What was he Thinking?
The final scene of the 1972 movie The Candidate with Robert Redford asked a question that was never answered.
Redford’s unknown California Senate candidate Bill McKay stunningly upset the popular incumbent. Amid the victory celebration, McKay pulled his campaign manager Marvin Lucas, played by the late Peter Boyle, into a room and asked, “What do we do now?”
The movie ended when Lucas didn’t answer and the two returned to the party.
At the stroke of midnight on Monday, history smiles on Southern Methodist University. It becomes a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The darkness from Feb. 25, 1987 – the NCAA enforcing the Death Penalty – yields to the light of this grand day.
It’s a few days early from the United States declaring its independence. But make no mistake, this is SMU’s independence.
This community has been pining for this moment for the better part of two decades.
Dreams are realized. The unparalleled position SMU enjoyed with driven and influential leadership charted a determined and sometimes uncertain course. However, SMU reached its destination on Sept. 1, 2023. The ACC said yes.
Even before SMU athletics showed signs of life within the last decade, the university had always been viewed as that sleeping giant. You know the definition: A powerful entity that has yet to show it to the full extent.
A powerful city. Wealthy alums. Exquisite-looking campus. Some success in competing and winning.
But it never could sustain over time. Thus, the label stuck. It’s like what Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells said about potential: you haven’t done anything yet.
Well, the sleeping giant didn’t hit the snooze bar. It arises to an ever-changing climate in college athletics. It could change within a year, two years or six years. That can wait.
What does SMU do now?
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SMU believes it is answering that question.
Since last fall, SMU athletic administrators have been attending ACC meetings, changing the leadership within the men’s basketball program, putting the finishing touches on the Garry Weber End Zone Complex at Ford Stadium and adding on to an athletic department staff that must address every creative concept and every academic and non-academic concept that will impact athletics.
It had to start acting like a P4 program long before July 1.
SMU demonstrated that potential when it recently announced athletics raised a school-record $159 million for the 2023-24 fiscal school year. It had always been said that there was an overflow of capital sitting on the sidelines should SMU ever break through.That’s no longer an urban legend.
The two NIL collectives – Boulevard Collective and Pony Sports DTX – could see a higher volume of participants and investments. At least, that’s the hope.
Then there is the Mustang Club’s pursuit of 5,000 members. It’s close. Regardless, the 4,946 as the weekend began is a record. Football season tickets are beyond 12,000. That’s a school record. Men’s basketball ticket demands at Moody Coliseum are beyond the Larry Brown days.
The monetary infrastructure is building. The organization toward doing things the P4 way is evolving. When you walk into Ford Stadium on Aug. 31 for Houston Christian, perhaps you will see the difference how the university pulls back the curtain on itself complimented by the game presentation. And it wouldn’t hurt if the Mustangs run HCU off the field.
This 2024-25 athletic calendar is expected to be a learning experience in all sports. Moving forward, the strength of what you see on the field will be based on what SMU can establish off it.
If everything I mentioned above maintains solvency, SMU positions itself to be successful year in and year out.
As we all recognize, the ACC’s future is a thing. But it cannot be the thing for SMU. This school can’t control the ongoing litigation between the conference and Florida State and Clemson.
SMU must focus on itself. And should there ever be a shift regarding those two institutions and college athletics, there’s not a second to lose for SMU to be in the best position possible and make itself attractive. That ties into winning…a lot.
It may take a couple of years for SMU to find its footing. However, if SMU is on the tip of the tongue in media circles about being a conference title contender in both football and men’s basketball and finds a respected position in preseason polls and then fulfills them, then we have something. Sleeping giants shed the label and evolve into becoming respected powers.
Already, there is national media intrigue. We’ve seen SMU featured as a team to watch for the 2024 ACC football season.
It’s not easy for a private school to do this against the mega-state schools. In the College Football Playoff era, only two private schools have qualified, Notre Dame twice in 2018 and 2020 and TCU’s miracle run in 2022.
Starting in 2010, the NCAA men’s tournament has produced three different private school champions, Duke in 2010 and 2015, Villanova in 2016 and 2018 and Baylor in 2021.
As for the ACC, no private school has won the football championship since Wake Forest in 2006. The Demon Deacons were also the last private school to play in the title game (2021). Miami (FL) (2017) and Duke (2013) made title game appearances. Notre Dame played in the title game in the COVID 2020 season when it was acting as an ACC member.
Basketball is more friendly with Miami winning the regular season title in 2023 and Duke in 2022. However, that broke a dry spell. Wake Forest was the last to win the regular season title, 2003. But this is something interesting. The newer members between Pitt, Louisville, Syracuse, Boston College, Virginia Tech and Notre Dame have never won the regular season crown.
SMU understands the challenge. It will be buffered by revenue collected from the bowl season and playoff, the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournament, softball and baseball tournaments and the ESPN-backed ACC Network. That’s an eight-figure number that still easily exceeds what it was receiving from the American Athletic Conference TV deal. In short, all the sports will live better.
The right of passage for SMU is when it wins that first conference game in any sport. And we all know in football, SMU beating anyone not named TCU has been an issue.
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SMU’s journey to this day can be compared to that as a free spirit. It had been suppressed for so long. It reached a point where it refused to acknowledge or accept conformist attitudes. This university was going to find that golden ticket.
When the University put its best foot forward in a 2016 presentation to the Big 12, it fell flat. The Big 12 went through the motions. It chose not to expand.
SMU was among 11 to present. That group included the four future members Central Florida, Houston, BYU and Cincinnati.
However, there seemed to be more than a hostile reception toward SMU. Other Texas Big 12 schools didn’t want them. And there were still hard Southwest Conference feelings from the last of that generation between TCU, Baylor and Texas Tech.
That strain remains. It’s the only reason SMU isn’t in the Big 12. Publicly and privately SMU officials called it what it is. They moved on. Factions of those three haven’t.
Undaunted, the efforts went next level when Texas and Oklahoma bolted the Big 12 for the SEC leaving the Big 12 and ACC to scramble.
Between keeping PAC 12 and ACC talks alive, there was still some tepid hope that the Big 12 would come to its senses. Wishful thinking.
One university official shared with me that while other Big 12 schools would have accepted SMU, they were told by Texas Tech, Baylor and TCU that under no certain terms would SMU ever be a member.
Recruiting Dallas was a factor. But there’s more to it. That’s the SMU sleeping giant phenomena. That’s what has those other schools on edge. Now, the onus is on SMU to prove them right.
SMU’s path to the ACC is considered unconventional. But there is no uniform way to do this. Texas Tech and Baylor were included in the original Big 12 formation in 1996. Tech had the advantage of being a large state school.
Baylor’s admittance summoned doubts. But its political presence in Texas politics with alums holding office – Gov. Ann Richards and Lieutenant Gov. Bob Bullock – made it clear that this conference was going to include Baylor or else.
While TCU was left out, it committed to winning and committed the resources over the next 17 years and won its way into the Big 12 in 2012.
Winning a lot would have been the cherry. But SMU’s influence, a measure of athletic success and unique financial position – arguably better than any other G5 school – created this version of Christmas in July.
SMU looked out for itself, aligned with the right people, made convincing arguments and returned the favor of dismissing criticism from Lubbock, Waco and Fort Worth.
Now, SMU is among equals. It has the stage it sought.
Game On! Pony Up!
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