SMU is not in the college football playoffs without its money, & passionate filmmaker
Had SMU been excluded from this college football playoff, not much would have happened other than our standard 36-hour moral outrage, but it would have been good content for the sequel to “Pony Excess.”
SMU alum and Dallas-resident Thaddeus Matula directed the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, which aired on Dec. 11, 2010. It’s one of the best films in that library, which remains that network’s gold standard.
Matula is one of the most important figures responsible for SMU football’s return from the grave. SMU is not where it is today without Matula, and his film.
Amid considerable speculation, worry, anger and consternation, SMU was the last invitee to the 12-team college football playoff bracket. The announcement was made on Sunday morning on ESPN’s selection show.
SMU’s last-second loss to Clemson in the ACC title game on Saturday night in Charlotte was enough to justify that the Mustangs (11-2) earned the final at-large bid, over three-loss Alabama. Had SMU not come back from a 31-14 deficit in the fourth quarter to tie the game late, the Tide would have been the pick over the Ponies.
The Ponies are the 11-seed, and will play at six-seed Penn State in the first round of this invitational, at noon on Dec. 21 in State College, Pa. The winner advances to the Fiesta Bowl in the quarterfinals to play Boise State, on New Year’s Eve.
BTW: Shoutout to the late Mike Leach. The former Texas Tech coach had lobbied for this sort of bracket for years. He also hated committees.
SMU going to the playoff invitational is just more footage for Matula in his efforts to make a sequel to “Pony Excess,” with the title, “Pony ACCess.”
“The ending,” Matula said, “just keeps getting better.”
Making the “Pony Excess”
Last week, former SMU running back Eric Dickerson joined a promotional event for an NIL company to discuss the modern state of college sports. Specifically, college players are now allowed to be compensated without going under the table.
During the Q&A, Dickerson specifically mentioned Matula and his film.
“Thad did a great job,” Dickerson said.
That’s now how this relationship started.
Dickerson’s initial response to Matula was, “How did you get my number?”
When Matula was compiling interviews, he recognized the key figure was Dickerson. At the time, Dickerson was still a four-letter word around The Hilltop, and he would routinely blister the state of the program in any interview. He never would discuss what he was paid to come to SMU.
SMU’s head football coach at the time was June Jones, and Matula went through him to contact Dickerson.
“You need to talk to this guy,” Jones told Dickerson.
Matula’s father was an SMU professor, and Thaddeus was 8 when SMU received the Death Penalty. The man loves his alma mater, and it was his efforts to tell the entire story of SMU that allowed the school to finally be done with a time that had for too long defined not just the football team but the institution.
Dickerson’s interview, along with so many other figures from that era, was the necessary sunshine that allowed the entire community to let this all be a part of a history they no longer needed to avoid. For too long too many SMU people focused on the anger that stemmed from the reality that other schools were participating in the same misdeeds but were unpunished. Specifically, the University of Texas.
“We didn’t want to acknowledge that we were doing it,” Matula said. “It was always, ‘How come they didn’t get what we got!’
The impact of “Pony Excess”
When SMU buried June Jones in cash to leave the University of Hawaii to be its head football coach, in 2008, the school’s commitment to rebuilding its football program was not complete. Over-paying to secure a head coach who had just led Hawaii to the BCS, a 41-10 loss to Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, was not enough.
Jones and the administration could not agree about certain realities that need to exist to field a competitive college football team. The issue wasn’t paying players. The issue had to do more with academics. For a while, it was harder for a college football recruit to gain admittance into SMU than Stanford.
SMU eventually modified, which is a professorial word for “lowered,” its standards for potential recruits. What SMU does now is consistent with the rest of major college football. If the Mustangs were going to get real about winning, they had to get real players.
When Dickerson attended an SMU game last season, he called his friends and proudly told them, “We have athletes now.”
Buying its way into the ACC completed this transformation.
Speaking of Dickerson, he is now a welcome part of the SMU community. All of those players who were associated with the “cheating” era of the program have been invited to return, and join in on the fun. This does not happen without Matula’s “Pony Excess.”
Last week, Matula received a message from June Jones. It simply read, “You started all of this.”
Matula’s intent was to tell the fascinating, complete story of SMU football’s rise, and death.
He knows there is a sequel in there, and the ending keeps getting better.
This story was originally published December 8, 2024 at 11:42 AM.
