Coming off the bowl win and with Jones’ national profile, Mustangs fans are right to be optimistic about the chances for more national television coverage of SMU’s games in the 2010 season. “SMU is definitely back,“ says Rivals.com’s national recruiting editor Jeremy Crabtree.
And Jones says the quality of play will continue its upward trajectory.
“I think athletically we’re going to be much better this year,” he says, crediting SMU’s academic stature as a recruiting plus. “When these kids get a degree from SMU, holy smokes, that’s more valuable than anything. It changes their lives.”
Three-year starter Mitch Enright ’08, who competed in his final season as a Mustang while working on an M.B.A. in the Cox School of Business, points to another factor for the team’s success: its fans. “We were able to feed off of their energy and play inspired football,” he says. “Our fans even showed up huge for us on the road. I’ll never forget the large fan support we had when we played at Tulsa. That road win was ultimately the turning point of our season.”
MVP quarterback Kyle Padron
For Jones, who speaks openly of his spiritual faith, football at its highest level requires a devout belief in the Golden Rule. “There are millions of ways to win football games, but that isn’t what decides games. It’s all the things you can’t put your finger on. It’s the friendships and the caring for each other as teammates. Those are the things that you play for and why we do what we do. I think a lot of people never figure that out.”
In the crowd of about 750 alumni and student believers at the Hawaii Bowl were Fort Worth attorney Albon Head (’68, ’71 J.D.) and his wife, Debbie. Head played on SMU’s SWC Championship football team in 1966 and was co-captain of the 1968 Bluebonnet Bowl champions. A loyal follower of Mustang football through all the good times and its 25-year bowl drought, Head earned bragging rights with SMU’s bowl win.
“Living in Fort Worth, I have to listen to TCU folks and ’Horns and Aggies all the time about their teams. I remind them that SMU was one of only two teams from Texas that won a bowl game.” (The other was Texas Tech.)
Debbie Head calls it “the greatest football game I have ever witnessed. The crowd was hugging, screaming, crying, jumping up and down.”
Members of the band, spirit squads, and Peruna and his handlers also attended the game. For junior Michael Danser, drum major of the Mustang Band, getting the opportunity to “represent the University was a great experience for everyone in the band. It felt good to walk around Waikiki all week proudly wearing SMU gear. Seeing a good amount of SMU fans really got the band pumped up.”
Alumni and other fans gear up for the game.
Quarterback Kyle Padron was chosen the Hawaii Bowl’s Most Valuable Player after throwing for an SMU-record 460 yards. He says he didn’t fully appreciate what a bowl victory would mean until he saw the reaction of his teammates, “especially the seniors and what they had to go through to get to that point. As a freshman, I didn’t know a whole lot about the background and all the losing they went through. Their emotion at the end of the Hawaii Bowl was something I will always remember.”
That remarkable win in the Pacific, along with Jones’ far-flung network of high school coaching friends on the mainland, paid off on signing day when the Mustangs harvested a nationally recognized recruiting class. Jeremy Crabtree, the Rivals.com editor, called SMU’s class “one of the top surprises this season.”
So, after 25 years of wondering when they could focus on the future instead
of fretting over the past, the wait is over for Mustang fans.
– Kent Best
Photos by (from top right) Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News, Robert Bobo, Tim Leonard, Debbie Head; Kyle Padron by Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News; fans by Anthony Calleja.