Top high school recruits choose where they play college football for a variety of reasons: program prestige, proximity to home, coaching, facilities, conference prestige, and a program’s recent success often factor into the decision making process.
Several programs in The American are gushing with untapped potential. Southern Methodist is arguably the program most untapped. The Mustangs should be a destination program for any top prospect, when you consider the built-in recruiting advantages that should come with its Texas location.
With National Signing Day a week from today, what better time than now to take elite recruits on a, sort of, written “official visit” to SMU.
Elite recruits, take notice. Here are five reasons why you should spend the next four years (or three) at SMU.
The Ponies are located in Big D
If we’re using technical terms, SMU is actually located in University Park, Texas, which was originally established as a housing community in the early 1900s for people associated with the university, but the U.S. Postal Service considers SMU and University Park a section of Dallas. Alone, Big D is the third largest city in the country’s second largest state, with over 1.2 million people — nearly a million less than leading Houston, and about 200,000 below second place San Antonio. But if we bring Dallas’ most prominent suburbs into the mix, Fort Worth and Arlington, the area known as the DFW Metroplex becomes the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the U.S.
In respect to football, however, distinguishing Dallas as part of the DFW is important because DFW, or The Metroplex, is considered a recruiting Mecca for elite high school football talent. Fans often debate which city/metro area produces the most top talent in Texas, but whether the answer is Houston or DFW, the entire state of Texas is a recruiting goldmine, and Dallas is littered with gold nuggets. To add perspective, five of the last six high school prospects ranked in the 2015 DFW top-40 are verbally committed to either TCU or Oklahoma — both prominent Big 12 programs.
If you’re an elite high school prospect who chooses SMU, know that you’re coaching staff will never be short of talent, as they could literally only recruit The Metroplex and still surround you with blue-chip players. New Mustangs head coach Chad Morris will need to use his Texas background to bag elite players from Big D. Speaking of Morris…
Chad Morris is head coach
On paper, Chad Morris is the consummate fit as SMU’s head coach. The first-year HC was born in Texas, attended Texas A&M, and coached high school football in the state for 16 years before becoming Tulsa’s offensive coordinator. Morris spent the last four seasons turning Clemson into an offensive machine, and his knack for developing offensive talent is a key reason why the Tigers won at least 10 games while he was there.
Having a head coach who knows Texas, no, is Texas will give SMU leverage on the recruiting trail that it hasn’t had for a long time.
“I know what football in this state means,” Morris said in a recent story from the Rock Hill Herald. “In particular, I know what high school football means. Any coach who comes into this profession, you better be able relate to high school coaches, whatever job you take. I’ve got that. We now have connections to high school coaches.”
Elite prospects on the offensive side of the ball will get the opportunity to play for a mastermind of the spread attack, if they choose SMU. Once Morris begins picking up the players he wants and builds depth, top defensive prospects will find solace knowing that their offensive counterparts will score globs of points after they stop the opposition.
Morris is a budding star in the ranks of college coaches, who will turn around SMU sooner, rather than later.
Chance to revive winning tradition
The Mustangs enjoyed unprecedented success from 2009-2012 when former head coach June Jones led the football team to four consecutive bowl appearances, winning three of them. SMU hadn’t experienced that kind of gridiron success since going to four bowls in five years from 1980-1984.
Actually, the Mustangs .839 win percentage (49-9-1) was the highest win percentage in Division I during that five-year period in the early 80s. But if you watch ESPN (who doesn’t?) and witnessed the 2010 30-For-30 film Pony Excess, you know why the Ponies’ wheels came off in the late 80s.
But “death” can be conquered in college athletics, as SMU proved in 2009 — albeit much later than expected. With the program far removed from its scandalous past, now its time to rebuild after falling on hard times the last couple seasons. June Jones’ surprising retirement just before the 2014 season shows that the father of the Run and Shoot offense had lost his passion to keep SMU rolling, which contributed to the programs recent ineptitude. Six wins in the last two seasons is an aberration, not the norm on The Hilltop.
Elite recruits who desire to be known as one of the greatest players at a program outside the sports historical powerhouses, but also don’t want to play for “No Name State,” SMU is their perfect fit. The Ponies claim 16 consensus All-Americans, a Heisman Trophy winner (Doak Walker), 11 conference titles (10 from the defunct Southwest Conference), and produced the NFL record holder for the most rushing yards (2,105) in a single season in Eric Dickerson. No shortage of accolades, yet SMU doesn’t scream Ohio State.
If enough elite prospects take their talents to the Dallas program, perhaps in the near future using Ohio State and SMU in the same sentence will conjure head nodding instead of hysterical laughter.
Boosters are willing to spend, spend, spend
SMU is oozing with potential, for more reasons than just being located in Texas. Dallas is white-collar to a tee, and SMU is just a small sample size of Dallas’ big business culture (The Cox School of Business at SMU is a nationally respected business school).
Wealthy alumni want their alma mater to produce top athletic teams, particularly in football, the most popular NCAA sport. And wealthy alumni often pass the wealth over to their alma mater’s athletic department, hoping their “generous” donation will get put to good use (No, not paying players; bad SMU!).
In 2000, Gerald J. Ford, graduate from the Cox School of Business, provided most of the funding for SMU’s 32,000 seat stadium that is named in his honor. Chad Morris has yet to coach a game for the Mustangs, yet he is currently listed as the second highest paid head coach in the AAC at roughly 2 Million per year.
SMU isn’t paying Morris’ salary with money stashed away in an old piggy bank; they got by with a little help from their friends. Wealthy friends, who love their university.
SMU has the financial backing to stay near the top half of the FBS in the facilities arms race.
If TCU can win, why not SMU?
In my opnion, this is the No.1 reason why top football recruits should flock to SMU; the blueprint for becoming a prominent power in college football is just 40 minutes down the road in Fort Worth, Texas.
Before TCU head coach Gary Patterson became a walking legend, TCU was the modern day SMU: plenty of past success, but nothing to show for the current era. Since 2000, Patterson has led the Horned Frogs to 13 of their 30 bowl appearances, and has, remarkably, produced 10 teams that finished the season ranked in the Top 25 of at least one major poll.
Until last season’s top five finish, TCU’s success occurred when the program was a member of the Western Athletic Conference, Conference USA, and the Mountain West, respectively — each considered Group of Five leagues.
Now a member of the Big 12, TCU can claim further leverage on its DFW rival. But college football, as we’ve seen during the recent realignment era, is an ever-changing landscape; who knows where the Big 12 or AAC will be in the next 10-20 years.
If more top prospects begin to fill the rosters of AAC programs, we could see the conference shift from Group of Five to Power Five contender. If that happens, TCU will have no internal advantages over the Mustangs.
Dallas may be housing more than just elite business professionals in the not-so-distant future.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
