SMU Mustangs

A look inside SMU’s college football program and its return to relevance

Published Sep. 8, 2021 8:31 p.m. ET

share

facebookxredditlink

By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

Football fans know that Fridays and Sundays are a done deal in Dallas during the fall. High school rules the end of the week, and the Cowboys are the only thing that matters at the end of the weekend.

"But there’s a gap in the middle," Southern Methodist University linebacker Delano Robinson told me this week. "That’s what we’re trying to fill."

Robinson is a fifth-year senior at SMU, one of the more intriguing college programs in the country, with benefits and difficulties like few others.

On the plus side, it is situated in the middle of Dallas, where football runs as deep in the blood as anywhere. On the tricky side … it is situated in the middle of Dallas … where, you might have noticed, there is plenty of competition for your football and entertainment attention.

Nearly four decades removed from when the Pony Express saw Eric Dickerson and Craig James in full flow, followed by the infamous "death penalty" NCAA sanctions for recruiting violations, SMU is trying to punch its way back to relevance.

"The most disappointing thing about it was how long it took for the program to recover," Kansas City Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt, who played soccer for SMU in the 1980s and is a key donor, told me. "We didn’t expect it would be decades to bounce back. It is great to see things looking up and with new aspirations. Dallas is a great football town, but Dallas likes a winner. It is important for the school to promote itself."

Hunt believes SMU’s history and location give it the potential to be a regular top-20 team, with the kind of big-city feel you get when USC or UCLA is going through a golden patch.

Given that Dallas doesn’t do small, SMU’s approach in the lead-up to the new campaign has been unapologetically bold. The school took out a giant billboard in Times Square to get some national buzz and backed that up with a series of similar signs in local communities.

SMU has also recruited luminaries such as Troy Aikman and Mark Cuban for promotional radio spots in the Dallas area, trying to get into the hearts and minds of both fans and potential recruits.

The school faces a monumental battle for a generous slice of the pie, with the scene dominated by the religion of Texas high school football and, yep, those ever-present Cowboys, guaranteed to make news whether they are thriving or nose-diving. But rather than be swallowed up by those collective forces, SMU aims to stand alongside them as part of the overall Texas football experience and has specifically targeted its recruiting policy to tap into the talent-packed local pool.

"We have to be fighting to get noticed," head coach Sonny Dykes told me. "There is a lot going on in Dallas. People in Dallas can spend their money in a lot of ways, and we are fighting to be an option. To do that, we have to be consistently putting a good product on the field."

The "Born and Raised" marketing blueprint that tries to get elite players to stay home instead of trekking to flashier programs elsewhere, or welcome them back through the transfer portal, appealed to Robinson, who is hoping to land in the NFL once this season is done.

"Being able to be close to my roots was a strong thing," Robinson said. "For the Dallas players, we can be the men of the city right here. Why go somewhere to try to get that feeling?"

It is a method Dykes, the former head coach at Cal and Louisiana Tech, regards as a core part of SMU’s future.

"We figured out how to recruit Dallas," Dykes added. "We needed to be in our own backyard. I tried to take a holistic approach, building relationships with the high school coaches. Once they trust me, they will send me their players.

"We hit the Dallas-Fort Worth area hard. Then sometimes we get a second go at it with the transfer portal, showing these young men they have an opportunity to come back home and thrive."

Among the movers, quarterback Tanner Mordecai hails from Waco and transferred from Oklahoma. Kicker Blake Mazza was starting at Washington State but moved to SMU largely due to family considerations. Cornerback Jahari Rogers transferred from Florida following his freshman season.

The current season began with a 56-9 walloping of Abilene Christian but will ultimately be judged on how things fare in the American Athletic Conference, where Cincinnati is the reigning power.

After a 7-3 run last season, playing for a conference title this time would be a dream, albeit the kind of dream Dykes wants to turn into reality.

"We are doing some good things, playing some good football, and the players are having fun," Dykes said. "What we really want? To be Dallas’ college football team."

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

share

Get more from SMU Mustangs Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more

in this topic

College Football

SMU Mustangs

Tanner Mordecai

Dallas Cowboys

Delano Robinson

Blake Mazza

Jahari Rogers

Martin Rogers