- Joined
- Feb 3, 2018
- Messages
- 23,847
Really great read from The Athletic. Sonny Dykes has a similar philosophy to Manny when it comes to building up the hometown team. There are some comments from Dykes about the Canes within the story. For those who think Lashlee/Manny should work Stone to flip to the Canes, this story tells you exactly why that isn't happening:
If you’re headed west on Interstate 635 — the Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway — in Northwest Dallas, there’s a prominently displayed billboard for lease towering over a Rooms To Go store. That billboard is located roughly 3 miles away from Parish Episcopal High School.
You can bet someone from SMU is scouting out that billboard.
In a few years, four-star quarterback Preston Stone’s face may be on it.
Stone, the No. 100 player in the 2021 recruiting class, according to the 247Sports Composite, is the highest-rated player in the country committed to a Group of 5 program. He had close to 50 scholarship offers and could have committed to play at Texas or Ohio State or Alabama, but that would have been the easy way out. Stone made the decision to stay home and play for SMU, a program he believes is going to be much different in the near future. Also, he wanted to play for Dallas.
“In SMU, there’s a chance to do something different,” Stone said. “I actually want to have an undefeated season at a school where that hasn’t been the usual result. That’s the end goal for me — to build something at a new place and leave my stamp on it.”
It seems to be a puzzling decision to many in the college football world. Why not take the obvious route? Why not go to a national power with a history of developing quarterbacks for the NFL, and do so while competing for a national championship? That’s the route taken by most high-profile prospects, and it’s part of the reason the same schools seem to be at the top of the rankings every year.
Today)
But dig a little deeper, and you’ll start to understand Stone’s decision. You’ll find a head coach in Sonny Dykes who has a clear understanding of how to build a program. Stone’s commitment isn’t just a one-off. Everything that is happening for the Mustangs right now goes so far beyond their top-25 ranking, their huge win over Memphis on Oct. 3 and the chance to go undefeated and win the American Athletic Conference in 2021.
Dykes has his sights fixed on the long game, a chance to make the Mustangs more than a fun Group of 5 Cinderella story.
His vision for SMU goes back more than two decades. Dykes has always recruited the Dallas-Fort Worth area, first as an assistant at Navarro Community College in Corsicana, Texas, in the mid-1990s, during stints as an assistant for Mike Leach at Texas Tech, as the offensive coordinator at Arizona and as the head coach at Louisiana Tech, California and now SMU.
“I’ve been thinking about what I could do here for the past 20 years,” said Dykes, whose father, Spike, was the head coach at Texas Tech from 1986-99. “I’d come to Dallas and recruit these talented high schools, and I just didn’t see a lot of SMU coaches. They were going through a rough time in the program and there was some tough situations there, but it never really seemed like they were recruiting the city the way I thought they could. Even back then, I’d tell people that SMU has to figure out a way to market itself and become Dallas’ college.”
When Dykes was named SMU’s head coach in December 2017 — after a one-year stint as an offensive analyst at TCU — he made it clear to his staff that the Mustangs were going to become Dallas’ college football team. SMU launched a wide-ranging marketing campaign focusing on billboards that featured a player from different parts of town. In Arlington, for example, there’s one that reads “Pony Up Arlington” with a picture of quarterback Shane Buechele, a four-star quarterback from the Arlington area in the Class of 2016 who transferred home after starting his career at Texas. The billboards are all over the city: Mesquite, South Dallas, Plano, Denton, Oak Cliff, Pleasant Grove and more.
It’s more than just billboards. It’s more than SMU’s Dallas-themed uniforms and alternate logo. It’s a commitment to recruiting the city hard. SMU assistants are fixtures in every high school in the area, eager to take advantage of one of the nation’s most fertile recruiting areas. Coaches have to decide how they are going to spend their valuable time, so why would SMU recruit New Orleans or Los Angeles or Atlanta when there are enough prospects in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to populate most of the teams in the Big 12?
“I’ve always believed that the most important element in building a successful college football program is having a recruiting base,” Dykes said. “You know, you just have to have a base where kids will at least listen to you and are interested in attending your school. That’s what we have here. Dallas is the home to some of the best high school football in the country. … We don’t have to get on an airplane, make three connections and travel across the country to get to these kids.
