.

Highlights included the eye-popping 21-21 tie with No. 7 Texas A&M in ’94 and beating Arkansas three years in a row, ’95-’97, basically getting the Hogs’ coach, Danny Ford, fired.

“We always caught them at the right time,” Flanigan said. “We would play Arkansas the week before they played Alabama or the week before they played Tennessee. The last year, in Shreveport, (SMU, 31-9), everything just kind of fell together. We could not be stopped on offense. Our defense was playing out-of-control great.”

And there was the ’94 touchdown pass from Flanigan to Brian Berry that beat New Mexico on the game’s final play.

Flanigan’s career-high passing performance was 316 yards, versus New Mexico in ’96. His career-high rushing game was at Navy in ‘93, 148 yards on 15 carries. SMU won both games.

The ’95 season opener with Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl started like a nightmare. “If you drew up a bad-case scenario in a movie,” Flanigan said, “you don’t do it that bad.”

Having played ranked opponents tough in ‘94, SMU entered the new season positioned to make a move. Flanigan had led the SWC in total offense the year before and the Mustangs had weapons back.

“Not so much me, but our team [was set for a turnaround season,]” Flanigan said.

Arkansas kicked off and on SMU’s first possession, it happened. It was Arkansas’ Junior Soli, who burst through the line on a play-action pass play and took down Flanigan. “It was just one of those deals,” he said. “My leg was planted the wrong way and he weighed 300 pounds. Just the torque of it dislocated my hip.”

Eight seconds in and Flanigan’s season was over.

“It was devastating,” Rossley said. “I know he was most devastated because he had prepared himself for a big year. He handled it like a true veteran.”

Flanigan listened by radio from nearby Baylor Hospital as the Mustangs, and backup quarterback Chris James, hung on for a dramatic 17-10 win, sealed by a Razorback fumble on SMU’s goal line.

The Mustangs wouldn’t win another game that year, though taking No. 22 Texas A&M and TCU to the wire.

“It changed everything,” Flanigan said of his injury’s personal impact. “It changed my life. I went from running a 4.3, 4.4 forty to still being mobile, but nothing close to what I was before.”

SMU’s culture changed with the move to the WAC in ’96. “The fans were different, the styles were different, the altitude was different,” Flanigan said.

The Mustangs were blown out on their first WAC road trip, 31-3, by No. 24 BYU in Provo, Utah, before rebounding to finish 4-4 in league play.

A Week 6 one-point non-conference loss to Missouri in the Cotton Bowl was SMU’s third close, crushing defeat in four weeks after opening 2-0 for the first time since ’85. A missed last-second field goal sealed SMU’s fate.

Flanigan said the field goal wouldn’t have mattered if he’d pitched the ball to Donte Womack on the previous play.

“Our coaching staff had the perfect play called against their defense and [I] didn’t pitch the ball on the option” Flanigan said. “Of all the things I’d go back and change, I would have pitched the ball on the option and Donte would have walked into the end zone.”

Rossley was fired after beating TCU in the season finale. “We’re 5-6 and lose three games on the last play of the game,” Flanigan said. “You don’t fire that coach, based on where this program’s heading.”

Flanigan, SMU's all-time career total offense leader, said his dream of being SMU's head coach one day "would never die because I understand what SMU did for me."

Cavan Arrives

New SMU coach Mike Cavan and Rossley were different as “night and day,” Flanigan said. “They had totally different styles, which is not good nor bad. … Coach Cavan was more a regimented, hands-on guy where Coach Rossley … gave you a long leash. You had to have some self-discipline.”

“My senior year was tough because a lot of my friends had graduated,” Flanigan said. “I wasn’t connected to the new staff. I wasn’t connected to the older players. I was kind of there.”

Approaching the ’97 final regular season game at 0-10 TCU, SMU had ripped off five straight wins. The 6-4 Mustangs arrived in Fort Worth with a conference championship game and bowl bid on the line - and lots of excited fans. It was all new - maybe too new.

“Up to that time, we hadn’t dealt with a lot of success,” Flanigan said. “Everything we were dealing with week-in, week-out [that year] was totally different than anything we had ever dealt with in any of our careers.”

