Even the Washington Post is covering us

[HubbaHubba]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/c ... story.html

[One Trick Pony]

I can't afford the dollar copy and paste

[mustangxc]

Don’t look now, but SMU football is undefeated and having fun again

SMU Coach Sonny Dykes is enjoying his team’s fast start. (Ron Jenkins/AP)

By Chuck Culpepper

Oct. 17, 2019 at 5:42 p.m. CDT

DALLAS — Here comes question No. 3, this one from “Anonymous,” in the “Ask The Coach” segment of the coach’s radio show on a Monday night in an airy meeting room of a sprawling bar. SMU radio voice Rich Phillips reads it, and it’s precisely the kind of question the human subspecies known as football coach will not and should not answer, suggesting the inquirer even might have dabbled in puckishness.

Which game will be the hardest on the remainder of the schedule?

With swift and keen detective skills, the well-traveled, 49-year-old, second-year SMU coach, Sonny Dykes, considers the question and surveys a room holding about 120 people with a recommended capacity on the wall of 166, and manages to decipher and identify “Anonymous”: his 11-year-old daughter, Ally.

“I know your sentence structure,” Dykes deadpans, and the room has a great big guffaw.

It’s a fitting scene from a fresh phenomenon the nation would not recognize: giddy SMU.

The nation once saw highbrow SMU (51-7-1 from 1980-84), Eric Dickerson SMU, and then dead SMU, reborn SMU, forgotten SMU, moribund SMU, pretty good SMU starting late last decade under June Jones. The nation has seen — or, really, not seen — an SMU with a 116-235 record and no more than eight wins in any season since 1989, the year SMU hobbled out of the NCAA crypt that provided infamy in a sport long rich in mischief.

Now here’s an SMU standing 6-0, with a cherished win at TCU, with a 43-37 win over Tulsa on Oct. 5 wrung from a 30-9 deficit after three quarters, with a ranking of No. 19, and with a bout Saturday with No. 25 Temple, the first ranked-versus-ranked game ever in 19-year-old Ford Stadium.

It’s an SMU giddy enough to delight even an erstwhile scarecrow.

“Oh, it’s just so much fun,” said erstwhile scarecrow Paul Layne, who has attended the past 514 SMU games home and away and very away (Tokyo, Hawaii), and who looks so much younger than his 65 that one wonders whether attending 514 SMU games in a row is some sort of elixir.

“It’s great to be a Mustang,” he continued. “One thing, I didn’t know if I’d ever live long enough to see it.”

Layne, a former student reporter at SMU who found it too excruciating to refrain from cheering in the press box and thus became an SMU cheerleader, also didn’t know if he’d get anywhere near 514 when, in October 1995, he got one of those unusual diagnoses of chicken pox at age 41 just as SMU fixed to play Rice in the Cotton Bowl. So Layne had to ply some creativity.

While Rice defeated SMU 34-24 and dropped SMU to 1-7 along the trail to 1-10, one of the world’s all-time fans watched alone, from the barren rafters of the Cotton Bowl, while dressed as a scarecrow, the costume providing further help against prospective contagion.

Clearly, he has earned his turn at giddy SMU.

At giddy SMU, a Dallas-raised receiver with a movie-star smile meets with reporters. James Proche calls the Tulsa fracas “my favorite game of all-time,” and he ranks No. 6 in the country in receiving yards per game (88.2), No. 11 in touchdown catches (seven), No. 22 in receptions (45), coming off a junior year in which he caught a tall 93.

“It’s amazing,” Proche says. “I’m a Dallas kid through-and-through: born and raised in DeSoto, played Little League here, and to be able to see this group being able to represent this city, and bring SMU back to promise, that’s something that I focused on, and it’s real.

“I don’t understand why somebody would go represent somewhere else, instead of building a giant, you know, where they are. You understand?”

He finishes whereupon, at giddy SMU, he gives high handshakes and shoulder-bump hugs to all six reporters in sequence.

At giddy SMU, a fan, Perri Brackett, says she went to get a soda for her husband during the Tulsa game but found the line too onerous. She says they ran out of popcorn. After all, they’re getting more fans now, from 22,766 to 17,489 to 28,142 in three home popcorn games.

At giddy SMU, the head coach says, “I think our overall depth has been impressive to me.” He speaks of converted cornerback and former UCLA player Brandon Stephens as “a big surprise,” in a program that has mastered college football’s 21st-century “transfer portal,” roping in 15 such signees. To his credit, the coach can say, “We played tight, I think, the first half” against Tulsa, and, “I think we coached a little tight.” At giddy SMU, they’re just off a crackerjack of a game in which they converted six consecutive fourth downs, of which Dykes says, “There’s some teams that won’t convert six fourth downs all year.”

