Houston Chron on Pony Excess

[The PonyGrad]

DALLAS – Using just about any measuring device, from ratings to viewer response to critical approval, ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series must be considered a success. Its long-term value, however, may hinge on the degree that ESPN airs more documentaries – not 30 within a 15-month period, obviously – but maybe four or five per year for the next few years.

Those decisions will be made in part by John Dahl, one of the series’ executive producers for ESPN Films and the man who helped correct a two-decade oversight by HBO, the standard-bearer in sports films, by green-lighting the project that became Pony Excess, SMU graduate Thaddeus Matula’s film about the SMU pay-for-play football scandal that culminated in the 1987 imposition of the NCAA death penalty.

Dahl and Mattula were on hand Thursday night for a preview screening of Pony Excess, which airs Saturday, Dec. 11, the night of the Heisman Trophy presentation, as the final 30 for 30 installment. (Ironic, isn’t it, that a tale about cheating in college football will air on the same night that Auburn’s Cam Newton, whose family has been accused of their own pay-for-play scheme, is likely to receive the Heisman.)

“It’s an amazing cultural story,” Dahl said. “It’s about a time when Texas culture became immersed in American culture with Dallas and Who Shot J.R. It was as if Texas culture started to become a theme for the 1980s. I love that it was the larger cultural story that was the setup for the film.”

The SMU death penalty case was a watershed moment for Texas football fans in that it laid bare the culture of cheating that was countenanced and even legitimized by Gov. Bill Clements and his cronies on the SMU board of governors and the degree to which SMU’s fall from grace contributed to the end of the Southwest Conference and the ongoing conference shakeup that saw its latest chapter this week with TCU’s impending move to the Big East.

It's ancient history to current SMU players, who will play Saturday for the Conference USA title and whose coach, June Jones, attended the screening, but still prompts vivid memories for those who lived through it.

We’ll talk about the film in greater depth at the Four DVRs, No Waiting blog. Dahl, meanwhile, said ESPN is committed to more documentaries and will continue to use the same wide range of filmmakers that it used in the 30 for 30 series.

“We’ve worked with big names, small names, people on the rise, and that is how we will continue,” he said. “We want to embrace the style that is best for telling each story.”

The top five films, in terms of Nielsen ratings, included some of my favorites – Dan Klores’ film about Reggie Miller and the New York Knicks, the Marcus Dupree film titled The Best that Never Was – a starkly original look at the juxtaposition of a Mike Tyson fight and the killing of Tupac Shakur titled One Night in Vegas and a couple that I didn’t enjoy or thought were done better by others -- Four Days in October on the 2004 Red Sox-Yankees playoffs and The U about the University of Miami football program.

One film that’s definitely coming up in the next year or so is Enron documentarian Alex Gibney’s film about Steve Bartman, which was part of the original series but has been delayed. Other than that, decisions are pending.

“We’re still deciding where to go from here,” Dahl said. “Four or five (films) a year is a realistic number, but we haven’t come up with a number yet. We’re discussing what to do, but the bottom line is that we will continue to do documentaries.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/7321899.html