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.
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.