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First of all, congrats on a truly great-or at least very good season. Yes, losing Roberson-I think right before the Memphis game if I remember-was tough. At your best last year SMU was easily a top 25 team. No question.

I thought I'd share some thoughts regarding Memphis for the coming season. Can't wait. I think we have one more season of being really good where the conference championship goes through us, a tougher schedule and no divisions due to UConn leaving notwithstanding.

Brady White is coming back. Kenneth Gainwell is coming back, as is Coxie. And we have a four star running back coming in from Auburn, though we lose Patrick Taylor. And not sure about our offensive line, but we get 8 defensive starters back. All this from a team that was within one play of perhaps beating Penn State. No, we did not win, but we showed we belonged.

We have had three straight NFL talented quarterbacks, the key for us longer terms is can we find another equivalent after White leaves? Next year White and Gainwell will be mentioned in the Heisman voting, though you can probably forget a non-power five school getting the Heisman. But we have two national players at least.

So my prediction is that we have one more season at a minimum of being the team to beat in the Conference along with UCF, with Cincy, Houston, and SMU being dark horses. For now, Memphis, Boise, and UCF are the three brands that highlight the Group of Five. We are going to be extremely good in 2020, hopefully we get the Peach Bowl! Can't wait to see us play here next year. So a few SMU questions and thoughts if I may?

Any chance of losing your coach to Baylor?
Love the Dallas time-in!
Is Xavier back next year? I thought he did a great job
Do you think by efficient use of the transfer portal, good coaching, and a few other factors (finding another Shane) that SMU can move up to the level where the above three schools seem to be now?
What can be done about getting attendance to be consistently higher, even though there are two other division one schools in the area. Can SMU consistently draw say, 30K?
Do you play TCU again next year?

Go Tigers! I look forward to many more years of this being a real battle, and I hope SMU can continue to grow so that Memphis, Houston, SMU and perhaps one other school can get in the Big 12

Best Wishes to you for another great season. Let me know your thoughts! Ultimately, do you see SMU with 9 wins next year?

Robert Hyman
Dallas, Texas

Feel we did have a change in offensive potential with the loss of Roberson. He stretched the field and that help open up other options for the offense. Defense tended to pack it tighter after he was hurt.

No clue about Dykes. The P5 bug has burned us recently and one never knows when it comes to money and P5 prestige.

Jones is a Sr. and will move on to the next phase of life. All the best to him, he was great for us.

Yes, the transfer portal has been good to us and Dykes and his team have used it to great benefit.

Feel we are at least in the conversation for better recruits now. The commitment by Stone is a huge benefit for us.

We do have more potential to improve. We had more depth this year than usual. And we have key players coming back. It depends on keeping our coach more now than ever. Also, next year we have a better home schedule. Get some of the better teams (Memphis, TCU, Houston, Cincy, Navy) at home. That's a big plus.

How will Memphis be under Silverfield? Any changes to the offensive or defensive schemes?

Others on this board can give a more indepth analysis. I think the variable of a coaching change is the one unknown that has some on edge about SMU

Regarding the coaching change.

Obviously Norvell did a great job and no one wanted him to leave, but it was inevitable. That said, all of us are always in this situation Fuente, Norvell, Chad for you guys and so forth. However we may have struck it rich in some ways with Norvell.

First, we are keeping the same offensive coordinator who is well into Norvell's system. We may get a bit more of the Texas Tech type system, but we have been a running team under Norvell as much as passing.

Whether we can still get the ridiculously high level of running backs that we have had remains to be seen. We have had Darrell Henderson, Patrick Taylor, Tony Pollard, Kenny Gainwell last several years. So we will see how that goes.

Silverfield has had NFL experience and I think he also must know Norvell's system very well. The key thing with Silverfield is that HE SAYS (FOR WHAT THAT IS WORTH) HE WON'T USE MEMPHIS AS A STEPPING STONE and will stay long term. We'll see on that however his wife has a medical practice in Memphis and this seems like his job for as long as he produces. It is SO HARD to have stability when outstanding coaches leave for "power five programs"

For right now, the key thing for Memphis is that Brady White will be returning, so we will have stability in the quarterback position for one more year. At that point we need to find a way to have the right person-or close to that-in place for us to continue at a very high level.

Another key thing for us, and SMU has the same "problem" is we don't get the attendance we should. PART OF THAT is that we need to find a way to get at least one more power five team on our schedule. Need to start getting crowds in the thirties at least.

Hope both our schools can continue on the upward path. Best of luck next year.

Work on special teams, LOL! Wonder how much money Riley Patterson made at the Cotton Bowl!

Robert Hyman
Dallas, Texas

Didn't look like an attendence problem when playing SMU and Cincy this year.

Memphis has much better support from the average Memphian than SMU has from local non affiliated Dallasites. Too much competition around the Dallas area, a small student body, and years of mediocre or worse competitiveness has reduced our fan base to what it is today. That being said, the future looks bright. Coach Dykes is doing a great job and says all the right things about how he likes being here. Talent level is on a nice upward trajectory and there is for the first time in a long while some buzz around the program. The small fan base is excited and growing slowly. We all know it all comes down to winning and if we can do that crowd sizes will increase......slowly. 30k crowd averages are possible but are at least a few years away.