College
Decades in making, SMU back among college football's elite
SMU's move to the ACC is the culminating moment for a football program that was once literally considered "dead". What the move to a new conference means to Mustangs head coach Rhett Lashlee.
DALLAS – SMU President R. Gerald Turner arrived at the Hilltop in June 1995, months before the final season of the Southwest Conference. On Friday in the Bill Armstrong Fieldhouse, Turner, athletic director Rick Hart, and board chair David B. Miller addressed a room full of deep-pocketed Mustangs who felt put out to pasture for four decades with a simple message: “We’re finally back where we belong.”
The news that the Atlantic Coast Conference voted 12-3 to extend official invitations to SMU, Stanford, and Cal arrived in the wee hours of Friday morning. SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee spent the night before distracted by his twins’ seventh-grade football game. By the time homework was done, he was ready for bed. Besides, he had a Week 1 game against La Tech on the brain.
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