Coaches Football

Head coach Rhett Lashlee trusts in 'God's faithfulness' as he leads SMU to ACC title game

By Kevin Mercer Dec 4, 2024
SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee, Oct. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

For the first time ever, an automatic bid to the new 12-team College Football Playoff now hangs in the balance on Saturday in the championship games of the four major conferences.

In the ACC title game, CFP regular Clemson will take on conference newcomer SMU, and it’s the Mustangs who are slight favorites.

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Led by third-year head coach Rhett Lashlee and in its first year in the ACC, SMU battled to an 8-0 conference record and an 11-1 overall record this fall. Its only regular-season loss came at the hands of now-No. 19 BYU on Sept. 6. What’s more, the Mustangs are playing perhaps their best football at just the right time, as they’ve won their last two games (against Virginia and California) by a combined score of 71-13.

Lashlee has led SMU to heights never before reached, even in its heyday with the “Pony Express” in the early 1980s; the 2024 campaign is SMU’s second consecutive 11-win season, the first time in program history that the Mustangs have won 11 games in back-to-back seasons. Lashlee has led his team to a bowl game in each of his first two seasons at the helm, and he’ll add another this December. It’ll be the first time SMU has appeared in a bowl game for three straight seasons since it went to four straight from 2009-12.

At the age of 41 and in his first stint as a head coach, Lashlee is quickly proving to be one of the best in college football.

He entered the coaching world immediately after his time as a backup quarterback at Arkansas from 2002-04, but after Arkansas coach Gus Malzahn left for Tulsa, Lashlee stayed in his home state to produce a magazine about high school sports in the region. Once Malzahn was hired as offensive coordinator at Auburn, he offered Lashlee a position on his staff, and Lashlee returned to coaching.

He’s proved time and again since then that he can develop quarterbacks and run offenses, so when SMU came calling in November 2021, Lashlee jumped at the opportunity.

During his ascent in the coaching ranks, Lashlee hasn’t shied away from speaking about his faith. He was featured on the Sports Spectrum Podcast in April 2022 before his first season at SMU, as well as in May 2021 when he was with Miami. When asked on the podcast in 2022 about being a head coach, he said God ultimately placed him in that position in order to share with his players what God has done in his life.

“That’s my purpose. That’s why God has given me the influence He’s given me,” Lashlee said. “… God has put me here on assignment, and I’ve always kind of felt that. But, ‘Be intentional about living out that assignment. That’s why you’re here. The winning and all those other things will take care of itself.’”

Lashlee, who writes that he’s “forgiven” in his Instagram and X bios, spoke about God’s sovereignty in bringing him to SMU.

“There’s all the little things that happen here or there that just give you that confirmation that, like, ‘Yeah, you’re in God’s will. This is where you’re supposed to be,'” Lashlee said on the podcast in 2022. “And that gives you all the peace you need to kind of move forward day to day, even when some days are tough.”

Lashlee shared on the podcast in 2021 his story of how he came to faith in middle school, surrounded by family members who unceasingly prayed for his conversion and friends who encouraged him in faith despite his alcoholic and often-absent father. It all served to make God’s grace sweeter to him.

Now, despite a hectic schedule as he’s building a perennial winner at SMU, he ensures he will always have time to pray with his wife, Lauren, and his twin sons and twin daughters.

“You want to pray about everything and through everything,” Lashlee said in 2021, “and those who do know that sometimes it’s like there’s an answer in neon lights and sometimes it’s like there’s nothing. We’ve just kind of adapted the philosophy that we’re gonna pray about it and then we’re just gonna trust either what we know the Lord is telling us or just trust what we feel in our heart.”

He said he’s learned throughout all of his coaching stops along the way that God will accomplish every one of His purposes.

“We try to seek the Lord, seek what He would want us to do,” he said in 2021. “Put us where we could be used the most, not for our glory, but for His. … When you look back, that’s when you can see God’s faithfulness.”

SMU has won 12 games in a season just once in program history, way back in 1935. On Saturday against Clemson (9-3), the Mustangs will have a chance to do it again. A win will guarantee them a spot in the CFP and a chance to play for a national title. Kickoff from Charlotte, North Carolina, is set for 8 p.m. ET.

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