Derek Canine, who’d begun his career at SMU, was TCU’s starting quarterback. “[We were] axe-murdering him,” Flanigan said, adding, “That was our mistake. If could have kind of just kept him in the game ….”
Instead, backup Jeff Dover came on with TCU trailing to ignite the 21-18 upset.

“If it’s anybody else besides SMU, they don’t even show up,” Flanigan said.

“That game that night changed the course of the two schools. The next year, when [Coach Dennis] Franchione came in, [TCU] watered down the schedule and changed their approach to football and went to a bowl game. SMU went the exact opposite way.”

Flanigan was benched in the third quarter and watched the final minutes of his record-setting career tick away from there.

“If we could have won the game,” he said, “even with me not playing at the end, it would have been OK. But probably the toughest pill for me to swallow was, you know, you’ve given your heart and soul to the program for a lot of years and at the end, when the game is on the line, they didn’t trust in you enough to be in.” “We more than likely still would have lost,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Flanigan said he holds no animosity about the decision. “I was a coach,” he said. “You have to do what you think is in the best interest of your team.”

SMU was without Womack that game, due to suspension, and Kelsey Adams, the hottest Mustang rusher at the time, was injured. “We ended up playing Rodnick Phillips, who was a good football player - and he got hurt,” Flanigan said. Roy Coats finished the game at tailback.

Flanigan paused to consider the confluence of Womack’s suspension with the injuries. “Only at SMU,” he said.

When his career ended, Flanigan was certain success was near for SMU. “In my wildest dreams, I wouldn’t think that you’re still going to be sitting here twelve years later, talking about, ‘That’s the only winning season they’ve had [since the death penalty]."

Flanigan said he had no favorite receiver while at SMU. “Mick [Rossley] was one of the best because he knew the system and seemed to always be open. I had speed guys like Brian Berry, Larry Wilson, A.J. Johnson and Erwin Wilburn, and tremendous possession guys like Mick, Jason Wolf and John DeVoss.”

“Kevin Thornal was probably the receiver who possessed the total package and was a huge target, and one of my best friends.”

Regrets?

“I didn’t talk to a lot of guys when I was there,” Flanigan said. “I mean, I had my set of good close friends, and the thing that I would change, I would be a ‘college guy’ a little bit better. I didn’t do a good job of being a ‘college guy.’ I went to practice, I studied and I didn’t hang out.”

Never making first-team All-SWC doesn’t bother Flanigan. “Honestly, I’m still amazed that I was Honorable Mention in ’94,” adding he never made All-District in high school, so any SWC notice felt like being an All-American.

More important to Flanigan, he said, was being a two-year team captain.

Today Flanigan, “as single as can be,” lives in Denton. He’s a consultant for Recruiting Helpers, a firm specializing in assisting high school athletes and their families prepare for the recruiting process.

He said he now has time to reconnect with SMU, recently catching up with friends at the Red-Blue scrimmage. “The fact that they’re excited to see me makes me feel good,” Flanigan said, “because I’m excited to see them and be around.” He calls his current relationship with Mustang football “wonderful.”

His ultimate goal, still, is to be head coach at SMU, though he feels his chances fading. The iron was hotter when he and North Texas were winning conference championships and going to bowl games four years ago. “There probably was not a hotter coach in America,” Flanigan said. “And now, sitting here in 2009, there is not a colder coach in America.”

Rossley says coaching is what Flanigan “was born to do.”

“It’s all in the Lord’s hands,” Flanigan said. “I just need to be patient.”

Quotable Flanigan:

• On majoring in economics: “You know, if you’re smart, you go in there and take those SMU ties and go into the business world. You don’t go into coaching.”
• On something SMU fans probably didn’t know about him: “That I felt honored wearing an SMU jersey every weekend.”
• On SMU ever playing Texas again: “I hope they play [ Texas] in a bowl game because playing them anywhere outside a bowl game would not be good for us in the foreseeable future. You don’t get anything out of scheduling Texas non-conference. That’s what we did at North Texas.”
  

SMU Notes:

• SMU’s five-game winning streak in ’97: Utah 20-19, Wyoming 22-17, Rice 24-6, UTEP 28-14, and Tulsa 42-41.
• Chuck Hixson (1968-70), SMU’s no. 2 in career total offense behind Flanigan, by 553 yards, played three years.