SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee was watching his kids eat breakfast when he received a text from the university’s Board of Trustees Chairman David Miller at 6:43 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2023 that read, “We’re in,” followed by what Lashlee remembers as six or eight exclamation marks. 

Soon after, SMU athletic director Rick Hart called to confirm the news that N.C. State changed its vote and that the Ponies were back in a major athletics conference since the 1990s as newly minted members of the ACC. It was a Friday morning before the first game of the season and the second-year head coach hoped to meet with his Ponies before news broke. A dream larger than winning a conference title for the first time in 40 years. 

“I was told that only a small circle knew and to keep it in house,” he remembered. “It was all over social media in 15 or 20 minutes. There was no way I was getting to my team first.” 

Lashlee confirmed the news in an 8 a.m. team meeting to a chorus of cheers. By 5 p.m. that day, SMU was hosting a celebration in the Armstrong Fieldhouse. By the next afternoon, the Mustangs were 1-0 with a win over La Tech. But what felt like a whirlwind, was a lifetime in the making. 

Miller graduated from SMU in 1972. A standout basketball player himself, he remembered the Mustangs dominating on the basketball court and occasionally punching above their weight class on the gridiron to bite Arkansas and Texas to snag a Southwest Conference Championship. Hayden Fry was the football coach in Miller’s days. He watched the Pony Express emerge as a young alum as the Mustangs went 41-5 from 1981-1984 under Ron Meyer and Bobby Collins, claiming two national championships. 

And then he watched it crumble. SMU was issued the Death Penalty following the 1986 season and didn’t field a team in 1987 or 1988. The Mustangs wouldn’t post a winning season again until a 6-5 record in 1997. They wouldn’t win more than six games in a season again until 2009. The Southwest Conference disbanded after 1995 and SMU wasn’t offered a life raft into the Big 12. The Mustangs slipped into the WAC and out of major college football. 

“It was painful,” Miller said of the years following the Death Penalty. “The Death Penalty’s impact on SMU extended far beyond athletics. It was a crushing blow to SMU. The leadership at the university had to focus on reestablishing on the school’s academic integrity and that put athletics in the background.” 

Miller joined the Board of Trustees over a decade ago, but his appointment to the role as Chairman in 2022 coincided with the formation of the Power Conference Taskforce. As the name suggests, the goal was to find a Power Five home for SMU athletics. 

The Ponies wanted back into the game. After all, the crime they committed to be put on Death Row wasn’t even illegal anymore. With 2022 glasses on, buying a few cars and giving out a few heavy handshakes is child’s play. 

SMU assumed invitations to the SEC or Big Ten were longshots, so they focused on realistic targets – the Big 12, Pac-12, and ACC. Miller oversaw contacting fellow Board of Trustee Chairmen and other mega donors involved in athletics that would have their university president’s ear. Hart was tasked with contacting athletic directors in those conferences. And SMU president R. Gerald Turner called his peers – the ones who’d ultimately vote yay or nay on SMU’s entrance. 

SMU enlisted Oliver Luck, who consulted with the Big 12 when the conference added Houston, Cincinnati, UCF, and BYU, as well as a major media consulting firm with contacts. Miller hopped on his plane and flew thousands of miles across the country and back to meet with anyone with the power and influence to return SMU to the Hilltop of college athletics. 

Miller & Co. were assured after months of work that SMU would get an invite to the Pac-12. Had the conference finalized a media contract before dissolving, the Mustangs might have linked with the West Coast rather than the East Coast. SMU wanted ACC, however. The chance to link arms with academic institutions such as Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia in a Power Five conference was the perfect combination. Neighbors in the Big 12 were a barrier to entrance to Brett Yormark’s expanding empire. 

“We thought an invite from Pac-12 would motivate the presidents of the ACC to react,” Miller said. “There is nothing more valuable in a business negotiation than one party feeling like they’re about to lose something.” 

The Pac-12 implosion sped up the process with the ACC as Cal and Stanford joined the fold. The only thing that was left was the vote early in the morning on Sept. 1 of 2023. No one new if the Mustangs had enough support. Lashlee spent the night before watching his twins play their first middle school football game. Hart said he couldn’t sleep. He had seen SMU come close but get left out of possible returns to P5 status too many times. 

“By the time it got to the vote, I was guarded emotionally,” Hart admitted. “I didn’t let myself believe it would happen until it happened.”

The vote wasn’t the end of a fairytale story of revival. The Mustangs won their first outright conference championship since 1982. The 11 wins were the most by the program since that same 1982 season. The athletics department also raised a national best $159 million dollars to make up for the negotiated foregoing of media revenue as ACC members. 

Miller says SMU won’t miss what they never had regarding that television money. He says SMU will make up the $10 million dollars in media revenue it earned as AAC members through other revenue streams in its new conference. 

“I’m in awe by it, but I’m not surprised by it,” Hart said of the fundraising efforts behind the scenes. “This is not just an athletics moment. It is an institutional moment.” 

SMU is dreaming big. And not just on the field of play. Miller and Hart believe the move to the ACC puts their beloved university in a new reputational sphere. The move should help with admissions and research and fundraising. It helps the university’s brand and reach and influence. When you think of elite academic institutions playing major college sports the names Duke and Vanderbilt come to mind. SMU wants to join that club. That’s why it bought itself into the ACC fraternity. 

But buying a ticket isn’t enough. SMU must capitalize on its chance. That means winning. The Ponies hired Andy Enfield away from USC to coach basketball and provided Lashlee with the NIL funds to maintain and improve his roster ahead of their P4 voyage. No one is expecting a national championship in Year 1. Expectations are high, however. 

“We can’t afford to go into the ACC and languish athletically, and we will not,” Miller said. “It is our expectation that within a 2,3,4-year time period can compete against the top tier teams in the ACC in both football and basketball.”