Years later, members of the committee that imposed the "death penalty" said that they had never anticipated a situation where they would ever have to impose such a severe sanction. However, they felt they had no choice after their investigation at SMU led them to conclude that the program was completely out of control. Still, the crippling effects the penalty had on SMU has reportedly made the NCAA reluctant to impose another one. John V. Lombardi, then chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said in 2002: "SMU taught the committee that the death penalty is too much like the nuclear bomb. 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."