Rhett Lashlee reaffirms SMU 'earned the right to be in' College Football Playoff

Many immediately questioned SMU with how they performed and what the final score was in their appearance in the College Football Playoff. Regardless of that, though, Rhett Lashlee doesn’t doubt that the Mustangs should have been in the field.

Lashlee had to address and justify his team’s candidacy again following their 38-10 loss at Penn State on Saturday. He had no additional opinion on the debate about them, as well as the likes of Indiana, being in. He just again stated that they deserved it, regardless of what happened in the opening round in Happy Valley.

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“Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t. Not right now,” Lashlee said postgame. “I mean, like I said, we earned the right to be in. It’s unfortunate that, you know, a bad game is going to maybe make it feel, maybe, that that’s not the case.”

“I can’t control the debate. I can’t control what people are going to say,” said Lashlee. “We got in. Today, we got beat. We got beat soundly by a very good team. Next year’s going to be a whole new year, you know. Maybe in the future, if we’re on the edge, we may not get the nod because of how we performed today.”

With that, Lashlee put some of that on themselves. They had their chance to earn a potentially more favorable matchup in the bracket while in the ACC Championship.

“It’s our job to do what we should have done a week ago and win the championship and get a bye and be sitting in Arizona right now,” Lashlee noted. “We didn’t do that. So I don’t know.”

SMU suffered their largest loss of the season by far with the 28-point blowout to the Nittany Lions in Beaver Stadium. It was 14-0 because a pair of pick-sixes, 28-0 by halftime, and as much as 38-3 in the fourth quarter. Penn State created most of that margin with a 21-0 mark in the second quarter as Penn State scored off of all three of the Mustangs’ turnovers in the game.

“I don’t have a whole lot more to say other than I wish we would have played better because I think our body of work shows we’re a better team than how we performed today,” said Lashlee. “Now, whether we would have won the game or not, I don’t know. But, if you take three of the four quarters, that game is 17-10, you know what I mean? So, unfortunately, the second quarter existed, so.”

Whether fair or not, it’s now a talking point that SMU, plus Indiana, are now the main topic of. Still, for all that we need to fix in the future with the expanded playoff, Lashlee thinks it’s still much better for the sport, including team’s like his, as a whole.

“I mean, there’s a lot of things that need to be reformed. I don’t know if I’m ready to weigh in on the committee. Like I said, they got a hard job,” said Lashlee. “I do think the playoff is good for college football. Whether you have results like last night and this one a little bit at times or not, it’s still good. You got more teams that get in. It’s all the first year of doing it.”