Coaches and players talk about the need for a team to be mature almost as much as that team needs to have talent. For a team as young as the SMU football team, there clearly is more talent than maturity. The 2008 Ponies showed considerable promise at several positions, but many of the team’s top players were true freshmen and sophomores.

Enright was sidelined in 2008 when he broke the first knuckle on his right (snapping) ring finger in practice (photo by Travis Johnston).

Those players are a year older as they get ready for the upcoming season in 2009. Some have turned some leftover baby fat into muscle. Others now look for the first time like they can shave. Several will go so far as to declare a major.

Those players are a long way from matching up to center Mitch Enright. Playfully ribbed by teammates as the Mustangs’ grand old man, Enright is preparing for his fifth season on the Hilltop. He’s 23 years old, cut his teeth as an honorary assistant coach when an injury forced him to the sideline, already has a degree and is halfway to his MBA, and after sweating through the team’s voluntary summer workouts, goes home to his new wife, Ali.

As one of the elder statesmen on the Ponies’ offensive line, Enright began the 2008 season in his familiar position, as the team’s starting center. But during the week leading up to the Ponies’ game against Texas Tech, Enright got his right ring finger tangled up in a teammate’s jersey during practice, snapping the bone above the first knuckle, and rendering the hand useless for snapping a football.

“I thought it was just jammed,” he said. “I couldn’t grip the ball at all, and couldn’t get it off the ground. I knew there was a problem, so I went in there (to the training room) and it was completely snapped in half. I had to get three pins in there — they’re going to be in there for the rest of my life.

“It wasn’t even something cool — our practice jerseys last year were pretty loose, so I got it caught in someone’s jersey in practice, and it just completely bent outward toward my pinky.”

With Enright unable to go, the coaches installed true freshman Blake McJunkin into the starting lineup. Until he had surgery on his hand, Enright was considered the backup center, even though he couldn’t grip the ball.

“Blake did an amazing job when he went in there,” Enright said. “As young as he was — still is — and having played at this level for just a few weeks, that’s a lot to ask. But he’s a smart guy, he comes from great bloodlines with his dad being a former offensive lineman, and he’s very tough. There were times last year when he’d line up, at not even 260 (pounds), against a guy who was 80 pounds bigger than he was. No matter what (the defense) threw at him, he kept going. It was impressive.”

While he admired his youthful replacement’s moxie in the trenches, Enright was beside himself as he watched from the sideline, unable to take the field and help the Mustang offense.

Enright said his battle with Blake McJunkin for the starting center spot in 2009 was "neck and neck" coming out of spring workouts (photo by Travis Johnston).

“It was the most frustrating thing I’ve been through since I’ve been here — and I’ve been through two 1-11 seasons, so I’ve been through lots of frustrating times — but that tops the list,” Enright said. “First of all, it’s a stupid finger. You hear about people taping up their fingers and playing through it all the time, and if it was my left hand, I wouldn’t have missed a game. But I couldn’t get the ball off the ground snapping, and center’s pretty much the only position I can play in this offense, so it was really frustrating. Having to have the surgery three weeks after I broke it and being out another four weeks after that and it never really healed the rest of the year, it was just a really frustrating time.

“We would have probably had to go to Bryce Tennison. He can long-snap, and he practiced (at center) a little bit, but even the week that I broke it, the week of the Texas Tech game, Blake was in there but I traveled with the team, even though it was completely broken. I couldn’t even feel it. I just took some medicine before the game, and (the coaches) were telling me, ‘if something happens to Blake, we have nobody else. We’re going to have to figure something out.’ So I was actually practicing snapping with my left hand. I wasn’t comfortable doing it, but if I had to play with it broken, I would have had to snap with my left hand. I wouldn’t have been able to move quickly after snapping — I would have had to worry about getting it back to the quarterback slowly, and then worry about what happens after that.”

As it turned out, of course, McJunkin survived the season and Enright wasn’t forced back on the field prematurely. While his hand healed, Enright patrolled the SMU sideline, serving as an extra set of eyes and ears for offensive line coach Dennis McKnight.

