SMU Making The College Football Playoff Is Just The First Step Of Coach Rhett Lashlee's Plan
SMU’s Roderick Daniels caught a four-yard touchdown pass from Kevin Jennings with 16 seconds left in the ACC Championship Game Saturday night vs. Clemson as the Mustangs erased a 17-point, fourth quarter deficit. Collin Rogers calmly kicked the extra point and it looked like it was headed for overtime with College Football Playoff berths on the line for both squads.
Instead, Clemson frantically drove down the field, Nolan Hauser hit a walk-off, 56-yard field goal and SMU coach Rhett Lashlee spent the next 14 hours stewing over his team’s future. Will the College Football Playoff selection committee put the Mustangs in the CFP, or will Alabama get the nod?
Head coach Rhett Lashlee of the Southern Methodist Mustangs salutes the fans after a win. (Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
As we all know, SMU made the dance and will play Penn State next week in the first round of the 12-team event. That stress could have been avoided, though. I, like many out there, screamed "go for it" at the television as if we had some control over Lashlee’s decision-making.
"I've got asked a lot, would you go for two? I've done that before. I'm not scared to go for two, but I didn't, I didn't really even hesitate," Lashlee told me on College Football Smothered and Covered.
There was hardly any time for Lashlee to put on the political full-court press, so he was forced to leave the fate of his team to the 13 CFP selection committee members meeting in a board room in Grapevine, Texas.
"It was a roller coaster for sure … It was hard for us to not really be able to process losing a championship game of that caliber," he said. "You knew 11 or 12 hours you're going to find out are you in the playoff or not. When you went into that game, being solidly in. So to see our logo pop up there around 11:20 (central time), 11:30, whatever time it was, was, was really cool. It was really emotional, actually. I was just so happy for our kids. This team deserves it. We got a special group."
The impact of the NCAA "Death Penalty" that was levied on the program that cost the Mustangs the 1988 and 1989 seasons lingered for decades. The Mustangs didn’t finish above .500 until 1997 and didn’t make a bowl game until 2009.
Consistency was hard to find even after the climb back to relevancy, but that changed in 2022 when Lashlee took the helm. He led the ponies to back-to-back double-digit win seasons in 2023-24, finished last season ranked No. 22 - the first time they finished in the top 25 since the NCAA shut down the program in the late 1980s - and will repeat the feat this season no matter what happens in the CFP.
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA - DECEMBER 07: Deuce Harmon #7 of the SMU Mustangs celebrates during the second half of the 2024 ACC Football Championship at Bank of America Stadium on December 07, 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
This is all part of Lashlee’s plan.
"I think the vision, I think the plan, now that we're in the ACC, now that we've proven we belong, and not only we belong, but at SMU, in the ACC, you can compete for a national championship," he said. "You can get to the highest level. You can get to your conference championship game. You can get to the College Football Playoff even without winning your conference championship game. It just changes everything because we're in Dallas. Dallas is the best city in America. It deserves a big time college football program."
The Mustangs have reached the "big time," and will look to take another step toward becoming a college football superpower next Saturday when they take on Penn State in Happy Valley. It has been a wild ride out of the darkness with everybody associated program, so it’s only fitting that Lashlee embarked on that proverbial roller coaster late Saturday night through Sunday morning.