It’s branded across the team’s jerseys, plastered on billboards and even written into the program’s official Twitter/X bio.
“Don’t get it twisted,” SMU football’s Twitter/X account reads, “we’re Dallas’ college football team.”
Semantics might argue otherwise. The data doesn’t.
The Mustangs will have 50 players from Dallas-Fort Worth high schools on their roster Saturday when they play Penn State in the first round of the College Football Playoff in University Park, Pa. That accounts for more than a third of SMU’s roster and more than 14% of all players signed out of D-FW high schools who are playing football for one of Texas’ 13 FBS programs.
The race for recruiting dominance in D-FW is, at best, a battle for second place. Texas, which will host Clemson in the first round on Saturday at Darrell K. Royal Texas-Memorial Stadium in Austin, will have 32 players from D-FW on its roster. It and SMU combine for 82 of the 115 players from D-FW high schools who are scattered across the 12 rosters that make up this year’s CFP field.
Playoff contenders like Arizona State and Boise State have used D-FW natives to help fuel their respective runs, but for the most part, SMU, Texas and the rest of the state’s major universities have battled to keep the region’s top talent within local boundaries.
A decade’s worth of data can help explain how the war has gone.
Keeping it local
The Mustangs haven’t always rolled through D-FW with the same level of conviction as they now do.
Just ask the coaches who were left to beg for attention.
“I just wish they would come over more,” DeSoto coach Claude Mathis said of SMU in 2014.
“I think each year SMU has tried to get more and more into the city,” then-South Oak Cliff recruiting coordinator RJ Bond said that same year.
“I don’t think they’ve hit us as hard as they should have — given where they are,” said Reginald Samples — a two-time state champion at Duncanville who at the time coached at Lincoln — of the Mustangs in 2014.
Ironic.
Dallas’ southern sector (which includes DeSoto, South Oak Cliff, Duncanville, Lancaster and Cedar Hill) now provides SMU with as much talent as any local or national programs, and the relationships that the Mustangs have forged with their neighbors to the south have helped keyed their push to recruit D-FW better than any other program.
The Mustangs have 12 players on their roster from the southern sector — including quarterback Kevin Jennings (South Oak Cliff), wide receiver Roderick Daniels Jr. (Duncanville) and linebacker Brandon Booker (DeSoto) — and have another five signed in the class of 2025.
Former SMU coach June Jones drew criticism for his lack of commitment to local recruiting. He signed 19 D-FW high schoolers as part of his last three recruiting classes from 2011-13 before his resignation in 2014. Chad Morris recommitted to the region when he replaced Jones in 2014, signed 37 high schoolers from D-FW from 2014-17 and re-established SMU as a threat to farm the metroplex.
Only two were from the southern sector, though, and the Mustangs were hardly serious contenders under Morris. Two things followed to create a shift in the area’s landscape: SMU hired Sonny Dykes (and, alongside him, Skyline alum and recruiting whiz Ra’Shaad Samples) in 2019, and South Dallas football blossomed soon thereafter.
DeSoto, South Oak Cliff and Duncanville combined to win six state championships from 2021-23 and, in turn, evolved into one of the nation’s most highly concentrated regions of amateur football talent. SOC could win another state title Friday. Dykes and his successor, Rhett Lashlee, took notice. The Mustangs signed 17 recruits directly out of high school or through the transfer portal that hailed from South Dallas from 2020-24.
“We have to be able to recruit all of Texas, and we have to be able to recruit all of Dallas,” Lashlee said. “That’s what we’ve focused on for the last several years. And I think you’ve seen that’s helped our program grow.”
The hunt for D-FW dominance
Every program in Texas wants to fare well in D-FW. Most have, at the very least, maintained periods of high success plumbing the area for talent in the last decade.
Texas A&M lost ground in North Texas during the Jimbo Fisher era but has begun to rebuild and repair its footing under the direction of the well-respected Mike Elko. Texas Tech turned into a serious player for Dallas-area talent after it hired former Cedar Hill head coach Joey McGuire in 2021. TCU is omnipresent and, most recently, capitalized on its run to the CFP National Championship with a 2023 recruiting class that included 10 players from D-FW. Only Texas — which was then in the midst of preparing for a move into the Southeastern Conference — signed as many North Texans that cycle.