And at giddy SMU, a coach from the Hal Mumme-Mike Leach fold who has seen a whole lot of most everything by now, and who has assistant-coached at J.J. Pearce High (in Texas), at Navarro Junior College (in Texas), at Kentucky, at Northeast Louisiana, at Texas Tech, at Arizona, then head-coached at Louisiana Tech, Jared Goff’s California and SMU (with the former Texas quarterback Shane Buechele in command now), can even kid around about, you know, that Tulsa kickoff.

That Tulsa kickoff caromed around the country’s phone screens after it caromed around the sideline with SMU players unable to corral it until a Tulsa player fell on it in the end zone for a Tulsa touchdown. It looked like one of those nightmares when one cannot pick up a ball or run to first base without stumbling.

When Phillips brought it up, Dykes said, “Well . . . hmmm,” and the audience laughed the way audiences can when their team is 6-0.

“A great learning experience for us,” he wound up saying.

At giddy SMU, then, Dykes and staff suddely face what some coaches, Georgia’s Kirby Smart among them, have called the hardest of all their coaching tasks: keeping young men consistent amid the onus of widespread praise. He speaks of “the need for people to feel validated,” and says, “So many of them are accustomed to getting it from soial media and from people they don’t even know, which I’ve really always kind of struggled to understand a little bit, why it could be so important to so many young people, to get validation from people that they don’t know. But I think it is, and I think that’s part of, kind of, the society that we live in, to an extent.

“And so, you know, when guys start getting a lot of praise, you’ve got to do a good job of making sure they understand how quickly it can go away. You know what I mean? I think we’re one of those programs that, if we lose a game, then our shine’s gonna go off pretty quickly, and I think our guys understand that. It’s certainly been pointed out to them enough, to where we know we have to fight for every ounce of respect that we get. We’re okay with that.”

In that vein and others, his players seem to know his sentence structure.

[HubbaHubba]

Thanks for the post. Let me in for free.

[One Trick Pony]

Don’t look now, but SMU football is undefeated and having fun again

SMU Coach Sonny Dykes is enjoying his team’s fast start. (Ron Jenkins/AP)

By Chuck Culpepper

Oct. 17, 2019 at 5:42 p.m. CDT

DALLAS — Here comes question No. 3, this one from “Anonymous,” in the “Ask The Coach” segment of the coach’s radio show on a Monday night in an airy meeting room of a sprawling bar. SMU radio voice Rich Phillips reads it, and it’s precisely the kind of question the human subspecies known as football coach will not and should not answer, suggesting the inquirer even might have dabbled in puckishness.

Which game will be the hardest on the remainder of the schedule?

With swift and keen detective skills, the well-traveled, 49-year-old, second-year SMU coach, Sonny Dykes, considers the question and surveys a room holding about 120 people with a recommended capacity on the wall of 166, and manages to decipher and identify “Anonymous”: his 11-year-old daughter, Ally.

“I know your sentence structure,” Dykes deadpans, and the room has a great big guffaw.

It’s a fitting scene from a fresh phenomenon the nation would not recognize: giddy SMU.

The nation once saw highbrow SMU (51-7-1 from 1980-84), Eric Dickerson SMU, and then dead SMU, reborn SMU, forgotten SMU, moribund SMU, pretty good SMU starting late last decade under June Jones. The nation has seen — or, really, not seen — an SMU with a 116-235 record and no more than eight wins in any season since 1989, the year SMU hobbled out of the NCAA crypt that provided infamy in a sport long rich in mischief.

Now here’s an SMU standing 6-0, with a cherished win at TCU, with a 43-37 win over Tulsa on Oct. 5 wrung from a 30-9 deficit after three quarters, with a ranking of No. 19, and with a bout Saturday with No. 25 Temple, the first ranked-versus-ranked game ever in 19-year-old Ford Stadium.

It’s an SMU giddy enough to delight even an erstwhile scarecrow.

“Oh, it’s just so much fun,” said erstwhile scarecrow Paul Layne, who has attended the past 514 SMU games home and away and very away (Tokyo, Hawaii), and who looks so much younger than his 65 that one wonders whether attending 514 SMU games in a row is some sort of elixir.

“It’s great to be a Mustang,” he continued. “One thing, I didn’t know if I’d ever live long enough to see it.”

Layne, a former student reporter at SMU who found it too excruciating to refrain from cheering in the press box and thus became an SMU cheerleader, also didn’t know if he’d get anywhere near 514 when, in October 1995, he got one of those unusual diagnoses of chicken pox at age 41 just as SMU fixed to play Rice in the Cotton Bowl. So Layne had to ply some creativity.

While Rice defeated SMU 34-24 and dropped SMU to 1-7 along the trail to 1-10, one of the world’s all-time fans watched alone, from the barren rafters of the Cotton Bowl, while dressed as a scarecrow, the costume providing further help against prospective contagion.

Clearly, he has earned his turn at giddy SMU.

At giddy SMU, a Dallas-raised receiver with a movie-star smile meets with reporters. James Proche calls the Tulsa fracas “my favorite game of all-time,” and he ranks No. 6 in the country in receiving yards per game (88.2), No. 11 in touchdown catches (seven), No. 22 in receptions (45), coming off a junior year in which he caught a tall 93.

