30 biggest college football scandals of all time
By Ethan Lee
The NCAA gives Southern Methodist University the death penalty
Once upon a time, the Southern Methodist University Mustangs were a force to be reckoned with in football. SMU, seemingly miraculously and overnight, became a team to be feared in the 1980s. Despite the fact that the Mustangs were placed on probation in June of 1981, they went on to win the Southwest Conference in December and went on to have a half-decade of solid success.
And then suddenly, in 1987, that success was halted as the NCAA came down and just about put an end to SMU’s football program.
As has been outlined before, cheating in college sports happens. Players receive benefits that the NCAA deems to be impermissible to play for schools. More or less, that’s the case with SMU, except the Mustangs were busted multiple times in a relatively short span of time.
NCAA investigations, bowl bans, and being kicked off TV didn’t stop SMU from operating outside of the NCAA’s rules. So the NCAA prevented SMU from playing football in 1987 and imposed multiple other penalties.
And SMU still hasn’t recovered from them.
It’d be safe to say that the SMU football program will never be the same following that devastating penalty. It took the Mustangs almost 33 years to make it back into the AP Top 25. The penalty didn’t totally destroy SMU’s football program, but it ruined the Mustangs for decades.