“There is a lot of good high school football in the Bay Area, so when I was at Cal, I didn’t know the Bay Area. There was a learning curve there. When I got here, I knew all about the best programs, I knew who I had to see first, the movers and shakers, who was going to influence kids. I know this area. So what that enabled me to do was go hire coaches who also know this area and have a presence here. This is a big part of the success, assembling a staff that can attack this area and prioritize Dallas. The day I walked into the door, I was two years ahead of where I was the day I walked into the door at Cal. I didn’t start from scratch. I had a clear understanding of how to recruit here.”
Half of the battle is creating a plan. So many coaches fail in recruiting because they struggle to find a recruiting identity or don’t use their time efficiently and end up chasing prospects who live a plane ride away. Some schools are fortunate to be located in a talent-rich area. Some schools are not. But it’s still about identifying who you are and executing your plan.
Take a look at SMU’s 2021 class: All 13 of the commitments are from Texas. Ten are from Dallas-Fort Worth. On top of that, SMU has emerged as a popular transfer destination for Dallas prospects who signed with Power 5 schools and want to return home. Buechele is the perfect example. The Mustangs hope that form of roster building will continue, especially if the NCAA — as expected — passes the one-time transfer waiver in January. Maybe a four-star prospect from Texas will go to Alabama, decide he wants to play earlier and return home to SMU. There will be a billboard with his name waiting for him.
If a player wants to play for Dallas, SMU is the team.
“Our hope is that we can be like what Miami did in Miami,” Dykes said. “We asked ourselves over and over again, ‘Can we do that? Can we be “The U” in Dallas?’ And we think we can. There are a lot of kids who take a lot of pride in being from Dallas. That’s our approach in marketing — the billboards, the uniforms, all of it came from that idea. I don’t care who you are or how heavily recruited you are. We think we can beat anyone out there for a Dallas prospect.”
Texas wanted Stone as its quarterback in the 2021 class but was also recruiting four-star prospect Jalen Milroe. The Longhorns told Stone to either commit or risk losing his spot. He didn’t commit because he’s a Dallas kid with an SMU background. His older brother, Parker, is a wide receiver for the Mustangs, and his father, Ted, is an SMU alum. Scott Nady, the director of recruiting and an analyst for the Mustangs, was the previous head coach at Parish Episcopal.
Stone is all Mustangs.
“The quarterback is definitely the essential piece to any recruiting class,” Stone said. “I think a lot of guys saw my commitment as a sign like, ‘Maybe SMU is the place to be to have an opportunity to do something special.’ I take pride in being a leader or someone who can help attract talent here with me.”
Most of the Dallas-area prospects know each other through recruiting camps and youth leagues. Stone has personal relationships with most of the players in SMU’s class, and he’s close with four-star offensive tackle Savion Byrd of Duncanville (Texas) High, the No. 43 player and the No. 6 offensive tackle in the 2021 class. Byrd is also considering Oklahoma and LSU — which is the battle SMU is always going to face with top-100 players in Dallas — but the Mustangs are right in the thick of things. SMU could potentially land two top-100 players (including a quarterback) in a single class, which has happened only once by a non-Power 5 school, BYU in 2002, in the modern recruiting era.
“If Savion were to commit to SMU, that’d be the biggest piece to the whole puzzle,” Stone said. “I definitely want someone like that protecting me. I’ve tried to share with him the vision of what SMU is about, and I think he’s really starting to buy into that. I wish him the best, and I hope it’s at SMU to do something special.”
Assuming Buechele doesn’t return for a sixth season — the NCAA has granted every player an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic — Stone will have a great opportunity to win the starting assignment as a true freshman on a team that is loaded with talent at the skill positions.
SMU was the right school in the right place at the right time. If Stone’s career doesn’t pan out, well, he’s got a degree from SMU. If his career turns out the way most expect, he can either go to the NFL from SMU or, if he chooses, transfer to a Power 5 program in need of a quarterback in three years to chase a national championship. He has plenty of options.
SMU is clearly the right one for now.
“SMU people run Dallas,” Daniel Novakov, the head coach at Parish Episcopal said. “You know, so if you want to live in Dallas, SMU is a pretty good school to go to.”
That’s the plan. Own Dallas, welcome transfers originally from Dallas and attract talent at a higher level. And when the next wave of expansion hits college football, maybe SMU will be an attractive candidate to join the Power 5 ranks. But for the time being, there’s a clear path to becoming a Group of 5 Power.
