ESPN.com: SMU Mustangs welcome high expectations in 2011
Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 12:00 amPonies 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
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
