Everything SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said at ACC Media Days

SMU Mustangs football head coach Rhett Lashlee spoke with the media in Charlotte on Day 1 of ACC Media Days. Here’s what Lashlee said from the podium at the main stage.

RHETT LASHLEE: Always good to be with you. Just want to thank our conference’s great commissioner, Jim Phillips, for his leadership and everything he does for us. On behalf of SMU, it’s great to represent our school and our program. Our new president, Jay Hartzell, our Athletics Director, Damon Evans, David Miller our Board Chair and our entire board of trustees. Just excited to be here and represent them.

First, just talking about SMU and our program, there’s never been a better time to come to SMU. Back-to-back 11-win seasons, making the College Football Playoff. Season tickets last year was a school record, and we had a bunch of sellouts, the most in school history, and a record of attendance. Here we are middle of July, and we’ve already surpassed by several thousand last year’s season ticket sales. So just the excitement is great.

The city of Dallas is embracing our program at an all time high, and we’re embracing them back. The alignment in the leadership, from our president, our board, our alumni, all the way on down is just as good as it’s ever been, and that’s what’s exciting about where we can go in the future.

Recruiting is at an all-time high. This past spring we had a 2.95 team GPA, which was a team and school record for football. Keyana Smith and her team that work with our student-athletes deserve a ton of credit for that.

Really the most exciting part about SMU and where we are is our players and our staff. We have an incredible staff. We have a lot of continuity, a lot of low ego, high output guys and girls on our staff that just deserve all the credit for the success we’ve had.

We’ve got some incredible student-athletes with us here today. We’ve got Kevin Jennings, Logan Parr, Isaiah Nwokobia and even Alex Kilgore representing our team. Man, they’re fun to coach. The character they have. They’re always giving back to our community. They’re always thinking of others. They make it a lot of fun to coach. It’s a great time to be at SMU. We’re excited about that.

When it comes to the ACC, there’s no question our league has separated itself as one of the top three leagues in America. The data speaks for itself, whether it’s the revenue generation that we did this past year. I know the commissioner spoke to three leagues how to network. Our network five years in is thriving and does a great job covering us. Three leagues had multiple CFP participants this year. We were one of them.

I think sometimes — you know, I was fortunate to win a National Championship in 2010 when I was at Auburn, and since then, over the last 14 seasons, one league’s won eight championships and two other leagues, us and the Big Ten, have won three National Championships, and another league hasn’t won any. I think that just shows you where our league has been on the national stage and where we think we’ll continue to be and where we belong.

On top of it, I know it’s been talked about here, we have the toughest nonconference strength of schedule in all of college football. We’re going to partake in that this year as we play two really good teams from the Big 12 in Baylor and TCU that are both nine-win teams a year ago.

When you start talking about the state of college football, I know there’s a lot of questions that will probably come on that, a lot of change, a lot of transition. I do think the CSC and the revenue sharing situation has a chance to be a step in the right direction. It’s obviously new. I think the key will be is there accountability and is it enforced? If it’s strictly adhered to, I think it creates good consistency for college football, for coaches, for players, for administration, and everyone. But that’s the key, it’s going to have to be held accountable.

We still need massive congressional help in a lot of areas, from codifying that a little bit, but also most importantly, protecting our players from bad actors in the agency world. There’s good agents out there, but all the agents need to be registered. We need to put a cap — I know it’s being proposed — on the agency commission so families and players aren’t taken advantage of. We need standardized contracts and a lot of things that we need congressional help on so it’s equal across all states.

I think we need to reimagine the College Football Playoff. It’s at a time where I know that’s being discussed. The players and the fans come first. That’s what we’re supposed to be about. I think more is always better. I know it’s out there. I think 16 teams would be great, more access for more teams, more players, more conferences.

The committee has a really hard decision. We were up close and personal with that a year ago, and I respect what they have to do, but honestly it’s a situation that’s set up for failure because there’s human bias and there’s always going to be. I think, if we could remove the committee from the situation, it would help because there’s no other major professional sport or major sport in America or the world that uses a committee to select their tournament participants. You look at America, it’s the NFL, and it’s college football. I think we need to re-look at that.

Just imagine — I know our commissioner has been outspoken about this before as options of what we could do, not only in the championship game, but maybe in a 2 versus 3, 3 versus 6, 4 versus 5 kind of scenario. Imagine if Championship Saturday every year right after Thanksgiving was your four Power 4 conference championship games, and you have a 3 versus 6 and a 4 versus 5 in every conference playing to try to get in a 16-team playoff. It would be like March Madness Thursday and Friday. It would be the best Saturday that college football could ever manufacture. We need to reimagine and think outside the box a little bit instead of going down the same path we’ve gone down before. We’ve got a great opportunity to do that, so I hope leadership will do that.

Last thing I’ll hit with, we’ve got a good group here from SMU. Craig James is actually in the building with us. Craig James, Eric Dickerson, arguably one of the best duos in tandem all time in college football, and they’re bringing back — they started last year bringing back the Pony Express Award, and it’s an award those two started to give to the best tandem, the best duo in college football. Last year Shedeur and Travis Hunter at Colorado won it. He’s here to talk more about that throughout the day and try to help spread the word about it.

