Ponygate scandal
The Ponygate scandal or SMU football scandal is an affair in the field of American college football that is one of the largest scandals in the history of sports in the United States . The trigger was hidden payments and other perks for players of the football team in Dallas -based Southern Methodist University (SMU) that took place, and from the 1970s to 1985, according to the area of the American university sports valid rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA ) were not allowed.
The penalties that the NCAA imposed on the team of the SMU as a result of these violations, including the exclusion from play for an entire season, were the most serious sanctions against a team in the history of college football. The far-reaching consequences, in particular a long-term decline in the performance and sporting importance of the team as well as the later end of the Southwest Conference, have led the NCAA to cautiously deal with its sanction options until the present.
background
The football team of Southern Methodist University , the SMU Mustangs , was one of the most traditional teams in the NCAA's game operations until the scandal became known. She had won the national championship in 1935 as well as the championship of the Southwest Conference (SWC) ten times and in 1949 produced a winner of the Heisman Trophy with Doak Walker . The team reached fourth in 1981 and a year later after an undefeated season second place nationwide, and between 1980 and 1985 won three SWC titles. On the other hand, the university was one of the smallest in the country in terms of student numbers and financial resources, making it difficult to hire high-performing players.
The SMU Mustangs have been regularly checked by the NCAA since 1974 and between 1974 and 1985 punished a total of five times with various sanctions for various violations of the association's rules. Due to violations of the NCAA rules regarding the signing of new players, the team had been banned from the post-season bowl games in 1985 and 1986 and in 1986 from live broadcasts on television . Direct payments to college football players and other perks were and are not permitted in American college sports because, unlike scholarships or tuition waivers, they are not study-related.
Exposure
In June 1986, a producer on television station WFAA, a Dallas- based local branch of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), received a notice of continued violations of the rules by the SMU Mustangs . His research led him to David Stanley, a linebacker the team in 1983 and 1984 who claimed 25,000 US dollars for the commitment in the SMU Mustangs to have received and later monthly payments. On October 27, 1986, the director of the station's sports department confronted three key university officials - the sports director, the head coach and the signing coordinator - with the allegations and with several letters to David Stanley's family as evidence of the allegations. In the meantime, David Stanley also contacted the NCAA directly, and the broadcaster WFAA aired a 40-minute special on November 12, 1986 in which the allegations were first made public. Two days later, the Dallas Morning News revealed that Albert Reese , who played the tight end of the SMU Mustangs , was living rent-free in a Dallas apartment.
The NCAA investigation found that 13 SMU Mustangs players received a total of $ 61,000 in 1985 and 1986 in covert monthly payments of between $ 50 and $ 725, made to the knowledge of the college's sports department . To make matters worse, these payments were made after the last sanction imposed by the NCAA on the university and thus during a probation period. The money was made available by various sponsoring associations and private sponsors of the university. As a result of the investigation, the president, the sports director and the football head coach of the university resigned from their posts. However, the university allowed payments to continue for some time after the scandal was uncovered, as it was obliged to keep the promises made to the players.
consequences
The NCAA issued a series of sanctions on February 25, 1987, which, taken together, constituted the most serious penalty for a team in college football history. The entire 1987 season of the team of the SMU was canceled, for the following season they were only allowed to play the away games in order to save the opposing teams concerned financial losses. The existing ban on bowl games and live broadcasts was extended until 1989. The SMU also lost 55 scholarships for new players over the next four years and was only allowed to hire five assistant coaches instead of the usual nine . The university was banned from recruiting new players off-campus and reimbursing expenses for visits to potential players until 1988. The suspension for an entire season, known in American sports jargon as the "death penalty", had been imposed by the NCAA only twice for basketball and never before for a football team. The NCAA cited the need to "break up a team built on a legacy of misconduct, fraud and rule violations" and remove the competitive advantage the SMU had gained over its competitors through these misconduct. The financial loss due to the sanctions was approximately $ 1.2 million per season in lost bowl game and television revenue.
The NCAA allowed SMU Mustangs players to move to other universities without losing their eligibility to play. This decision resulted in more than 250 coaches from other universities visiting the SMU team in order to poach players. Because of this, the university was unable to set up a team for the 1988 season even after the closed season in 1987. It was not until 1989 that Forrest Gregg , a former player in the SMU Mustangs and later NFL professional player , was hired a new coach, so that in the same year the team took part in the NCAA's game operations again. Due to the loss of 55 scholarships, however, it was not until 1993 that a team was created in which no player was affected by the scandal. The SMU Mustangs reached since the scandal only in the seasons 1997, 2009, 2011 and 2012, a positive record this season, and qualified only 25 years later, the first time for a bowl game. The Southwest Conference, whose reputation had already been damaged by the violations of the rules by the SMU and other teams, disbanded as a result of the scandal and other incidents in 1996. After the scandal, the resigned head coach Bobby Collins never found a new job as a coach in college or in the professional sector. In view of the dramatic and long-lasting consequences for the sporting quality of the SMU Mustangs , the NCAA has since largely refrained from further seasonal bans, and has only made use of this sanction measure after the SMU football scandal once in the field of football and tennis , although it has been since 1987 would have been possible for more than 25 teams due to repeated serious rule violations.
literature
- David Whitford: A Payroll to Meet: A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU. Macmillan, New York 1989, ISBN 0-02-627191-5 .
- Sudden Death at SMU: Football Scandals in the 1980s. In: John Sayle Watterson: College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2002, ISBN 0-8018-7114-X , pp. 353-378.
- 1987. The Year of Raising Canes, "Tie Dye," and SMU Doomed to Death. In: Bob Boyles, Paul Guido: 50 Years of College Football: A Modern History of America's Most Colorful Sport. Skyhorse Publishing, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-60239-090-4 , p. 481.
- Southern Methodist University Football Given Death Penalty. In: Peter S. Finley, Laura L. Finley, Jeffrey Fountain: Sports Scandals. Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-34458-9 , pp. 95-97.
- Robert Sullivan, Craig Neff: Shame On You, SMU . In: Sports Illustrated . 66th volume, issue 10 of March 9, 1987, pp. 18-23.