“During the games, Coach McKnight would tell me to watch the left side while he watched the right side,” Enright said. “We’d talk about what happened — I’d tell him the mistakes guys made — so I was definitely a second pair of eyes out there for him, since I couldn’t do anything else. Then, I was at every practice, which was so hard, watching the guys do everything. I just tried to help as much as I could, especially with a young guy like Blake, who had been doing the offense for maybe six weeks until he became the starter.”

When he returned to the field toward the end of last season, his hand still bothered him, and Enright added to the pain by jamming the finger in practice. After resting the hand through the offseason, however, Enright said his hand is now pain-free.

“Every single practice, I would jam it a few times, and it would just kill me,” he said. “It didn’t re-break or anything, but I’d jam it just the right way, and it would just go numb for a few plays.

“But that was then and this is now — I’m glad that’s over with. The great thing is that during spring ball, I was a little hesitant, because I didn’t know if I was going to jam it again, but through all of spring ball, I didn’t hurt it at all. It doesn’t bother me at all now. I tried ‘buddy-taping’ it — the middle finger and the ring finger taped together — but I’m just not comfortable snapping that way, and I didn’t feel like it offered any extra protection. If you hit your finger, you hit your finger, so there was nothing more I could do to protect it more.”

FAMILY MAN

While he always has been one of the Ponies hardest workers, both on the field and in the classroom, the stabilizing force in his life for years has been Ali, whom he started dating in 10th grade when they were students at Carroll High School in Southlake. The two survived a long-distance romance — she attended Oklahoma State while he was at SMU — and married June 20. Linebacker Pete Fleps was Enright’s best man, and his ushers included former teammates Caleb Peveto, Ben Poynter and Tommy Poynter.

Mitch and Ali Enright were married June 20, 2009 (photo by Enright family).

“We met sophomore year of high school, and we’ve been going out ever since, so it’s been like six-and-a-half years,” Enright said. “We did the whole long-distance thing ever since we started college. When we went to college, we didn’t break up, but we said if we get to college and want to go on a break or test the waters or something, we would. But we both got to college and were still happy with each other — there was no point. So I’d say after freshman year of college, we knew that it was going to last.

Enright said his teammates — particularly his young linemates — enjoy taking shots at him, but he clearly doesn’t mind the abuse.

“They make fun of me for being old, because they’re all young; the oldest guys on the offensive line besides me are just going to be sophomores this year,” he said. “So they make fun of me for that, and if we want to go out to eat or something, they make fun of me with that, too, saying, ‘hey, do you need to check in with the wife?’ Stuff like that — they give me a hard time. I’m just like, ‘hey, you find someone like Ali and then you can start talking.’”

As much as Enright enjoys going home to Ali now, he said that being married and a college graduate have not affected his intensity and dedication to offseason workouts and his preparation for the upcoming season.

“The only thing that’s changed is that we live together now, and obviously that’s a big thing, but as far as our relationship, we’ve been so close for so long that it really doesn’t feel any different,” he said. “Football’s football — it doesn’t matter what you go home to at night. When you’re here, it’s all about football. It doesn’t matter if you’re a 23-year-old senior who’s married, or a 17-year-old freshman. When you’re out here, you’re part of the team, and age doesn’t matter.”

LAST GO-’ROUND

With his Bachelor’s degree already in-hand, and with a clear path to earning his MBA in May 2010 (which he plans to use after graduation to get a job in the financial industry, rather than build on his cameo appearance as McKnight’s assistant by getting into coaching), Enright is now focused on his final season with the Mustangs. Obviously he wants to re-gain the starting center job from McJunkin, but said the battle won’t affect their off-field relationship and respect for each other.

“Neck-and-neck,” Enright said when asked how his battle with McJunkin for the starting center spot looked at the end of spring workouts. “I would say most positions on the team — you have the possibility of flip-flopping every week during two-a-days. We’re not going to have a set starting 11 on offense or defense until maybe the week before the first game. They want competition at every position, they want us pushing each other. We’ve both been here this summer, and we’re both working our hardest, and whatever happens happens.

“We both have the mindset that we’re starting this year, so it should be interesting.”