UNIVERSITY PARK, Texas — On the eve of a top-20 game against Pitt, legendary SMU and NFL running back Eric Dickerson spoke to the Mustangs team and told them, “Thank you.”
The bespectacled Dickerson thanked SMU on behalf of all former players, for seeing the Mustangs play at the highest level of college football again, now in their first Atlantic Coast Conference season. Dickerson was in town to celebrate the 1982 team that beat Dan Marino and Pitt in the Cotton Bowl for a claimed share of the national championship.
With Dickerson, his Pony Express backfield teammate Craig James and champion golfer Bryson DeChambeau part of a sellout crowd, SMU put on a show reminiscent of the glory days, beating previously undefeated and No. 20 Pitt, 48-25, and delivering a statement to the rest of the country: SMU has arrived and it isn’t going back.
“We’ve been waiting 40 years for this,” Dickerson told The Athletic. “When you win, it changes everything.”
This is why SMU fought so hard amid three years of conference realignment for someone to give them a power conference invitation. This is why billionaire boosters put up almost half a billion dollars to pay for upgrades and the move up, as SMU forgoes ACC TV money for nine years.
Almost 40 years after the SMU program was given the “death penalty” and 30 years after the program fell into purgatory as the Southwest Conference dissolved, SMU is tied atop the standings of the ACC, 8-1 overall and 5-0 in league play.
After Clemson’s loss to Louisville on Saturday, SMU controls its destiny and has very real dreams of making the College Football Playoff.
“Our program belongs at this level,” head coach Rhett Lashlee said.
Not letting up.#PonyUpDallas pic.twitter.com/tDKFDz88uG
— SMU Football (@SMUFB) November 3, 2024
They’re certain to be a top-20 team in next week’s CFP rankings, maybe even in the top 15. They have to be. They’re 8-1 with that one loss coming to undefeated BYU. They just delivered Pitt its first loss and won at a Louisville team that just beat Clemson and pushed Miami to the limit.
Saturday was undoubtedly the best performance of the season, coming a week after one of the worst. Quarterback Kevin Jennings, who had five turnovers in a squeaker win against Duke, was electric with 306 passing yards and two touchdowns while completing 17 of 25 passes.
On College Gameday Saturday morning, well before the game, Nick Saban called Jennings the most underrated player in the country, even coming off the Duke performance.
“He wasn’t wrong,” Jennings said.
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SMU’s start this year is arguably the best first year a program has had moving up from the Group of 5 to a power conference in the modern era. The Mustangs are 5-0 in the ACC. No team making such a move has started better than 2-0. It helps that SMU won’t play Miami or Clemson in the regular season, but they’ve still racked up impressive wins. This was a G5 team last year, winning the AAC for its first conference title in 40 years, but you wouldn’t notice there was any step up the way they’ve continued to play. SMU is now 17-2 in its last 19 games.
Lashlee didn’t have much time to build a roster ready for ACC play. The Mustangs got the invite the day before the 2023 season kicked off. Still, SMU is fifth in the ACC in 247Sports’ Team Talent rankings, which take into account a player’s high school star rating. Lashlee and his staff put together one of the best transfer portal classes in the country in each of the past two years. That includes nine players from Miami, where Lashlee previously coached.
One of those Miami players was running back Brashard Smith, a former four-star wide receiver recruit who ran for 161 yards and two touchdowns on Saturday against Pitt.
This team has athleticism, strength and size. It loaded up with 13 offensive and defensive line players in the 2024 transfer class, knowing it would have to get stronger and deeper in the trenches. Against Pitt, SMU had nine tackles for loss, three sacks and constantly pressured quarterback Eli Holstein.
“We haven’t had talent like this in 40 years,” Dickerson said.
.@SMUFB‘s The Pony Express was something special 🐴
Eric Dickerson and Craig James join ACC Huddle 🏈 pic.twitter.com/XVdGaV1myK
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) November 2, 2024
The Mustangs are off next week and then have Boston College at home, Virginia on the road and Cal at home to finish the season. They’re all winnable games. They’re also all losable — the AAC Mustangs lost to BC in a bowl game last season. But SMU heads into the home stretch with control of its destiny.
Dickerson for years said other schools were scared of SMU getting back to a power conference because its location and financial resources would unlock the high potential that reached its peak in the early 1980s — the NCAA allows players to be paid now, after all. Just one year into the ACC, SMU is kicking down that door.
“This was the vision,” athletic director Rick Hard said. “We didn’t know how quickly it would happen, but we believed it would happen. There’s a ways to go, but we’re here in November and we’re living it, and the vision is visible.”
(Photo of Brashard Smith running for a touchdown in front of Pitt’s Donovan McMillon: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)
