SMU, a School With 6,300 Undergraduates, Raised $159 MILLION for Athletics Last Year as the Mustangs Move to the ACC

Holy shit. It looks like the Pony Express might be back up and running.

The biggest winners of conference realignment are obviously the schools that were able to jump to the SEC and Big Ten, but I don't know that SMU is too far behind those. The Mustangs are back in a power conference and it sure seems like the alumni are pretty fired up about it.

SMU is going to be a fascinating case study in the NIL and soon-to-be school-funded payroll era. There is (literally) not a school out there with more money when the Mustangs' boosters decide to go all-in. Texas A&M led the country with $115 million in donations in 2022-23 and the next-closest school was Texas at $86 million. This number from SMU is massive and shows what the Mustangs' oil barons are willing to shell out when they think their team has a chance to compete.

SMU has an endowment of $2 billion and enough crazy rich alumni to be competitive in any sport it wants to be. I'm a little surprised the Mustangs haven't already had more success on the field and in recruiting since NIL has been introduced, but it seems like the move to the ACC has everybody ready to pull out their checkbooks.

I am not a big proponent of the expanded College Football Playoff, but one of its positives will be programs like SMU spending more money and trying to compete. There are spots legitimately up for grabs now, go get one.