And for prospects such as Stone — and others who believe in the vision — SMU is an intriguing program.
Just look at the billboards.
If you’re headed west on Interstate 635 — the Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway — in Northwest Dallas, there’s a prominently displayed billboard for lease towering over a Rooms To Go store. That billboard is located roughly 3 miles away from Parish Episcopal High School.
You can bet someone from SMU is scouting out that billboard.
In a few years, four-star quarterback Preston Stone’s face may be on it.
Stone, the No. 100 player in the 2021 recruiting class, according to the 247Sports Composite, is the highest-rated player in the country committed to a Group of 5 program. He had close to 50 scholarship offers and could have committed to play at Texas or Ohio State or Alabama, but that would have been the easy way out. Stone made the decision to stay home and play for SMU, a program he believes is going to be much different in the near future. Also, he wanted to play for Dallas.
“In SMU, there’s a chance to do something different,” Stone said. “I actually want to have an undefeated season at a school where that hasn’t been the usual result. That’s the end goal for me — to build something at a new place and leave my stamp on it.”
It seems to be a puzzling decision to many in the college football world. Why not take the obvious route? Why not go to a national power with a history of developing quarterbacks for the NFL, and do so while competing for a national championship? That’s the route taken by most high-profile prospects, and it’s part of the reason the same schools seem to be at the top of the rankings every year.
Today)
But dig a little deeper, and you’ll start to understand Stone’s decision. You’ll find a head coach in Sonny Dykes who has a clear understanding of how to build a program. Stone’s commitment isn’t just a one-off. Everything that is happening for the Mustangs right now goes so far beyond their top-25 ranking, their huge win over Memphis on Oct. 3 and the chance to go undefeated and win the American Athletic Conference in 2021.
Dykes has his sights fixed on the long game, a chance to make the Mustangs more than a fun Group of 5 Cinderella story.
His vision for SMU goes back more than two decades. Dykes has always recruited the Dallas-Fort Worth area, first as an assistant at Navarro Community College in Corsicana, Texas, in the mid-1990s, during stints as an assistant for Mike Leach at Texas Tech, as the offensive coordinator at Arizona and as the head coach at Louisiana Tech, California and now SMU.
“I’ve been thinking about what I could do here for the past 20 years,” said Dykes, whose father, Spike, was the head coach at Texas Tech from 1986-99. “I’d come to Dallas and recruit these talented high schools, and I just didn’t see a lot of SMU coaches. They were going through a rough time in the program and there was some tough situations there, but it never really seemed like they were recruiting the city the way I thought they could. Even back then, I’d tell people that SMU has to figure out a way to market itself and become Dallas’ college.”
When Dykes was named SMU’s head coach in December 2017 — after a one-year stint as an offensive analyst at TCU — he made it clear to his staff that the Mustangs were going to become Dallas’ college football team. SMU launched a wide-ranging marketing campaign focusing on billboards that featured a player from different parts of town. In Arlington, for example, there’s one that reads “Pony Up Arlington” with a picture of quarterback Shane Buechele, a four-star quarterback from the Arlington area in the Class of 2016 who transferred home after starting his career at Texas. The billboards are all over the city: Mesquite, South Dallas, Plano, Denton, Oak Cliff, Pleasant Grove and more.
It’s more than just billboards. It’s more than SMU’s Dallas-themed uniforms and alternate logo. It’s a commitment to recruiting the city hard. SMU assistants are fixtures in every high school in the area, eager to take advantage of one of the nation’s most fertile recruiting areas. Coaches have to decide how they are going to spend their valuable time, so why would SMU recruit New Orleans or Los Angeles or Atlanta when there are enough prospects in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to populate most of the teams in the Big 12?
“I’ve always believed that the most important element in building a successful college football program is having a recruiting base,” Dykes said. “You know, you just have to have a base where kids will at least listen to you and are interested in attending your school. That’s what we have here. Dallas is the home to some of the best high school football in the country. … We don’t have to get on an airplane, make three connections and travel across the country to get to these kids.
