SI.com Football's most embarrassing moments

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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writ...ents/index.html

2. SMU gets the death penalty: Feb. 25, 1987

The history and mythology of modern college football are papered with examples of programs whose keepers and boosters flaunted NCAA rules by building quasi-professional programs with marginal student-athletes. But only one has received the NCAA's death penalty: Southern Methodist University. The Mustangs rose to the top of the high-powered Southwest Conference in the early '80s, riding on the back of the Pony Express backfield (Eric Dickerson and Craig James), and twice finished in the top five in the nation. At swank parties all over Texas, where football is big business, SMU alums bragged to their Longhorn and Aggie brethren. Then the bubble burst: SMU was found to have made approximately $61,000 in payments to athletes from funds provided by a booster, with the approval of university officials as high up as former -- and future -- Texas governor Bill Clements, who was then chairman of SMU's board of governors. NCAA officials did not levy the penalty lightly, but, said Dan Beebe, the lead investigator on the case, "I'm not sure what else would have gotten the message across to those people.'' It has been nearly two decades since the NCAA took down SMU; 16 schools have since been eligible for the death penalty, but none have received it. SMU has never recovered. "It's like an atomic bomb,'' SMU coach Phil Bennett told Sports Illustrated in 2002. "The NCAA did it once and caused devastation beyond belief, and it's never going to be done again.''