DMN:'Pony Excess' a striking film

[dcpony]

ESPN's sparkling "30 for 30" documentary series hits home next Saturday night with a post-Heisman Trophy ceremony look at what may have been the best college football team money could buy – the SMU Mustangs of the early 1980s – and its subsequent death penalty.

One word for the one-hour, forty-two minute effort smartly titled "Pony Excess": Exhaustive.

Director Thaddeus Matula, a SMU film school alum, left no stone unturned in gathering material for his work. The documentary rehashes old news and presents several new facts and claims.

That SMU had to cheat to compete because everyone else was also ignoring the rules remains an oft-repeated mantra by (surprise!) those who did the cheating.

What the documentary lacks, however, is a dramatic "Aha!" moment, like a cleansing confession from one of the lead perpetrators or eye-opening news that one of the players the Mustangs bought utilized what SMU education he received to better society.

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