Rhett Lashlee believes College Football Playoff berth closed chapter on SMU's Death Penalty

The SMU Mustangs are a program often defined by their history. That history, unfortunately, has included receiving the Death Penalty and the fallout that punishment had on the program.

This season, SMU was able to make the College Football Playoff, losing to Penn State in the process. Even with that first round loss, head coach Rhett Lashlee believes that this season has final closed the chapter on SMU’s history associated with the Death Penalty.

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“I hope it gives you something else to write about,” Rhett Lashlee said. “Nothing disrespectful to anybody here, you should have been writing about it. We’ve been revived. That’s over. That chapter is closed. We’ve moved on. It’s a part of our past and history just like everybody’s got parts of their past in history, but that’s what I mean by this team raised the standard and the expectations for SMU football. They made our entire school proud. They made our entire city proud. We got Tim in here, I see him over here like we’ve got guys recognizing what they did.”

In 1987, the NCAA decided to punish SMU with the Death Penalty for serious and repeated violations. To this day, it’s the only football program to receive that punishment, largely because of how harsh it was as a punishment. Earlier in the 1980s, SMU had won at least 10 games for four straight seasons. After the program returned in 1989, the Mustangs went eight seasons before they had a winning record. In 2009, they made their first bowl game since 1984.

After all those difficult seasons, Rhett Lashlee has now led SMU to two straight 11-win seasons and a College Football Playoff berth.

“Look, if we played the way we did in the second quarter today and throw — if you throw two pick-sixes, a pick in the endzone, or, I’m sorry, in the red zone and do some of the things we did, we would have lost to every single team on our conference schedule probably. We somehow miraculously won one doing that. We didn’t do that stuff all year. So it’s going to be unfortunate that it happened on this stage in this moment, so it has a different feel, but we’ve proven we belong. We’ve proven we can play with the big programs in America,” Lashlee said.

“And, you know, we’ve gotten back to the national stage and we’ve proven we have a long way to go if we want to get to a National Championship again, but hopefully this is a way to close that chapter on that part of our history and say, ‘Okay, SMU is back and back in the standard of we’re on the national stage, we’re playing with the power coverage schools. We’re competing and winning with power coverage schools.’ Now we have to see can we sustain it? Now we have to see can we take out even further over time?”

While Rhett Lashlee has found a ton of success, leading the program to the Playoff and a power conference. However, he emphasized that the job isn’t done in his mind.

“I think if you would have told anybody going into year one in the ACC that we would go undefeated in conference and play for a championship and be in the College Football Playoff, probably people wouldn’t have believed you or said that’s a heck of a year,” Lashlee said. “So, hopefully, the more distance we get from this moment, that’s what’s remembered and we’re disappointed we didn’t finish today the way we wanted to, but we’ll be back.”

The game against Penn State didn’t go the way that Lashlee and SMU wanted it to, losing 38-10. Still, as one of only 12 teams to make the Playoff, it was a special season for the Mustangs.