“There is a lot of good high school football in the Bay Area, so when I was at Cal, I didn’t know the Bay Area. There was a learning curve there. When I got here, I knew all about the best programs, I knew who I had to see first, the movers and shakers, who was going to influence kids. I know this area. So what that enabled me to do was go hire coaches who also know this area and have a presence here. This is a big part of the success, assembling a staff that can attack this area and prioritize Dallas. The day I walked into the door, I was two years ahead of where I was the day I walked into the door at Cal. I didn’t start from scratch. I had a clear understanding of how to recruit here.”
Half of the battle is creating a plan. So many coaches fail in recruiting because they struggle to find a recruiting identity or don’t use their time efficiently and end up chasing prospects who live a plane ride away. Some schools are fortunate to be located in a talent-rich area. Some schools are not. But it’s still about identifying who you are and executing your plan.
Take a look at SMU’s 2021 class: All 13 of the commitments are from Texas. Ten are from Dallas-Fort Worth. On top of that, SMU has emerged as a popular transfer destination for Dallas prospects who signed with Power 5 schools and want to return home. Buechele is the perfect example. The Mustangs hope that form of roster building will continue, especially if the NCAA — as expected — passes the one-time transfer waiver in January. Maybe a four-star prospect from Texas will go to Alabama, decide he wants to play earlier and return home to SMU. There will be a billboard with his name waiting for him.
If a player wants to play for Dallas, SMU is the team.
“Our hope is that we can be like what Miami did in Miami,” Dykes said. “We asked ourselves over and over again, ‘Can we do that? Can we be “The U” in Dallas?’ And we think we can. There are a lot of kids who take a lot of pride in being from Dallas. That’s our approach in marketing — the billboards, the uniforms, all of it came from that idea. I don’t care who you are or how heavily recruited you are. We think we can beat anyone out there for a Dallas prospect.”
Texas wanted Stone as its quarterback in the 2021 class but was also recruiting four-star prospect Jalen Milroe. The Longhorns told Stone to either commit or risk losing his spot. He didn’t commit because he’s a Dallas kid with an SMU background. His older brother, Parker, is a wide receiver for the Mustangs, and his father, Ted, is an SMU alum. Scott Nady, the director of recruiting and an analyst for the Mustangs, was the previous head coach at Parish Episcopal.
Stone is all Mustangs.
“The quarterback is definitely the essential piece to any recruiting class,” Stone said. “I think a lot of guys saw my commitment as a sign like, ‘Maybe SMU is the place to be to have an opportunity to do something special.’ I take pride in being a leader or someone who can help attract talent here with me.”
Most of the Dallas-area prospects know each other through recruiting camps and youth leagues. Stone has personal relationships with most of the players in SMU’s class, and he’s close with four-star offensive tackle Savion Byrd of Duncanville (Texas) High, the No. 43 player and the No. 6 offensive tackle in the 2021 class. Byrd is also considering Oklahoma and LSU — which is the battle SMU is always going to face with top-100 players in Dallas — but the Mustangs are right in the thick of things. SMU could potentially land two top-100 players (including a quarterback) in a single class, which has happened only once by a non-Power 5 school, BYU in 2002, in the modern recruiting era.
“If Savion were to commit to SMU, that’d be the biggest piece to the whole puzzle,” Stone said. “I definitely want someone like that protecting me. I’ve tried to share with him the vision of what SMU is about, and I think he’s really starting to buy into that. I wish him the best, and I hope it’s at SMU to do something special.”
Assuming Buechele doesn’t return for a sixth season — the NCAA has granted every player an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic — Stone will have a great opportunity to win the starting assignment as a true freshman on a team that is loaded with talent at the skill positions.
SMU was the right school in the right place at the right time. If Stone’s career doesn’t pan out, well, he’s got a degree from SMU. If his career turns out the way most expect, he can either go to the NFL from SMU or, if he chooses, transfer to a Power 5 program in need of a quarterback in three years to chase a national championship. He has plenty of options.
SMU is clearly the right one for now.
“SMU people run Dallas,” Daniel Novakov, the head coach at Parish Episcopal said. “You know, so if you want to live in Dallas, SMU is a pretty good school to go to.”
That’s the plan. Own Dallas, welcome transfers originally from Dallas and attract talent at a higher level. And when the next wave of expansion hits college football, maybe SMU will be an attractive candidate to join the Power 5 ranks. But for the time being, there’s a clear path to becoming a Group of 5 Power.
And for prospects such as Stone — and others who believe in the vision — SMU is an intriguing program.
Just look at the billboards.
