Everybody Wants to be … SMU … Again

SMU … time was when everybody who was anybody wanted to be a Mustang, wanted to be at SMU. If you missed those days when Highland Park was the place to be, let’s just say you missed a lot … and I’m so sorry. The world was simple back then with none of the technological advances we often take for granted. But simple though it may have been word still got out about that slice of paradise where all those rich folks lived, worked, and played … sitting on a hill …where they played a brand of football you had to see to believe.

In the late 70’s, Mustang Mania was how they described the love affair between fans and SMU football. It carried over into the early 80’s as SMU became a national power. It’s hard to describe their energy, their aura, but to put it into perspective, think UNLV Running Rebels or Michigan Fab Five, yeah that’s how cold they were. Wearing sleek red, white, and blue unis, running the option to perfection, having the two best running backs in the nation and get this … one of them was White: yeah, you read that right.

Back then, the Mustangs were the ones to watch in DFW and honestly, with the way the Cowboys were playing, SMU might’ve been the best football team in the city. Yes, everybody wanted to be a Mustang, everybody wanted to be at SMU … that is until that … thing

…happened.

The Day

February 25, 1987, is a day that will forever live in infamy. College football diehards won’t ever forget where they were when they got the news that the NCAA had handed SMU the most severe decision in history. The “Death Penalty” as it came to be called was extreme with sanctions that reverberated across the national landscape. Their current roster, arguably the most talented in the land, was free to transfer and eligible to play immediately, but the program itself was left to face the wrath of the NCAA.

For starters, SMU’s 1987 season was cancelled, and the team was banned from playing any home games in 1988: a move that prompted school officials to cancel that season too. It didn’t stop there. Scholarships. Recruiting. Roster construction. Booster relationships. The entire SMU football machine was dismantled.

It wasn’t just about SMU. That cold winter morning set the Mustang program back decades and marked the beginning of the end of the Southwest Conference. SMU was a cornerstone of the SWC but with the Mustangs sidelined for two years, the lucrative Dallas market was no longer paying or playing. That reality prompted Arkansas to seek greener pastures in the SEC and Texas, A&M, Baylor, and Texas Tech joined forces with the old Big Eight to form the first iteration of the Big 12 thus ending the historic 82-year run of the SWC.

The Mustangs felt the pain, but the ruling was bigger than SMU. Oh sure, the message was heard loud and clear throughout the red, white and blue halls off I-75 … but the message was delivered in such a way that it was heard in other halls, on other campuses, by other universities. Heard and felt in such a way that the world would never again be faced with another SMU.

The Next Day

The SMU decision was shocking … but the college football world kept spinning and the money kept flowing. Rival programs joined forces at the negotiating tables, leading to the formation of the College Football Association (CFA). This move opened the floodgates, and million-dollar network deals began falling from the skies like confetti during a championship celebration.

The network deals meant more money for schools … and coaches. Overnight, head coaches saw their paychecks increase by as much as 13 times the previous year. From the late 1980’s when the SMU decision was rendered, head coaches at major universities rake in up to 100 times more than they were prior to those network deals while staff budgets have increased by an astounding 370%.

There’s an old football weightroom adage that says that steel is steel meaning no matter where you’re working out, 100 pounds of steel is still 100 pounds of steel. But with those network dollars, the “where” got a makeover. No longer were players lifting and sculpting their bodies in obscure, decaled boxes, stained with the blood, sweat, and tears of past glory’s. No, those new dollars ushered in the construction of palatial fitness hubs that doubled as recruiting tools, holding the promise of turning a prospect into a superstar, the kind who made even more money for everyone … but himself.

Networks were seeing profits increase immensely, coach and staff salaries were going through the ceiling, while universities were welcoming record revenue streams through their doors. Every pocket was being filled with the exception of one …

… the player.

Even with the new economic realities of the sport, it was fair to say that the systemic vulnerabilities that set the stage for the SMU decision remained present. And to be clear, while the Mustangs were the only who received the Death Penalty, the only ones forced to sit by and watch as their program was taken down to the studs. You ever have that friend who breaks a rule like I don’t know, bringing your car back on E, or drinking your last beer, shrugs and keeps moving like nothing ever happened? I see you nodding. Yeah…

…that’s kind of what college football did to SMU.

A New Day

The pressure was building and as they say, pressure always bursts pipes … and the pipes of college football finally did what they do: they burst. The first one gave way in 2018 with the Transfer Portal; the digital space that gave players the freedom to move on from their current school to one that better aligned with their needs. Best part of all was that unlike past generations, transferring players were now granted immediate eligibility you know, …

… just like after that thing at SMU.

In July of 2021 with Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) legislation being passed, life as a college athlete became interesting and lucrative. Couple that with revenue sharing arriving four years later and some of those youngsters were staring at bank accounts that looked like generational wealth, and they hadn’t seen the insides of an NFL locker room. But here’s the thing, all these fiscal mechanisms that underwrote this financial windfall didn’t just magically appear. Make no mistake about it, the television deals were huge, but when it comes to paying the athletes, the straw stirring this financial drink, the ability to do so and the money …

… was always there.

Today

Almost forty years have passed since that cold February morning in 1987 where crippling sanctions bit harder than the North Texas winds … and so, so much has changed. “Payroll”, a word coaches wouldn’t dare utter in the same sentence as “player”, is a primary responsibility along budgeting and get this, managing the salary cap. New rules allow schools like Texas Tech, a program that orbited far outside the elites, to build a $36.3 million war chest last season and Indiana, a team that hadn’t sniffed a Big Ten title since 1967 … win the Big Ten and national championship. Oil money buoyed the Red Raiders while billionaire alums like Mark Cuban helped the Hoosiers field the best team money could buy.

Look familiar?

SMU, a shell of themselves by the end of that fateful day is also starting to look familiar. The Mustangs are once again a cornerstone program, this time in the ACC, and from the moment they walked in the front door, they’ve been a force. Since the adoption of the CFP 12-team playoff format in the 2024-25 season, the kids from Dallas have made one appearance … one more than Michigan, LSU, USC, Florida State and other so-called Blue Bloods …

…and they might just be getting started.

College football has changed, but on the micro level, so much of what made SMU a power has remained the same. The campus is still a virtual paradise nestled in what ranks as the most desirable locale in the most progressive city in the South. Powerhouse high schools and elite players are on every corner and in this age where money talks and elite local players are less likely to walk … the stage is set for SMU and their multi-billion-dollar endowment to finally get the last laugh.

The funniest part is how after all these seasons … through it all … how everybody wants to be just… like …SMU …

…again.