Thad Speaks: Thaddeus Matula's recruiting pitch to SMU targets
In Part 5 of a five-part, extended Q&A series, the director of 'Pony Excess' chats with The HillTopics to discuss today's topic regarding SMU athletics.
Saturday marked the first day college football programs can send official scholarship offers to prospective student-athletes. Several SMU targets proudly showcased their official offers on various social media sites.
Thaddeus D. Matula would love to see SMU's 2021 class grow, and he'd love for the class to be a part of exponential growth within the program. The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director was asked to put himself in the shoes of a college coach and deliver his own recruiting pitch.
Needless to say, Matula didn't disappoint. The director, who made the highly successful ESPN documentary "Pony Excess," concluded his five-part extended Q&A series with The HillTopics with a message to all of the potential SMU student-athletes.
TODAY'S QUESTION:
Recruiting is on a high right now. What would be your pitch to a recruit if you were put in that situation?
Let's just for a minute pretend we're not living in a COVID world. Ooh, how refreshing.
Let me rattle off the any-year spiel first: First you sell Dallas.
It's a surprisingly livable city -- meaning it's a big city with all the amenities you expect from a big city without being difficult to get around. And being at SMU, you are right in the heart of it.
And then, the education -- one of the best in the state, one of the best in the nation. Class size. Professors are incentivized to see you pass whether you're a football star or not.
State schools, it's a number game ... as in, you are one. You tie that back to Dallas. Come play here, and coming out of college, if going pro in your sport isn't an option, you'll land in a good spot here.
And, we've got DFW airport. Once you've lived elsewhere, you figure out what an advantage DFW is for the post-college working professional. Seriously not having to change planes is worth the 30-minute drive and the parking hassle. (Look, I just moved back here from Austin, I love that town -- 14 years there. But that airport thing is a big deal.)
It's also an interesting mix. A financial center, with a conservative background. But it's also becoming surprisingly progressive with thriving diverse communities and a nurtured art scene. It's a center for tech. And it's seemingly always booming.
Bringing back the pandemic for a second, Dallas has this ability to bounce back, if there's a setback, to keep "blowin' and goin'" like they said in the '80s. That's because Dallas is not a real place; it's an idea. There aren't mountains here, there isn't a sea port, or a connection of rivers. Heck it was never even a rail hub. All it is is this hubris-infused place of we're gonna make this a world-class city. Even Northpark advertises itself as "World Class Shopping."
People are attracted to it as a place because you can hold in your mind -- whatever that idea is -- and come here and make it yours.
As an aside, I'll note that SMU is in the heart of one of the largest media markets in the country. It's a hotbed for football. Finally putting a winning product on the field means the move back into a power conference isn't far behind ... that or the entire conference itself gets upgraded.
Like I said, all of that is pretty boilerplate for a coach of any recent era. But the combo of SMU and Dallas is pretty fantastic, especially now that we are winning again. Couple Dallas and WINNING football, now you got something unmatched in the state of Texas.
And here's where the answer you really want begins: Come to Dallas and be a part of something truly legacy-defining.
You are going to be a part of moving SMU into a power conference, and it's gonna happen while you're here. SMU's gonna win a national championship, and you're gonna be the one that puts us over the top.
Maybe you didn't know the name Doak Walker before we started recruiting you, but you do now, or you did but only because your favorite running back won that award with his name on it. Know this: They call the Cotton Bowl the House that Doak Built -- because of the crowds he drew. They had to expand our on-campus stadium, and expand it again, and then they moved the team to the Cotton Bowl and the crowds kept coming, and they had to expand that, and expanded it again.
So you know what? Now you're gonna come to SMU, you're gonna put that second deck on the east side of the stadium, you're get that bowl filled out with the stands in the south end zone. We're gonna be calling Ford "The House That You Built."
And in your last game? We'll be carrying you off the field, MVP trophy in hand, and the whole world's gonna know your name.
So what do you say, my friend? Why don't you come here.
Be a Mustang. Be a legend.
