![]() ![]() The interview was later immortalized in the ESPN documentary Pony Excess. SMU, which had already been placed on probation five times between 19 for similar violations, had continued giving some of its players "thousand-dollar signing bonuses, rent-free apartments, and $750-per-month allowances in some cases." Hansen's report included an on-air admission from one of the players, linebacker David Stanley, and a live interview with the school's athletic director, head football coach, and recruiting coordinator. 12, 1986, Hansen aired a 40-minute special revealing SMU was paying - or rather still paying - its football players. He was only a few years into his WFAA gig when he broke open one of the biggest stories in college football history. Hansen moved from there to Omaha and then to Dallas, where he started with WFAA in the mid-1980s. "It was amazing the stories that I stumbled into." "It was one of the most corrupt towns I've ever been in my life," he said. (Yes, coal mining in Iowa.) Within a year, his muckraking had earned him an award as the state's Associated Press investigative reporter of the year. Hansen got his first media job in 1974 at a radio station in Newton, Iowa, an old coal mining town of about 15,000. "I once wrote about Obamacare and all I said was, 'I don't know if it's the right answer for the country, but we need to sit down and talk about it and find the right answer.' Every redneck son of a bitch came out of the woodworks and wanted to blow me up." My bosses hate it on the occasions when I say it," Hansen told BuzzFeed. And yes, in a metro area where 11 of the 12 congressional representatives are Republicans, he is an unapologetic champion of liberal politics. ![]() ![]() His defense of child victims in the wake of the Penn State sex abuse scandal hinted at a deep reservoir of empathy. Since then he's tangled with the area's sports icons - Tom Landry, Jerry Jones, and Barry Switzer, to name a few - and several times turned down big-money offers from stations and networks in larger media markets. Hansen, the longtime sports anchor for WFAA-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth, first made a name for himself and the station nearly 30 years ago when he broke a story involving a Southern Methodist University slush fund for under-the-table payments to football players. ![]()
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