1-on-1 with SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee: Mustangs move to ACC has Pony Express eying a renaissance

Throughout the history of college football, countless programs have been seen as potential sleeping giants, and while few truly fulfill such a destiny, nearly four decades after SMU received the “death penalty,” Rhett Lashlee believes the Mustangs are ready for their renaissance.

“I don’t think there’s been a better time, maybe ever, definitely not since Eric Dickerson played here 40 years ago, to come to SMU,” Lashlee told me.

“And I’m the one who’s blessed to get to be the head coach.”

SMU is a small, private school in the heart of Dallas, ripe with potential, promise and renewed optimism. In the new-look world of college football, the program is looking to parlay a move to the ACC with a return to national prominence. 

After taking over for Sonny Dykes in 2022, Mustangs went 11-3 in Lashlee’s second season as head coach. They won the AAC, were competitive in a loss at Oklahoma and finished the year ranked in the postseason polls. It was the program’s best season since 1982 when it finished No. 2 nationally, and while SMU rode the “Pony Express” backfield of Eric Dickerson and Craig James to storied heights more than 40 years ago, the Mustangs are ready to ride high again as they enter the ACC in 2024. 

“With us going to the ACC, having the success we’ve had, five straight years qualifying for a bowl game, winning a conference championship. We’re building a brand new $100 million facility. 

“Like there’s just so many things lining up all at once, so it’s so exciting,” Lashlee said. 

And a bit unnerving. 

Ever since the collapse of the famed Southwest Conference in the mid-1990s, SMU has been on a near 20-year quest to become a Power Conference member again. The invitation from the ACC came on Sept. 1 last year — the day before the Mustangs’ first game of the 2023 season. In the moment, Lashlee barely had time to contemplate what the move meant for his program, but with the season now in the rear-view mirror, he’s begun studying the history of other teams that made successful jumps to the Power 5 level in recent years. 

Gary Patterson’s TCU and Kyle Whittingham’s Utah are two of the more famed examples of programs leveling up in competition and still winning almost immediately. The Utes went 8-5 in their first season in the Pac-12, while Patterson took the Horned Frogs to a bowl game in Year 1 in the Big 12 and TCU was crowned as the Big 12 champs in Year 3. Lashlee also mentioned his mentor Gus Malzahn at UCF, which was the only Big 12 newcomer to make a bowl game last season. 

But the goal isn’t just to become an ACC bowl team for SMU. The Mustangs expect to be truly competitive in the ACC — on an annual basis.

The question is how quickly can they achieve such hopes?

“Our starting 11 on offense and defense are probably gonna be good enough to beat anybody on our schedule next year. Common sense would tell you it’s gonna take us a few years to get the depth to probably meet our expectations there, but we’re sure gonna try to get there sooner than later,” Lashlee explained. 

“I’ll definitely pick Gus and (Gary) brains just kind of see what they learned and what they did that they thought worked and maybe what they did that maybe they wouldn’t do again.

“We do feel like we’re gonna be able to compete. I think the question is gonna be can we have the depth to compete week-in and week-out throughout the course of the season? We do have a lot of guys back, particularly on offense. Defense, too, but we got to fill some holes there.

“We’ve got a lot of momentum. We got a team that just won a championship. So they’re used to winning. They believe they can win, and I think there’s a lot of power in that.”

Why SMU could get off to a fast start in Year 1 in the ACC

The good news for the Mustangs is they’re set to return the foundation of their 2023 championship squad as they make their transition to the ACC. Alongside Georgia and Oregon, SMU was one of just three programs last season to rank in the Top 10 nationally in scoring offense and scoring defense. 

Play-making quarterback Preston Stone is back, as are former blue-chip tailbacks LJ Johnson and Camar Wheaton. The Mustangs’ defense allowed just 4.59 yards per play, and a good bulk of that side of the ball remains intact, too. Staff continuity has been a fixture for Lashlee in his first two seasons as a head coach, and although his longtime lieutenant Jonathan Brewer, the team’s OC and quarterbacks coach, is now the offensive coordinator for Manny Diaz at Duke, most of the staff remains the same as it was in 2022. 

He recently promoted former Houston quarterback D’eriq King to Brewer’s spot, and Lashlee was able to hold onto underrated defensive coordinator Scott Symons, who was a rumored candidate for openings at LSU, Missouri and elsewhere. 

“I think we’ve got a unique opportunity over the next five or six years to try to seize the moment with the momentum we have,” Lashlee said. 