I think it’s a great award because it recognizes a duo, teamwork. It’s an award by the players, for the players, to be voted on by players, and the second year bringing it back. I wanted to shed some light and exposure on that.

Then I’ll just say this: I’m incredibly humbled to get to be the head coach at SMU. It’s the dream of a lifetime. My wife, the real head coach, Lauren Lashlee, is here. My four kiddos, two sets of twins at home, Hudson and Thomas, Rowyn and Scarlet, are probably watching right now critiquing everything I do and don’t do. So they’ll have a full post-game report when I get home tonight.

Then just to coach these guys and represent our university is really cool. With that, I’m from Arkansas, I live in Texas. Whatever y’all want to do, let’s do it.

Q. To speak on the expansion of the College Football Playoff, being it expanding to 12 or staying at 14 or 16, why do you believe the ACC should be a multi-bid? We got to see that with you and Clemson. Why should it continue to be a multi-bid conference?

RHETT LASHLEE: I don’t think it’s up for discussion, it should be 16. More is better — I don’t think you’ve got to go crazy over that because it is football. We saw last year what the Playoff can do. On campus games, fantastic, everything it does for our game. More exposure, more access, creates more fan bases and more people involved in the season throughout the year and more conferences.

When it comes to our league, it should be easy. I just shed some light. There’s only three leagues to win a National Championship that have teams in their league since 1990. All the teams that have won a National Championship since 1990 are SEC, ACC, or Big Ten. Since I mentioned in the last 15 years, we’re tied for the second most championships with three with the Big Ten. I don’t know why that’s not talked about more. We have national brands. We’ve won championships. The revenue is almost double who’s fourth. We have our own network, the competition, the investment. I just think it speaks for itself.

Most people want to see things decided on the field, so let’s let it happen that way. I don’t think there’s any question that if it stayed at 12, we’re every year a multi-bid league. Miami should have been last year at 10-2. There’s no question they were one of the top 12 teams in America. But it does get tough, especially when you have a human committee making decisions. It’s a hard job. It’s set up for failure. They’re great people. They do the best they can. The NFL doesn’t do that. The NBA doesn’t do that. High school football, FIFA World Cup. Let’s take that out of that and let it be decided on the field with a different process, in my opinion.

When it comes to the ACC, I think the experience and the results speak for itself.

Q. You were talking about tandems, and of course you guys had two transfers come in in Chris Johnson Jr. and TJ Harden. What is the road that you see these guys taking next year on the field and the carries that they’ll be splitting up?

RHETT LASHLEE: That’s a great question. Obviously we lost Brashard Smith to the Kansas City Chiefs, had almost 2,000 yards, set the school record for all-purpose last year. He was a big part of our success.

Competition, healthy competition is a big part of what we do in our program, and that will play out over the next four to six weeks, really. We feel like we have four really talented players at running back. Derrick McFall returns for his true sophomore year, similar style player to what Brashard is. He can catch the ball, run between the tackles, he’s explosive. A year of experience, I think he’s poised to have a good season for us.

You mentioned Chris Johnson, similar style player, fast, explosive, can catch the ball, good in space. So those guys give you that versatility.

TJ’s coming over from UCLA, where he led the school in rushing. He’s a big back, physical, he can run and has speed.

And we’ve got a freshman in Reed, who was a recruited All-American. One of the highest recruited players to ever come to SMU. He’s big, he’s physical, he’s explosive.

I think we’ve got four guys. I don’t know if it will be a tandem, one guy will raise the bar, but I feel like we have four really good options that’s all have different strengths that will help play within our offense.

Q. You talked about recruiting is at an all-time high. Currently you guys rank 31st nationally with five four-star recruits. That’s also a school high. How are you leveraging the school’s ACC and Texas location to attract top talent, and what’s your vision for the roster going forward?

RHETT LASHLEE: One year in, it’s a great partnership for us and the ACC. We hoped that would happen. Grateful to the commissioners and the others for allowing us to join the league. We felt we would bring value to the league, and we did that last year by making the College Football Playoff.

Also, the league has helped us. We’re in the city of Dallas. It’s arguably the best country in America — I mean the best city in America. Could be considered a country at times. It’s the best city in America, but it deserves a big-time college football team, and Dallas loves winners, and our guys have given the city that the past couple years, and the city has embraced that.

Arguably year in and year out, the best high school talent comes out of the Metroplex. So for us to be positioned there as the only school within 30 miles of downtown Dallas is a huge advantage for us. A lot of those kids, some of them are sitting right up here, Kevin and Isaiah and Nwokobia can speak to that. They’re from the city. Kids want to stay in Dallas, they want to stay and play in Texas, we just had to give them a reason. They want to play on the biggest stage, play in that championship game against a Clemson, play in the College Football Playoff. So being in the ACC has allowed us to do that and put our program back on the national stage where we feel like we belong. That, plus winning, has been huge for our recruiting efforts.

We’re going to continue to recruit Dallas in the state of Texas at a high level. The ACC allows us to do that more like we want to. To your point of this recruiting class and the last recruiting class, that’s our formula for sustained success. In Texas, the Texas high school football players are the best. They’re the best coached, the best talented. All four of the players that we brought here to represent SMU are great college football players that played great high school football in Texas. That’s going to continue to be our formula.