“It’s amazing,” Proche says. “I’m a Dallas kid through-and-through: born and raised in DeSoto, played Little League here, and to be able to see this group being able to represent this city, and bring SMU back to promise, that’s something that I focused on, and it’s real.

“I don’t understand why somebody would go represent somewhere else, instead of building a giant, you know, where they are. You understand?”

He finishes whereupon, at giddy SMU, he gives high handshakes and shoulder-bump hugs to all six reporters in sequence.

At giddy SMU, a fan, Perri Brackett, says she went to get a soda for her husband during the Tulsa game but found the line too onerous. She says they ran out of popcorn. After all, they’re getting more fans now, from 22,766 to 17,489 to 28,142 in three home popcorn games.

At giddy SMU, the head coach says, “I think our overall depth has been impressive to me.” He speaks of converted cornerback and former UCLA player Brandon Stephens as “a big surprise,” in a program that has mastered college football’s 21st-century “transfer portal,” roping in 15 such signees. To his credit, the coach can say, “We played tight, I think, the first half” against Tulsa, and, “I think we coached a little tight.” At giddy SMU, they’re just off a crackerjack of a game in which they converted six consecutive fourth downs, of which Dykes says, “There’s some teams that won’t convert six fourth downs all year.”

And at giddy SMU, a coach from the Hal Mumme-Mike Leach fold who has seen a whole lot of most everything by now, and who has assistant-coached at J.J. Pearce High (in Texas), at Navarro Junior College (in Texas), at Kentucky, at Northeast Louisiana, at Texas Tech, at Arizona, then head-coached at Louisiana Tech, Jared Goff’s California and SMU (with the former Texas quarterback Shane Buechele in command now), can even kid around about, you know, that Tulsa kickoff.

That Tulsa kickoff caromed around the country’s phone screens after it caromed around the sideline with SMU players unable to corral it until a Tulsa player fell on it in the end zone for a Tulsa touchdown. It looked like one of those nightmares when one cannot pick up a ball or run to first base without stumbling.

When Phillips brought it up, Dykes said, “Well . . . hmmm,” and the audience laughed the way audiences can when their team is 6-0.

“A great learning experience for us,” he wound up saying.

At giddy SMU, then, Dykes and staff suddely face what some coaches, Georgia’s Kirby Smart among them, have called the hardest of all their coaching tasks: keeping young men consistent amid the onus of widespread praise. He speaks of “the need for people to feel validated,” and says, “So many of them are accustomed to getting it from soial media and from people they don’t even know, which I’ve really always kind of struggled to understand a little bit, why it could be so important to so many young people, to get validation from people that they don’t know. But I think it is, and I think that’s part of, kind of, the society that we live in, to an extent.

“And so, you know, when guys start getting a lot of praise, you’ve got to do a good job of making sure they understand how quickly it can go away. You know what I mean? I think we’re one of those programs that, if we lose a game, then our shine’s gonna go off pretty quickly, and I think our guys understand that. It’s certainly been pointed out to them enough, to where we know we have to fight for every ounce of respect that we get. We’re okay with that.”

In that vein and others, his players seem to know his sentence structure.

grazie

[Chnash318]

Everyone click on the link so they see the clicks SMU drives.

[Treadway21]

Very cool.

[ponyte]

Thanks for posting. I'm not sure we got WaPo pub back in the Pony Express days.

[ponyboy]

Everyone click on the link so they see the clicks SMU drives.

Yes, give it a click. I could read the full article on the site with no problem. Pretty neat stuff.

[max the wonder dog]

Typically if you go to washingtonpost.com and click on a link from within the website you will be blocked, but if you click on a link from an another source (like ponyfans.com) you will get through. No guarantees. It's been my morning paper for four years and I still haven't mastered their system.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

That article makes me giddy.

[mustangxc]

Typically if you go to washingtonpost.com and click on a link from within the website you will be blocked, but if you click on a link from an another source (like ponyfans.com) you will get through. No guarantees. It's been my morning paper for four years and I still haven't mastered their system.

It could be that you are allowed up to 3 free articles within a certain time frame. That has been my experience with several newspapers.

[One Trick Pony]

Typically if you go to washingtonpost.com and click on a link from within the website you will be blocked, but if you click on a link from an another source (like ponyfans.com) you will get through. No guarantees. It's been my morning paper for four years and I still haven't mastered their system.

It could be that you are allowed up to 3 free articles within a certain time frame. That has been my experience with several newspapers.

If you clear your browser history or use a VPN you could bypass that I suppose

[78pony]

Typically if you go to washingtonpost.com and click on a link from within the website you will be blocked, but if you click on a link from an another source (like ponyfans.com) you will get through. No guarantees. It's been my morning paper for four years and I still haven't mastered their system.

Typically, if I were to go to the Compost and click, I would involuntarily puke. But in this case, thankful for the pub.