SMU’s ACC timeline: How the Mustangs found their way back into a power conference

Is SMU officially back on the national stage?

Not yet. But the Mustangs are set to officially join the Atlantic Coast Conference on July 1. That’s a pretty important step back towards the national stage.

1918-1996: Southwest Conference

The historic Southwest Conference sparks plenty of nostalgia among older college sports fans in this area. The Mustangs were a part of the SWC from 1918 until it was disbanded in 1996. The core of the conference included Arkansas, Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M, Rice, SMU, TCU, Texas Tech, and Houston.

The conference was one of the most dominant in college athletics, but began to decline in the 1980s as several schools were penalized for violating the NCAA’s recruiting rules. This ultimately came to a head when the NCAA gave the SMU football program the “death penalty” from 1987 to 1988. But in its heyday, the conference had incredible success both on the football field and on the basketball court. Until 1995, the Southwest Conference champion was invited to the Cotton Bowl Classic on New Year’s Day in Dallas. In an era before actual championship games were played and the champions were determined by the final polls, the Cotton Bowl often had national title implications.

The SWC was also iconic because of the coaches and players it boasted. Legendary coaches like John Heisman, Paul “Bear” Bryant, Darrell Royal, Lou Holtz, and several others all walked the sidelines in the conference. Eric Dickerson and Andre Ware are just two of the many star college football players from the SWC. The SWC’s basketball resume is headlined by Nolan Richardson’s dominant Arkansas basketball teams and Houston’s “Phi Slama Jama” teams.

As the SWC declined in the late 1980s, it slowly disbanded in the early 1990s. Arkansas left for the SEC in 1990. Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, and Texas Tech bolted for the Big 8 in 1994, forming what we now know as the Big 12. SMU, TCU, and Rice headed to the Western Athletic Conference while Houston went to Conference USA.

1996-2005: Western Athletic Conference

The “death penalty” did what seemed to be irreparable damage to the SMU football program. After being one of college football’s powers in the early 1980s, the Mustangs were a laughing stock once the football program resumed in 1989. SMU was left behind when the SWC dissolved and found itself in the WAC in 1996. During the football program’s nine years in the WAC, SMU had a winning record just one time (6-5 in 1997) and finished with an overall record of 33-71 (including a 0-12 2003 campaign).

SMU enjoyed some success in men’s basketball while in the SWC, but the Mustangs had only seven winning seasons and never made the NCAA Tournament from 1994 to 2012.

2005-2013: Conference USA

When the Big East Conference poached some of Conference USA’s members, Conference USA turned to the WAC to replace some of its lost members. The conference added Rice, SMU, Tulsa, and UTEP from the WAC.

While SMU’s men’s basketball team remained dormant during its time in Conference USA (though SMU did hire Larry Brown in 2012), the football program showed signs of life. After Phil Bennett’s 1-11 campaign in 2007, SMU hired June Jones out of Hawaii to be its next head football coach. Jones went 1-11 in his first season, but led a historic turnaround in 2009. SMU was invited to its first bowl game since 1984 and defeated Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl 45-10.

In 2010, ESPN’s “30 for 30″ documentary series detailed SMU’s “death penalty” in a program titled “Pony Excess”. The documentary followed the program from its peak of the early 1980s, to its dramatic fall from grace, all the way to its resurrection under June Jones in 2009.

SMU finished with a 31-34 record under Jones in Conference USA, but put together four winning regular seasons in that time.

2013-2024: American Athletic Conference

In December of 2011, SMU announced it was moving to the Big East Conference during a series of messy realignment events.

Except SMU never played in a conference with that name.

The American Athletic Conference emerged from the messy divorce of the Big East Conference. During the conference realignment period of the 2010s, the Big East’s structure created massive issues. On the hardwood, the Big East boasted several prestigious basketball programs like Villanova, St. John’s, Georgetown, and others. But those programs’ football teams didn’t compete at the FBS level. Those programs became known as the “Catholic Seven”, and announced their intentions to leave the conference and retain the Big East name as a basketball-only conference in 2013.

A month later, the remaining football-playing members of the conference announced the leftover schools from the old Big East Conference were to be called the American Athletic Conference.

Since then, SMU has enjoyed new levels of success both in football and men’s basketball that helped make the Mustangs more attractive to power conferences. Moody Coliseum was ignited under Larry Brown in SMU’s first season in the AAC, as there were almost nightly sellouts. Under Larry Brown and his successor Tim Jankovich, SMU went to the NCAA Tournament in 2015 and 2017 (the program’s first tournament bids since 1993) and the Mustangs were ranked as high as No. 11 in the AP poll. SMU has not reached that success in recent years, but that stretch ignited a new enthusiasm for basketball.

The football program continued its steady climb that began with June Jones. Chad Morris led the Mustangs to a 7-5 season in 2017 before leaving for the Arkansas job. But the program took off when it hired Sonny Dykes as Morris’ successor. In Dykes’ second season in 2019, SMU won 10 games, was ranked as high as No. 15 in the AP poll, and was even featured on ESPN’s College Gameday in a primetime matchup against Memphis.

Dykes kept building the program, as the Mustangs were ranked as high as No. 16 in 2020 and No. 19 in 2021. After the 2021 season, Dykes left for TCU and former SMU offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee took over as the new head coach. In 2023, Lashlee’s second season and SMU’s last season in the AAC, the Mustangs went 11-3 and won their first conference championship since 1984.

Flirtation with the Pac-12

While SMU’s steady climb in the college sports world happened on the field and on the court, leadership was working behind the scenes to get the Mustangs back into a power conference.

After months of rumors and flirtation, the Pac-12′s commissioner at the time, George Kliavkoff was seen at an SMU basketball game with SMU athletic director Rick Hart in February of 2023. The Pac-12 was set to lose USC and UCLA to the Big 10 and was in search of a new media rights deal. The conference was in talks with SMU and San Diego State about potentially becoming members.

But the Pac-12 wanted to secure a new media deal before inviting new members. Ultimately, the conference was not able to hammer out a media rights deal before Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona State announced their intentions to leave the conference late in the summer of 2023. This left SMU in a massive state of uncertainty.

July 1, 2024: SMU will officially join the ACC

After the flirtation with the Pac-12 ended and that conference effectively ceased to exist, SMU had to move to its next option. On September 1, SMU officially accepted an offer to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, along with Stanford and California.

SMU officials did not want to get left behind in this vigorous realignment cycle. SMU was left behind in the realignment of the early 2010s, and it cost the school dearly. To make sure this didn’t happen again, SMU agreed to forgo nine years of television revenue from the ACC. How costly is that? The average annual payout of $39.4 million in 2022 would amount to more than $350 million over the course of nine years.

This financial burden, along with the roughly $18 million exit fee owed to the AAC, was made doable by SMU’s endowment of nearly $2 billion.

The Mustangs are set to officially join the conference on July 1 and have been preparing for this transition for years. Gerald J. Ford Stadium is wrapping up its $100 million Garry Weber End Zone Complex in time for the 2024 season, and the school opened up its wallets for the men’s basketball program, replacing Rob Lanier by poaching USC’s head coach Andy Enfield.

The “death penalty” in 1987 sent SMU’s athletics programs spiraling into irrelevance. But on July 1, SMU will take a massive step towards regaining national relevance as it officially joins the ACC.

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