The Longhorns, like SMU, are beneficiaries of South Dallas’ rise. Head coach Steve Sarkisian was hired at Texas prior to the 2021 season (just months before South Oak Cliff and Duncanville each played in state championship games at Arlington’s AT&T Stadium) and immediately planted a flag in D-FW. Texas has signed 12 recruits from the southern sector since Sarkisian’s first class in 2021 and has already sent one (DeSoto defensive lineman Byron Murphy II) into the NFL.
“We really felt like we didn’t have enough of the marquee players coming out of the Dallas region [prior to 2021],” Sarkisian said. “We made a huge emphasis to go do that.”
That emphasis has made Texas the second-most frequent destination for D-FW recruits behind SMU since the CFP era began in 2014. The Mustangs have a leg up in quantity (89 D-FW recruits signed out of high school since 2014 to Texas’ 76) but the Longhorns have an edge in quality. The 75 non-kicker recruits that Texas signed from 2014-25 carried an average recruiting rating of 90.4, according to 247Sports.com, which is the equivalent of a four-star recruit. The Mustangs’ D-FW recruits in that same period averaged a 82.9 rating — the equivalent of a three-star recruit.
Texas signed 39 recruits out of D-FW with a four-star or higher tag from 2014-25. The Mustangs signed just three: DeSoto wide receiver Daylon Singleton (2025), Southlake Carroll tight end RJ Maryland (2022) and Parish Episcopal quarterback Preston Stone (2021).
There’s two points to consider. First, since 2021, the Mustangs have signed recruits out of D-FW with an average rating of 85.8, which is more than a three-point jump than their average from 2014-20. And, second, the Mustangs have turned their local talent — regardless of pedigree — into winning players. Jennings, for example, was a three-star recruit with an 82 overall grade when he signed with SMU. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers (Southlake Carroll) was a five-star recruit with a 100 overall grade when he transferred in from Ohio State.
Both have led their teams to the CFP and, according to Pro Football Focus, the lightly recruited signal caller from South Oak Cliff has posted a better grade (86.6) than the highly-touted phenom has (72.4) for their respective school this season.
D-FW on the national stage
The Mustangs will bring nearly half-a-roster’s worth of D-FW talent with them to Penn State for its first-round game on Saturday and represent the region more thoroughly than any, but Texas isn’t far behind.
More than a quarter of the Longhorns’ roster played high school football in D-FW, as head coach Steve Sarkisian established a pipeline in North Texas when he arrived in Austin nearly four years ago. Texas’ standout Dallas-area imports include Ewers, linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. (Denton Ryan), defensive lineman Colin Simmons (Duncanville) and running back Tre Wisner (DeSoto).
The Mustangs have undoubtedly paced the field in quantity. The Longhorns still have a leg up in quality. Of the 10 highest-rated D-FW recruits in these playoffs, according to 247Sports.com’s database, Texas has six on its roster.
Ewers (who had a 100 overall recruiting grade, per 247) is the Dallas area’s top-ranked recruit in the postseason field. Oregon wide receiver Evan Stewart (who left Frisco Liberty with a 99 grade) is second, followed by Simmons (98), Hill (98) and Arlington Bowie offensive lineman DJ Campbell (98), who also is with Texas.
Defensive lineman Omari Abor (who had a 96 overall grade at Duncanville before he signed with Ohio State in the class of 2022) and running back Camar Wheaton (who had a 96 overall grade at Garland Lakeview Centennial in the class of 2021 ans signed with Alabama) were the highest-ranked former D-FW recruits on SMU’s roster this season.
Both arrived at the Hilltop via the transfer portal.
The Mustangs have cleaned up better than anyone on that front.
Portal power
In the portal, it’s been SMU and everyone else.
The Mustangs signed 39 athletes who played high school football in D-FW through the transfer portal since it opened prior to the 2019 season; only one other power conference program in the state (TCU, 16) has signed double-digits.
The portal has evolved into a get-rich-quick scheme for programs to rebuild and replenish their rosters through a quasi-free agency system. SMU was an early adopter, and in the portal’s inaugural 2019 class, signed eight transfers who played high school football in Dallas-Fort Worth. That’s more than Texas and Texas A&M have combined to sign in the five years since.
“If someone is some place and they’re not happy,” then-SMU coach Sonny Dykes said of the portal in 2019, “I think they ought to go some place where they are happy.”
The system has certainly made the Mustangs happy. SMU signed 16 players from D-FW out of the portal from 2023-24 including contributors like offensive tackle Savion Byrd (Duncanville, by way of Oklahoma), wide receiver Jordan Hudson (Garland, by way of TCU) and safety Jonathan McGill (Coppell, by way of Stanford).
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