To comprehend the best season of SMU football in 35 years, rewind to early August. Back when we didn’t know the Mustangs would be the surprise story of the college football season.
Back when the coaches didn’t know their players.
“It was the second day of fall camp and this big, athletic dude made a great play on a deep pass,” SMU defensive coordinator Kevin Kane remembers. “I looked at my coaches and said ‘Who the heck is that? We don’t have big corners that can make plays like that.’ I ran up to the kid, saw his name taped on his helmet and said ‘Hello, Stephens, damn nice to meet you.’ It’s been pretty crazy.”
Leading the 6-0 and 19th-ranked Ponies’ long-awaited rebirth from the 1986 NCAA Death Penalty are familiar sons. Head coach Sonny Dykes, son of the legendary Spike. Quarterback Shane Buechele, son of former Texas Ranger Steve. And a bunch of son of a guns who arrived on the Hilltop via some magical time machine called the “transfer portal.”
Buechele, beaten out at Texas by Sam Ehlinger, is the starting quarterback with 12 touchdown passes. “Stephens” is Brandon Stephens, who left Plano to play running back at UCLA but returned to Dallas as a stud cornerback. Richard McBryde arrived from SEC power Auburn to play middle linebacker, and is now SMU’s leading tackler. Starting defensive tackle Zach Ambercrumbia came from Rice, cornerback Chevin Calloway from Arkansas and safety Cam’ron Jones from Nebraska.
SMU’s defense is the Island of Misfit Toys, ill-fitting pieces and parts that didn’t work aboard but have come home to mesh as one of the most surprising units in the nation. Home? Indeed. Stephens played at Plano High School. Ambercrumbia starred at Skyline, Calloway at Bishop Dunne and Jones at Mansfield. The Mustangs are top five in sacks, led by Delontae Scott (Irving Nimitz) and Demerick Gary (Kimball).
“The transfer portal has changed the landscape of college football,” Kane said on our Press Box DFW Live! vodcast last week. “It’s allowed a lot of these guys to come back home, play right away and be a huge asset for us.”
The Dallas Cowboys have lost three in a row. TCU surrendered 49 points to Iowa State. North Texas’ 2018 shine has considerably dulled. SMU, which put up 40-plus points on both the Frogs and Mean Green, is the DFW football story of 2019. How trendy are the Mustangs? They moved up three spots in the rankings last week – inside the Top 20 – without even playing a game.
“I honestly can’t tell you I thought we’d be sitting at 6-0, but I felt pretty confident in what I saw,” said Kane. “We had some exciting new additions and we were way under the radar. Now everybody is seeing what we were seeing all along.”
Since the Death Penalty in the wake of the Pony Express glory days of Craig James and Eric Dickerson, SMU is 114-235. Its only gasps of air came under June Jones, who orchestrated 8-win, bowl-win seasons in 2009 and 2011. Other than that, SMU football for the better part of four decades has been overshadowed by Larry Brown’s basketball cameo and the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
But these Mustangs are different. Balanced. Better. Bonkers on The Boulevard.
Jones’ offenses produced gaudy numbers, but his defenses regularly coughed up 40 points and 490 yards per game. This Miracle on Mockingbird features the same firepower – 44 points per game, 6th-best in the country – but with a dash of defense.
Dykes may be walking on the Trinity River, but it’s Kane who’s turning its dirty water into wine.
“My philosophy is pretty simple,” Kane said. “We try to find the offense’s weakness and make ’em look really bad. We get after ’em. Attack is our whole mentality. It’s on the players’ lockers, in the position rooms, everywhere. We’re gonna blitz, attack from the edges and try to dictate what’s happening.”
Like a lot of his players, Kane sorta arrived in Dallas via the transfer portal.
“How’d I get to SMU?” he says, repeating the question. “I don’t really know, that’s a good question.”
A linebacker at Kansas, Kane played against Dykes when he coached at Texas Tech. He coached at Northern Illinois on the staff of Dave Doeren, now head coach at North Carolina State.
“Other than knowing Dave and having a little success at Northern Illinois, I really don’t know how Sonny knew about me,” Kane said. “But when he called me up, I knew the history of this school and realized the potential of this program.”
We’re not even to Halloween and it’s already been a historic season for SMU. The Mustangs yanked the Iron Skillet from crosstown rival TCU. They rallied from a fourth-quarter, 30-9 deficit to shock Tulsa in triple overtime. Barring an epic collapse from 6-0, they will win nine-plus games for the first time since 1984.
And over the next three weekends – starting with Saturday’s home showdown against 5-1 Temple and then road tests at Houston and Memphis – the Mustangs have a chance to win a conference championship for the first time since they owned the SWC during the time of Ronald Reagan, Ghostbusters and “Moody Madness.”
Considering their 1980s success was produced inside Texas Stadium, it’s not a stretch to label Saturday as the biggest on-campus home game in the history of SMU football.
“It’s a really cool experience that people are watching us, starting to believe in us,” Kane said. “But we’re just getting started. We’re only halfway home. Pony Up! Let’s go!”