Before plunging off that bridge into gator-infested waters, Phil Bennett must have stepped back, taken stock of the situation, and placed one phone call to Vegas to ascertain odds of survival.

Some cigar-chomping wise-guy named Vinny would have punched this data into the computer: One winning season since the death penalty 15 years ago. Nine losses or more six times during that stretch. Fat cats, once the lifeblood/ruination of the program, running for their lives. Enough fans to fill one greyhound bus leaving town.

"Sorry," Vinny would have said. "The computer don't have numbers that high."

	First-year coach Phil Bennett has faced tougher challenges than rebuilding SMU.

Still, Bennett took a hard look at the SMU football program last winter and knew he could conquer this river.

"There were some things I'd heard about the program that I didn't like," he said. "But after spending some time with (athletic director) Jim Copeland, I left that place feeling that this might be the time."

For starters, Bennett knew the true meaning of comeback, having lost his beloved wife to a freakish accident less than three years earlier. He knew the odds of survival. He had endured the darkest period of life, managed to keep the family on track, and excelled as one of college football's best defensive coordinators at Kansas State.

"I've faced bigger things than this," he said. "Try telling your two kids (now ages eleven and fourteen) that their mother won't be coming back."

During his second interview with Copeland, on his forty-sixth birthday, Bennett spotted a glimmer of hope that perhaps no other man could have possibly seen. Something felt right. He decided to roll the dice.

Given the opportunity, I might have tried to talk him out of it.

You see, I have been tracking the SMU football program for about thirty years, all the way back to the early seventies when, as a student reporter at the SMU Daily Campus a torchlight parade was staged to protest a series of stories I'd written. The program was filled with filth even then. Players were being paid for fumbles, interceptions and touchdowns. The program was a million dollars over budget. Coaches were running up huge tabs at a local hotel and the university was paying.

In response to my digging, a few hundred students marched up Bishop Boulevard, toting torches and hanging me in effigy. Funny thing, I marched right along with them.

I remember an interview with then-athletic director Dick Davis, who said, "Every day I come to work I can hear a bomb ticking underneath this desk." It seems that one explosion triggered a chain reaction. The player payroll got out of hand.

Ron Meyer coached at SMU from 1976 through '81 and was hailed for recruiting Eric Dickerson and Craig James while creating the "Pony Express." Years later, and years later, we sat down to discuss a possible book deal. Meyer is one of the most candid people I've ever met. I leaned across the table and asked, "any ideas on a working title?" He pounded the table and hollered, "I Cheated." We never wrote that book.

I actually expected a cleansing process to follow Meyer's departure. But the dirt just got deeper. More miscreants emerged. One of the editors at the Dallas Times Herald, where I worked for more than a decade, kept a chalkboard on all of the misdeeds that had been dug up at SMU. It wasn't long before he ran out of chalkboard.

In 1987, the NCAA handed down the death penalty and the football team was disbanded for two years. The day after the announcement, I remember standing in the rain outside of SMU's Ownby Stadium while college recruiters from across the country descended like vultures to feast on SMU players with eligibility remaining. Because of the downpour, they were jammed into the lobby of the football offices, belly-to-belly. I peered through the glass doors and wondered if all that banlon was sticking together.

	“	I've faced bigger things than this. Try telling your two kids that their mother won't be coming back. ”
		— SMU coach Phil Bennett

When the team did return in '89 with twenty-five scholarship players and seventy walk-ons, the Mustangs would have been no more than an intramural squad without a nifty little quarterback from San Antonio named Mike Romo, who won a few games and kept some others close.

To make matters worse, faculty and administration fought against the resurrection of the program by piling on unprecedented academic standards. Up until last year, a recruit needed 1,000 on the SAT just to qualify for an official "visit." Success on the field was once out of reach.

Now comes Phil Bennett, who knows that life's real issues are larger than wins and losses.

August 11th was the third anniversary of Nancy Bennett encounter with lightning. She died seventeen days later, August 28, at age 41.

She was jogging early one morning in a new subdivision near the family home in Manhattan, Kansas. Phil was getting out of the shower when he heard a low rumble. He was unsure if it was exercises at nearby Fort Riley or thunder. He opened the blinds and discovered it was raining. He left Sam, 11, and Maddie, 8, sleeping downstairs and jumped into his car.

It rained harder as he traced her normal route, passing a police cruiser with flashing lights, thinking nothing of it. He felt certain that Nancy had taken cover. But with no sign of his wife, Phil returned to the police car and rolled down his window.

"Officer, have you seen a good-looking blonde jogging?" he asked.

"Coach, do you know that woman?"

His heart was now in his throat. All he could think about were her words spoken just a half hour earlier. "I love you. I'll see you tonight."

The lightning had entered the base of her skull and exited through her feet. Two eyewitnesses said she was thrown six feet into the air, and that her jogging shoes were blown off.

At the entrance to the emergency room, Bennett ran through a tackle attempted by a security guard, and found a team of doctors trying to resuscitate Nancy. She was burned and her flesh was smoking. He threw himself on the ground and cried, "Nancy, please!"

On August 24, thirteen days into his vigil, Phil had life-support treatment terminated. She died four days later in his arms.

Another August has arrived and Phil Bennett is filled with memories.

"It is breaking my heart that she is not here," he said. "If she were here, she would tell me about the great life we had.

"This is the toughest time of the year for me. I am grateful that I have something to keep my mind occupied from seven in the morning till eleven at night."

Bennett has friends who provide strength and support each day, men like Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum, and Emory Bellard, the Aggies' head coach when Bennett played there from 1974 to '77.

"Emory used to always talk about real life and tell us there was real life beyond football," Bennett said. "Well, I guess I got a dose of real life in a tragic way."

I suspect Phil Bennett will continue to handle those issues. I also suspect that he possesses the strength to bring the Ponies back. Phil Bennett loves a challenge. And he has beaten greater odds.

Jim Dent is the author of "Junction Boys" and "The Undefeated" and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. "Junction Boys" will be ESPN Original Entertainment's second original, made-for-television movie. The premiere is scheduled for Saturday, December 14 at 9:00 p.m. ET on ESPN.