SMU football fans are celebrating the team’s first ACC season with a playoff against Penn State University this week. The Mustangs and Nittany Lions have only met twice in their long history. The 1948 Cotton Bowl Classic ended in a tie, and Penn State won the 1978 game at home.
SMU’s first football game was played in 1915 against Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. For over a century the Mustangs have played through six conference changes, sixteen coaches, one Heisman winner, one death penalty, twelve conference titles, and three national titles.
SMU Libraries recently digitized a video history of the football team produced in 1989: “An Old Tradition, A New Beginning…SMU Football: A Video History.” This half hour program provides an overview of the team’s history before SMU began building up the program after the 1987 death penalty. 
The team’s history is also covered in Darwin Payne’s 2010 book In Honor of the Mustangs: The Centennial History of SMU Athletics, 1911-2010. Football is one of the many SMU sports included in this volume, which can be purchased from the DeGolyer Library for $40. Researchers interested in SMU athletic history can access the guide to SMU University Archives digital collections. Included are oral histories, campus newspapers, and the SMU yearbook. Please contact degolyer@smu.edu for questions about these collections or to purchase In Honor of the Mustangs: The Centennial History of SMU Athletics, 1911-2010.
