30 for 30: Pony Excess

This is not the first time an overzealous parent has tried to shop a son or a daughter. As long as the N.C.A.A. runs this high-profile semiprofessional scam called big-time sports, the Newton episode will not be the last.

— William C. Rhoden, “Blame the Father, and Spare the Son”

Forty percent of Division I football programs lose money, but the rich are prospering, thanks to corporate branding of stadiums and bowl games, contracts with soft drink and athletic shoe companies, marketing of team logo merchandise, luxury suites, seat licenses for the privilege of buying seats and, most important, television.

— George Will, “Commercialization Rampant in College Football”

The pot of gold at the end of every paid-player scandal is the NFL, the promise of riches that a pro career brings. If the right people were to agree the current system is in need of a major overhaul, the NFL — and, more directly, its players union — could play a significant role in reducing the number of future infractions.

— Sam Farmer, “College players’ problems are NFL’s problems”

“The boosters at one particular school knew the boosters at another particular school, and there was this kind of competition between them to land the prospect.” Ron Meyer is smiling as he remembers the good old days in college football. Back then, Meyer was the head football coach at Southern Methodist University. And his days were definitely good.

As Meyer recalls for Pony Excess, a worthy and especially timely entry in ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series, his Mustangs were built to win. Having been a scout for the Cowboys team that won the Super Bowl in 1972, he was hired by SMU in 1976. “I thought I could dovetail the Cowboys’ success with a collegiate program like SMU,” says a young Meyer in archival footage. This dovetailing had to do with resources. For one thing, as Meyer says, “I didn’t want players who could play on the collegiate level, I wanted players who could play on the NFL level.” And for another thing, his university had the resources to pay for those players.

The result was the “Pony Express,” the Mustangs’ formidable two running backs system featuring Eric Dickerson and Craig James (Meyer: “The two of them were as special as special could be when it comes to running backs”). The team put up remarkable numbers from 1981 through 1984 (including a 41-5-1 record), paving the way for the players and their coach to head to the NFL. The documentary underlines the timing of Meyer’s departure to coach the Patriots in 1982, just before the NCAA imposed the “repeat violator sanction” (better known as the “death penalty”) on SMU’s football program. As the film recounts, the effect of this sanction was catastrophic, at least for SMU and the SWC (which dissolved altogether).

Directed by Thaddeus D. Matula (whose father is a faculty member at SMU), Pony Excess traces the development and the aftermath of the SMU scandal. It also makes the case that if SMU’s penalty was extraordinary, pay for play was and remains a common practice among NCAA Division I programs. The question is, who benefits and who is responsible. The answer to the first part is just about everyone involved, to varying degrees. Just in terms of money, this would include boosters and alumni, universities, commercial product manufacturers, coaches, agents, players and their families, and, of course, the NFL. The second answer to the second part is less clear, though the official inclination is to penalize players, with coaches and school presidents let off and programs sometimes suffering fallout (see: Reggie Bush, USC, and Meyer’s next incarnation, Pete Carroll).

The film makes the point that subsidized college athletics have long existed (it opens with a damning Carnegie Foundation report on the subject from 1929) and that “everyone” knows it (that is, denials or expressions of shock at the exposure of specific instances are for show). Those schools with money (that is, most often, alumni with money) pursue coaches and players (or, as one booster says in archival footage here, “materials”) in order to win. Though Dallas was an exceptional place (David McNabb of the Dallas Morning News begins, “”It was the place to come and make your fortune: big cars, extravagant lifestyles, big houses, big hair”), it was also banal. As denizens reveled in J.R. Ewing-style conspicuous consumption, they built reputations, via oil, the Cowboys, and Texas Stadium (see: Cowboys Stadium, and yes, also Meadowlands Stadium and the suddenly relatively pitiful FedExField!). The fact that the Mustangs played at Texas Stadium too seemed a function of fate.

