Friday, June 3, 2011

Pony Excess

In the early 1980s, Southern Methodist University in eastern Texas assembled a knockout football team which included running great Ernest Dickerson and surprised much of college football. However, it was soon revealed that many of their star athletes were given bribes and incentives to attend the university, and this scandal reached all the way up to the president of the university, the former and soon to be governer of Texas. When the school could not stop paying their athletes, the NCAA handed down the "death penalty", a measure that banned football from the school for a year, a measure which the program is still recovering from. Pony Excess has an interesting story to tell and goes about presenting it in the most bombastic unintersting method. Instead of simply telling its story, a slew of talking heads experts as well as people involved offer their commentary on what happened. This poor presentation on top of an overlong two hour running length make Pony Excess a disappointment, even if it is still relevant to current ongoings at Ohio State.