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On Friday afternoon, almost a year to the day after signing his first contract extension with the SMU Mustangs, head coach Rhett Lashlee agreed to another contract extension with the university that will keep the 41-year-old coach in Dallas through 2030. Lashlee celebrated this deal by leading the Mustangs to their 10th win of the season on Saturday afternoon, a 33-7 victory over Virginia, clinching a berth into the ACC Championship Game in the Mustangs' first season in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
After the game, Rhett Lashlee, who is 28-10 in his coaching career at SMU, spoke with reporters about what the win over the Cavaliers meant, and what it means for this program, which won the American Athletic Conference title last season, to be in position to win a second consecutive conference title this year in an entirely different conference.
“I think they had a special day and just, man, super proud of our guys. It’s hard to win 10 games. It’s hard to do something that’s never been done before. No one’s ever moved from a small conference to a power conference and gone to the championship game in their first year, so just really proud of our guys for doing that,” Lashlee said, per Bill Embody of On3. “It’s a fun group, man. They love playing together. They love playing for each other. They love playing for SMU.”
To be fair, who wouldn't love playing for SMU? The Mustangs are the 5th-highest scoring team in the country, and they've lost just one game this season — an 18-15 defeat at the hands of a BYU Cougars team that started the season 9-0. Regardless of what happens next Saturday against fellow ACC newbie California, they're heading to Charlotte to play either Clemson or Miami in the ACC Championship Game. Not a bad place to be playing football, right?
And just for clarity, it's not as if the ACC is in the midst of a down year. Miami and Clemson are both in position to make the College Football Playoff. Pittsburgh started the season 7-0. Georgia Tech, Louisville, NC State and Boston College have all been ranked at one point of the season. And yet it's this private university in Dallas that was once without a football program for two years in the late-80s that became the first to clinch a berth into the title game.
SMU returns to AP Poll top ten for first time since days of Pony Express
It's only fitting that in an era where paying players is not just legal, but praised as a solid team-building tactic, the SMU football program, which received the ‘Death Penalty' after a nearly decade-long run of boosters and coaches paying players illegally, is now thriving thanks in large part to boosters with remarkably deep pockets who are willing to shell out $36,000 a year to every single player on the football team. That's in addition to whatever they can earn utilizing their own Name, Image or Likeness.
Now, with the release of the latest AP Top 25 Poll, the Mustangs are back where they were before the Death Penalty nearly killed the program for good, when the Pony Express was running wild in the state of Texas… they're ranked in the top ten.