SMU’s rise was directly related to the money put into the program, into Meyer and his recruiting plan. Meyer personally visited 74 recruits during the summer of 1978, using a private jet supplied for the purpose. He was, the film notes, “a one-man barnstorming tour of the players.” Craig James was impressed: “He just was a bag of tricks,” the former Mustang says now, recalling that the coach made something of a brilliant end run, recruiting James’ girlfriend (“now my wife”). Dickerson too remembers that he was persuaded to sign with SMU, despite the gift of a gold TransAm from Texas A&M. “Even if I did get something,” Dickerson says now, “I still wouldn’t tell, and it’s been what? I been out of college since 1982? I still wouldn’t tell.” Booster Ken Andrews (who, it’s worth underlining, agreed to be interviewed for the film) takes an even more sinuous approach when he says, “Eric decided he wanted to come to SMU and he did…. That’s… I’m stopping.” (Perhaps SMU paid very, very well, or perhaps, it was just doing what everyone else did, and no one else is talking about it now either, so, why stir the pot?) ESPN’s Skip Bayless, at the time writing for the Dallas Morning News, says he spoke to Meyer about Dickerson and James: “I said, ‘Ron, this is staggering.’ He said, ‘Yeah, isn’t this the damnedest thing you ever heard?'”

Bayless and other journalists make the point that they went along with the story, until they didn’t. Though SMU and other programs were investigated throughout the late ’70s and early ’80s, and even punished (fined, reprimanded), they persisted, and not especially secretly. Michael Bowen, a wide receiver with SMU in 1986 (and then again after the death penalty, from 1989-91), says, “Everybody was doing what SMU was doing at the time. We all knew it, the fans knew it, the NCAA certainly knew it.” It was only when what they all “knew” became more broadly public, namely, the subject of a much-watched TV report in 1985, that the NCAA took its most effective step.

The film includes part of this report, by Dale Hansen, which featured an interview with former Mustangs offensive lineman Sean Stopperich, and his mother Dawn. They revealed they had been paid by SMU’s athletic director. Even though the former chairman of SMU’s board of trustees, Bill Clements, insisted that the program had been “cleaned up,” it became clear that players who had been promised payments were still being paid. (At that point, Clements had just been reelected Texas governor, and though he never faced legal consequences for his participation in SMU’s pay for play, he did take a PR drubbing.)

Because Stopperich had been sent home (with a bad knee and some drug “issues”), he agreed, unlike other players still on the payroll, he agreed to speak to Hansen. Remembering the “infamous moment” when he confronted the assistant to the SMU athletic director with evidence he had sent money to Dawn, Hansen sighs, “When a booster thinks he owns the athlete, the problem is the athlete actually owns him.”

This question of ownership — in all its allusive as well as practical senses — goes to the heart of pay for play. David Whitford, author of A Payroll to Meet: A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU, puts it this way: “This is not an unambiguous issue here. College football programs generate a great deal of revenue, and for that they depend on the services of very poor student athletes.” The repeated efforts to police the student athletes — and their families — rather than program representatives, college administrators, and all manner of NFL executives who benefit from the system, only underscores how the system works. By separating out who benefits (the most) and who is deemed responsible, the system can continue despite and even because of occasional scandals and punishments.

Past is prologue. Again. Even as Pony Excess reminds you that SMU is the only program ever given the death penalty (and also notes its current rising “from the ashes” as a happy-ish ending), it also alludes to this broader story, concerning the effects of money on college sports, the ongoing audacity of pretending student athletes are “amateurs,” given the work they do and the money they bring in for their schools. The film contends that the problem cannot be solved by monitoring and disciplining student athletes, or even by investigating and punishing programs that pay for play.

It’s no coincidence that Pony Excess is premiering 11 December, just after the 2010 Heisman Trophy ceremony, given the NCAA’s decision to let Cam Newton play, and so be eligible for the Heisman. According to the NCAA, “based on the information available to the reinstatement staff at this time,” the culprit is Newton’s father Cecil. As he is chastised, his son can play, and university representatives or other sorts of agents remain unnamed and blameless. As Gene Wojciechowski notes of the decision, it creates (or rather, ignores) a large “loophole” through which all sorts of deals have been and will be driven. While players may benefit, they are hardly the architects of this loophole. And those most responsible just keep driving.