A look back at four infamous scandals in college sports
By Dani Bostick
SMU
Ponygate
SMU’s basketball program does not win for Best Scandal at a Methodist School in Texas. The football team takes those honors for their incredibly corrupt antics in the 70s and 80s.
SMU football’s rules violations during those years are encyclopedic. Most egregious, there was a booster-supported slush fund that was used to make payments to players. Athletic director Bob Hitch was not only aware of the fund, but allowed it to continue even after the team was on probation.
Athletes received perks from this fund and directly from boosters. One player lived rent-free in an apartment financed by a booster who was supposed to cut ties with the team due to previous shady activity. A total of $61,000 was paid out to players, again, after the team had already been sanctioned for other violations.
The team also had a history of paying recruits. One claimed he received $25,000 to play at SMU, and others verified that this was common practice at the school. After repeated sanctions, in 1986 the NCAA dropped the hammer and imposed the so-called death penalty on SMU, preventing them from playing at all during the 1987 season.
Where are they now?
The team took years to rebuild and recover from those sanctions. The football team relapsed in 1999 when defensive line coach Steve Malin allegedly paid someone to take a players ACT for him so that the player would be academically eligible.
Sound familiar? That brings us back to SMU basketball and Larry Brown. It’s the circle of life in the NCAA.
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