30 for 30

I didn't expect to enjoy ESPN's "30 for 30" series as much as I did, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of some of the documentaries.  Now, I didn't watch all of them (I do actually have a life), but among the ones that I did watch, two in particular stand out. 

The first one is "June 17, 1994," which aired, obviously, in June.  That has to go down as one of the craziest days in the history of sports.  Here's a list of things that happened on that day: the World Cup began in Chicago, Arnold Palmer played the final round of his U.S. Open career, Ken Griffey Jr. hit a home run in Kansas City that traveled about 600 feet, the Rangers held their first Stanley Cup parade in 54 years, then the Knicks hosted the Rockets in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.  But O.J. Simpson overshadowed them all.  Of course, everybody knows the O.J. story by now, so there's no need for me to retell the details.  The truly remarkable part is that more people wanted to watch O.J.'s low-speed chase down the Santa Monica Freeway than the NBA Finals, so much so that NBC cut away from the basketball game to stay with O.J. n You could even argue that reality TV was born that day.

The thing that made this documentary so cool was that there was no narration whatsoever.  There was simply raw video and TV footage.  That's it.  But that's all that was needed to tell the story.  At the end, they did put up graphics to describe how each of the events ended up (Brazil won the World Cup, the Rockets won the NBA Finals, O.J. was acquitted, etc.), but the only standard documentary-type interviews you saw were with the director to introduce the show, then one coming out of commercial.  I thought this would be the most brilliant piece in the series, but I was wrong.  It was trumped by the "30 for 30" finale on Saturday night.

Saturday night's show was possibly the best in the entire series (again, I only saw a few, but it was the best of the ones I saw).  Entitled "Pony Exce$$," it was the story of the SMU football program leading up to its receiving the "death penalty" from the NCAA in 1987. 

I was interested in seeing this one because I obviously knew about the penalty, which is the harshest punishment the NCAA has ever handed down, but I wanted to know the backstory.  The backstory wasn't pretty.  SMU, a program with a rich history, got good again in the late 70s, then became a powerhouse in the early 80s when Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson was the team's star.  Of course, the reason they got good again was because boosters started paying high school players to come to SMU, then kept paying them throughout their college careers.  I don't need to tell you that's bad.  Inevitably, the NCAA eventually found out and put SMU on probation, banning them from TV and a bowl game in 1984.  Normally that would be enough to scare a program straight, but SMU's boosters weren't really the sharpest knives in the drawer and kept up the payments.  A Dallas TV station talked to a disgruntled former player who admitted everything, then did some digging.  They aired an interview with SMU's head coach, AD and "administrative assistant to the AD" that made the three of them look guilty as sin, which brought the NCAA back.  SMU clearly didn't get the message, so the NCAA had to do something drastic, which was shutting the program down entirely in 1987.

After seeing this, I can now say that SMU was asking for it.  One of the people interviewed compared the SMU "death penalty" to the U.S. dropping the atomic bomb and predicted the "death penalty" will never be used again.  I agree with him, but only because I don't think a school will be stupid enough to cheat so blatantly for so long (including after the NCAA tells them to stop) ever again.  But the final 20 minutes of the show, which chronicles SMU's struggles after restoring the program in 1989 until today, when they've literally risen from the ashes to reach bowl games in back-to-back years for the first time since the Pony Express era.  (SMU beat Nevada in last year's Hawai'i Bowl and plays Army in the Armed Forces Bowl on Dec. 30.)

If you haven't seen either one of these documentaries, you should.  Both of them are saved on my DVR (for whatever that's worth).