ESPN.com: SMU Mustangs welcome high expectations in 2011

[PonyPride]

Ponies aiming for return to the big stage

By Pat Forde
ESPN.com

DALLAS -- Erik Herskind is a jeans-and-cowboy boots Texan who remembers the football glory days at his alma mater, Southern Methodist University.

His senior year, 1986, was the last of seven straight winning seasons for the Mustangs. The next two years, they would play no football after being slapped with the so-called Death Penalty by the NCAA for recidivist cheating.

For two decades after that, fall Saturdays were a hollow, humiliating echo of what used to be.

The Ponies are trying to position themselves to emerge back onto the national landscape.
"I'm the last guy that had the old football," said Herskind, who runs Greenlight, an advertising and marketing agency not far from SMU's idyllic campus. "We were there when they came back, through the years of pain. Everyone's craving a return to success. People want it back."

What SMU alums and fans want is a return to relevance for a program that was dealt the harshest hand in NCAA history. What they want is a chance to once again share the big athletic stage with the most powerful programs in the state. What they want, most of all, is membership in the Big 12 Conference.

Full article

[Mexmustang]

We had two dp's, one inflicted by the NCAA and the other by two administrations.

Hear me NCAA--somebody owes us! We were 4th of 5th in terms of cheating in the conference back then ...Somebody owes us! Never saw other flagrent cheats get anything similar to SMU, not Alabama, not OU, not A&M, not UT, not Arkansas (the grandfather that spawned most of the cheating--as Broyles assistants became head coaches), LSU? Ha!

Somebody owes us!

[One Trick Pony]

Naas going to have to earn it.

[BIGHORSE]

We had two dp's, one inflicted by the NCAA and the other by two administrations.

Hear me NCAA--somebody owes us! We were 4th of 5th in terms of cheating in the conference back then ...Somebody owes us! Never saw other flagrent cheats get anything similar to SMU, not Alabama, not OU, not A&M, not UT, not Arkansas (the grandfather that spawned most of the cheating--as Broyles assistants became head coaches), LSU? Ha!

Somebody owes us!

But stallion says we were the worst ever and nobody will ever be as bad as us and we

deserve the d.p. again just to make sure.

[One Trick Pony]

Picking on Stallion when the poor guy is last to get off the ship today.