You finally got your wish, SMU.

You’re No. 1 at last.

All those years of striving for athletic glory, damn the rules and ethics, have at last paid off. Southern Methodist University has become the first school in NCAA history to reach double figures in major infractions cases. The significant penalties announced Tuesday by the NCAA Committee on Infractions conclude the Mustangs’ 10th major case (pending appeal).

That breaks a tie with Arizona State for the distinction of being the most-penalized school in the 62 years the NCAA has been policing violators.

Hang a banner for that, SMU. Have a parade. Stage a pep rally. Maybe invite Craig James and Eric Dickerson back to drive free Camaros around campus for nostalgia’s sake. If you’re a Mustang, probation is handed down like an heirloom.

View photos SMU head coach Larry Brown has found NCAA trouble more than twice. (AP) More

It’s been a run of amazing consistency for the private school in Dallas. The dates and names change, but the scofflaw mentality never seems to waver. Arranging jobs, providing cars, improper entertainment and lodging, financial aid flimflam, academic fraud, too many text messages – it’s all there over the years, a multigenerational panoply of athletic corruption.

SMU is the NCAA compliance version of Old Faithful. Just a matter of time before it erupts again. The infraction years: 1958, 1965, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1985, 1987, 2000, 2011 and now 2015. And for all that rule violating, the Mustangs have one football national championship it can claim, from 1935, when three other schools say they won it all, too.

As you can see by the infraction years, SMU skipped cheating for much of the 1990s, perhaps because it was still reeling from the Death Penalty applied in 1987 that devastated the football program like no other sanction in NCAA history. The NCAA had it with the serial thumbing of the nose from the Mustangs in the ’80s and dropped the hammer.

But SMU stays scared straight for only so long. Then it’s back to business as usual.

With the latest addition of a one-year postseason ban for both men’s basketball and men’s golf, SMU now has 12 years’ worth of postseason bans across three sports. Nine of those were in football, where the Mustangs truly distinguished themselves as the cheatingest program in America. Two are in men’s hoops. Men’s golf is the newest addition into that rogues’ gallery.

“The fact that this institution has been in front of the Committee on Infractions so many times ... was an aggravating factor,” COI chair Michael Adams said Tuesday in a teleconference to announce the penalties.

The great cosmic joke to all this is the fact that America’s most penalized school went out and hired Larry Brown to be its basketball coach in 2012. And now here come the sanctions. WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING?

OK, maybe I saw that coming. I sure wasn’t the only one.

Brown is the guy whose only two previous college stints came with NCAA wreckage in his wake when he walked away. UCLA wound up with a postseason ban for the 1981-82 season, after he had sashayed to the NBA. Kansas was also banned in the 1988-89 season, after Brown won a national title and then hightailed back to the pros.

Now, if you ask Brown about those unfortunate developments he will place the blame elsewhere. In fact, he said the UCLA violations predated his time as coach there, from 1979-81. But the NCAA report from that case details impermissible benefits from a booster to a player from 1979-80, and by an assistant coach to a player and to recruits in 1979-80. Nice try, Larry.

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