It's absolutely crazy to me hearing all these men saying things like "the death penalty being used on here was the worst thing that's ever happened and I don't think they'll ever use the death penalty again" and they're referring to college football, while, being from Texas, I think it's pretty safe to assume where they stand on the literal death penalty. Scandals like this are part of the reason I love watching these documentaries, and on that level I really enjoyed the episode. But watching those guys revel in their cheating and equate their punishment to the punishment we reserve for the worst criminals and is considered by many to be inhumane, was, to put it mildly, irritating.
7.5/10. Very interesting documentary. It loses a little steam once you get past the "rise" and into the "fall" territory, with a few more jumps in the timeline and less well-defined figures to latch onto, but it's still an interesting time capsule of both SMU and Dallas at a particular time in the Metroplex's history. The generally unflinching look at shady things going on, and the film's willingness to point the finger at both malfeasance inside the school and also unfairness or bad luck outside of it, with selective enforcement and a local media battle desperate for a good story, makes "Pony Excess" a wide-ranging but illuminating look at the first and thus far only school to receive the "death penalty" in college football.
Review by drqshadowBlockedParent2020-02-06T19:44:18Z
From the shit-eating grins plastered across every single SMU alum's face in this documentary, it's pretty clear that the message of this story has been ultimately lost on the people who most needed to learn from it. Growing up an NFL fan with little time for college football in the '80s, I knew next to nothing about the sanctions, transgressions and ultimate fate of the Mustang football program, and it was quite telling to watch the sheer joy on the guilty parties' faces here, recounting as much of the story as they felt compelled to share and reveling in their own self-declared decadence.
After all was said and done, the only ones who came out of this looking like halfway decent human beings were the NCAA officials who gave the school chance after chance after chance before finally staying true to their word and cutting loose with the ultimate punishment. From everybody else it's smarmy excuse after smarmy excuse, always passing the buck and trying to act like the victim. Fuck these guys. The film itself is well enough done, interspersing modern interviews with actual news broadcasts from the era, but it ran a bit long and felt like it was just as interested in producing excuses as the boosters and players.