Southern Methodist University football scandal

The Southern Methodist University football scandal occurred in 1987 when the SMU Mustangs football program was investigated and penalized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Southern Methodist University (SMU), located in suburban Dallas, Texas, was the second-smallest school in the Southwest Conference (SWC) and one of the smallest in Division I-A, with a total enrollment of just over 9,000 students in 1986.^[1] From the 1950s onward, the team had found it difficult to compete against SWC schools that were double its size or more. As the 1980 season began, SMU had had twenty-one losing seasons in the previous thirty, including the last five in a row.^[2] As they increased their efforts to keep up with the bigger schools, SMU's coaches and athletic staff began using unethical methods of recruiting and retaining players. Schools in the NCAA were prohibited from paying a player to join or play for their team, and all players were required to remain bona fide students of the school they played for. According to ESPN's 2010 documentary film Pony Excess, much of the cheating took place with the full knowledge of school administrators.^[3]

While it was not the only SWC school to be sanctioned—at one point, five of the conference's nine member schools were on some form of probation—SMU's violations were considered to be particularly egregious, including the maintenance of a large slush fund for payments to recruits and players from the early 1970s onward. In early 1987, the NCAA investigated SMU's football program for these and other violations, and imposed what is referred to as the "death penalty"—banning a team from competition for a year or more. The severity of the sanctions the NCAA imposed in this case, while based on the number and seriousness of SMU's infractions, especially took into account the school's blatant disregard for previous efforts at enforcement; the university had been on probation five times between 1974 and 1985, and seven times overall—more than any other school.

As a result, the NCAA canceled SMU's 1987 season, the first time it had canceled a member's entire football season. The university opted to sit out the 1988 season as well due to concerns it would be unable to field a competitive team. The two-year hiatus had long-term effects on the program.