SMU's Impressive Rise in College Football This Season

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00:00But Rich Phillips calls SMU games, uh, down in Dallas, you know, Rich, it's great to see

00:08you.

00:09It's been forever.

00:10I actually, uh, I bet on SMU last week and, you know, I grew up in Pittsburgh, so I kind

00:16of have a little bit of an affinity for Pitt.

00:18I'm a Canes fan and I'm Indiana fan.

00:21I went to Indiana, but I, I liked Pitt.

00:24I used to watch, you know, Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett and many others, uh, Hugh Green, you

00:29name it, uh, that played there, Syracusa, all of the greats that played at Pitt over

00:34the years.

00:35They had a great team.

00:36They were undefeated, Narduzzi, and I still thought they were going to go to Ford and

00:39get smacked because that team, SMU, means business this year, and particularly down

00:44there at, uh, Ford in Dallas.

00:46Yeah.

00:47Uh, only lost this year, was at home, but it was three points to a team in the top 10

00:52now, BYU.

00:53It's been, uh, an incredible run for SMU this year, doing something that nobody else has

00:58ever done.

00:59Move up from a group of five conference to a power conference and keep winning.

01:04Nobody had won, had gone two and O in a league moving up like that.

01:08They're four and O now in the ACC and right there, uh, firmly, uh, in trance with a chance

01:13to go to the conference championship game here in a few weeks.

01:16My God, uh, Smith ran all over him in that game.

01:20Like I thought the guy was going to have 200 yards.

01:23That guy is working on getting himself paid.

01:26He was mostly a wide receiver for three years at Miami, transferred here to SMU.

01:32He had played for the Mustang's head coach, Rhett Lashley, when he was the offensive coordinator

01:36at Miami.

01:37So he transferred here and they told him he's going to be a running back primarily, and

01:41he's about to have a thousand yard season.

01:43And he has been nothing short of outstanding, um, and I've been really impressed, not just

01:47with his speed, but his willingness to do the tough stuff too, when it comes to running

01:51up the middle.

01:52Well, you saw him, uh, rich when the American last year at his team, you already knew they

01:56were good and then they get somehow into this conference.

02:02You have to explain that to me, how that worked out, because I didn't see that coming from

02:08anywhere, let alone a mile away that SMU was going to end up in the ACC seriously.

02:13And now you're, you win the American.

02:16Now you're going to play for the ACC.

02:19It looks like against my canes.

02:23Well, it's paying to play kind of what they're doing.

02:24They agreed to not take the football TV money for the first nine years in the ACC as part

02:31of this move up, you know, the other teams that moved in Stanford and Cal, they're taking

02:34a smaller percentage, but SMU gets none of the football TV money.

02:39They don't need it, I guess, because one week after the announcement was made last September,

02:42they raised a hundred million dollars in donations and in efforts to compete with everybody financially

02:47in the ACC and kind of, uh, they're paying to play.

02:50They bought their way in and now they're doing more than buying their way in.

02:54They're trying to win their way to the title game.

02:56I mean, you know, I know everything's bigger in Texas, uh, and the pockets are deeper.

03:04We've seen that with Jerry Jones, what he's turned that Cowboys team into a $10 billion

03:09monstrosity of money.

03:11I guess it's no different in college football there at Austin at SMU, uh, you know, I mean,

03:18obviously at Houston, they're paying players to play college basketball.

03:23Is that what it boils down to?

03:25It's just bigger in Texas?

03:27Well, we like to say NIL means now it's legal around here.

03:32It's kind of what they were doing 40 years ago at SMU.

03:36It just wasn't legal back then.

03:37And they ended up getting the program shut down for a couple of years because of it.

03:40But now everybody's allowed to do it.

03:42And, uh, they've waited a long time.

03:44The SMU fans have waited a long time to be back to this level from the Southwest Conference

03:48days of the early and mid eighties.

03:50And a lot of them were willing to pay up to get there.

03:54And so far so good.

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