“You look at a school like TCU 10 or 12 years ago, they’re in Fort Worth. They’re not in a major city. And yet, when they moved up to the Big 12, what Gary was able to do there, instantly when they became a Power Five school, the way it changed their recruiting and they were able to build and become what they become now, I think a lot of us have looked at Dallas and SMU and said, ‘Well if they can do it in Fort Worth, we can certainly do it in Dallas.’”

A Miami history lesson and Lashlee’s own Texas template

Rhett Lashlee, 40, climbed the coaching ladder working for Malzahn, Dykes and Diaz. He watched how to build a program from various lenses. Before becoming SMU’s head coach, his two-year stint as Miami’s offensive coordinator provided him with an interesting blueprint he didn’t realize at the time would become a template he would semi-replicate with the Mustangs. 

While at Miami, Lashlee became a bit of a college football history buff, learning all about ‘The U’ and how Howard Schnellenberger turned the Hurricanes into a powerhouse in the 1980s. 

What did it take for a small, private school in a major metropolitan city to achieve such success?

Schnellenberger famously locked down the Tri-Counties in South Florida, calling the fertile recruiting hotbed the “State of Miami.” Lashlee is looking to forge his own Texas template, only with a bit of a twist in the modern era of college football. 

“There’s a lot of parallels more than you would think with Miami and SMU. You start thinking about private schools that can win in football that are in recruiting hotbeds and big markets around the country: There’s Miami. There’s SMU in Dallas. There’s USC out in LA. Like there’s not a lot of others, smaller private schools that can take advantage of being in the big market,” Lashlee explained. 

“So there’s 11 counties in the Dallas Metroplex and we call that the “State of Dallas.” And that’s basically our home state. And then everywhere else Texas is almost like our bordering areas, our secondary markets. We can recruit the “State of Dallas” and the State of Texas and we don’t have to leave, per se. Now the transfer portal, you do end up going other places, but so that’s kind of what our focus has been.”

Lashlee isn’t reinventing the wheel looking to build a fence one of the best recruiting footprints in college football. Sonny Dykes had a similar plan. 

Everyone wants to own Dallas. 

The difference now is that SMU is actually positioned to take advantage of its local market because of its new ACC affiliations. The move to a power conference has allowed Lashlee to alter his program’s roster-building strategy, pivoting away from a portal-heavy approach to a foundation focused on securing as much local, blue-chip talent from the high school level. 

In Lashlee’s first two seasons at SMU, no Group of 5 program has been better or more aggressive using the transfer portal. The Mustangs had the best NIL game of any Group of 5 program, and their impending move to the ACC allowed them to capitalize on an even higher caliber of player this offseason. 

They’ve already signed 13 prospects from the likes of Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Miami, with Lashelee using his prior connections with the Hurricanes to land former 4-star wideout Brashard Smith and impact pass rusher Jahfari Harvey. 

“We’ll always be a transfer destination,” Lashlee said. “But the move to the ACC allows us to take advantage of both high school and portal recruiting just because we’re in a really unique position.

“Before we could get good players, but the high-end players, even though they wanted to stay home, they wanted to stay in Dallas, they loved SMU, to get over the top and get them to commit was tough because they want to play on the biggest stage. And so the transfer portal was a way for us to bridge that gap and get those high-caliber players that want to come back home to Dallas or back home to Texas. But going to ACC changes that from the high school level now, too.”

SMU signed just 10 prep prospects in its 2024 class — one that ranked 99th nationally. And yet, the Mustangs already have half as many commitments in their 2025 class — one that currently ranks 25th nationally with from Duncanville 4-star quarterback Keelon Russell and 4-star from DeSoto wideout Daylon Singleton headlining the group. 

Pony Express 2.0?

There’s a buzz around the Mustangs that hasn’t existed in decades. They have a rising star head coach. They return a strong roster. Their initial ACC schedule doesn’t include Clemson, NC State, North Carolina or Miami. 

Lashlee, who signed a contract extension in November, has administration support and alignment. The program is competitive in the NIL space and continues to see more and more investment. Within a week of announcing the move to the ACC, SMU raised more than $100 million. 

Add it all up, and the “Pony Express” is ready to ride again. 

“We’ve got our program back now on the national stage to where we’re finishing the season ranked, and people are actually talking about us in the preseason polls for a year from now,” Lashlee said. 

“Whether or not those expectations are early or not, I don’t know. But we’re being talked about, so we must be doing something right.”