By Jackson Posey | Sports Editor
It was never close.
August 2014 marked the grand opening of McLane Stadium, with a Sunday night showdown against rival SMU scheduled to break ground on the Bears’ new home. Former President George W. Bush was in the house, as was Robert Griffin III, who posed with a newly unveiled statue crafted in his image. Bryce Petty earned Heisman buzz of his own after leading the Big 12 in yards passing and touchdowns the year prior.
The game was over before it began. The Bears scored 24 unanswered points in the first quarter, ultimately dropping 45 points and completing their first shutout victory over an FBS team since 1995. They went 11-1 regular season and shared the Big 12 championship with TCU.
Griffin punctuated his pregame invocation with a single word: “wow.”
Baylor first played SMU in 1916, defeating the second-year program in Waco, 61-0. One year later, the Bears headed up I-35 to Dallas, playing the Ponies to a riveting 0-0 final — one of four ties in the teams’ first nine contests.
Saturday’s game will end a nine-year drought between matchups, the longest since the teams first played 109 years ago.
“The less old rivalries we continue to let burn, the better it is,” then-Baylor head coach Art Briles said before playing SMU in 2012. “The old days of the Southwest Conference were great. I played in it, I believe in it, it’s gone.”
Current Baylor head coach Dave Aranda echoed similar sentiments Monday when asked about playing regional rivals.
“I think it is [important],” Aranda said. “I think any time you have conferences that are just across the landscape … it’s good to have a rival, or to have an opponent that’s just down the street, where the stadium can be packed and it can be energized, and there can be brought back to life some old memories and old games and all.
“I know that was the college football that I grew up with,” Aranda continued. “I know a lot of you guys are that way, so it’s good to be able to get into that. I hope to get into that more.”
Aranda said he’s unaware of any discussions around extending the series beyond 2026, when the No. 17-ranked Mustangs are scheduled to make a return trip to Waco for the 84th matchup between the two programs. (Baylor leads the all-time series, 39-36-7.)
Baylor has won 13 straight against SMU, including that fateful game in 2014, but is catching the Mustangs at an inopportune time. Now in the ACC, SMU is coming off back-to-back 11-3 seasons — its best stretch since the pre-Death Penalty “Pony Express” of the early 1980s — and its first appearance in the College Football Playoff.
“I certainly respect the opponent,” Aranda said. “The thing with us is, we’ve just got to get better. There are things that are in our control — the opponent sometimes ain’t — but there are things in our control that we have to be better at. And I think if we do those things and play to the standard that we can and what we’re capable of, then all the other things are going to fall into place.”
Dual-threat quarterback Kevin Jennings captains a high-powered Mustang offense that averaged 36.5 points per game last season, second-best in the ACC. He’s less trigger-happy than Auburn’s Jackson Arnold, who rushed 137 yards on the ground against Baylor, but has plenty of wiggle behind the line of scrimmage to make plays out of structure.
“I think they’re two different runners,” sixth-year defensive back Kendrick Simpkins said. “But [facing Arnold] will help us out and give us more things to put in to stop the run.”
Jennings totaled 3,245 yards and 23 touchdowns through the air last season, but lost top rusher Brashard Smith and top receivers Roderick Daniels Jr and Keyshawn Smith.
Former Miami transfer receiver Romello Brinson is in line for an increased target share after an injury-filled 2024. He led the team in scrimmage yards and flipped into the end zone Saturday after scoring his first touchdown since Oct. 2023.
An upperclass-heavy offensive line features four starters in their fourth season or later, including a pair of Lone Star State blue-chippers on the left side: left tackle Savion Byrd (formerly at Oklahoma) and Logan Parr (formerly at Texas).
The hog mollies will pave the way for an inexperienced backfield. Redshirt freshman Derrick McFall (106 career yards) and Miami transfer Chris Johnson Jr (104 career yards) split reps with TJ Harden, who rushed for nearly 1,700 yards in three seasons at UCLA. But the offense runs through Jennings, whom Aranda compared to former Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy, now of the San Francisco 49ers.
“A lot of his runs are to throw it,” Aranda said of Jennings. “He’ll keep the drive alive, and then he’ll make you pay with a ball down the field. We would play Brock Purdy, and he would be this way, where he would be scrambling and he’d be running behind the line of scrimmage, but buying time. And there would be a defender that was covering a back or a tight end, and the defender would see Purdy run his way, and he would come up [and Purdy would throw it.]
“We’ve got to try to flush [Jennings] certain ways. So, there’ll be the whole game going in to try to be able to control. I think he does a great job of identifying coverage, and he’s a very, very adept passer. He’s done a great job maturing through all of it, and they’ve done a great job coaching them, because he’s impressive to watch.
Saturday’s game has the potential makings of an old-school Big 12 game, complete with high-flying offenses teetering in an Icarian joust. Senior wideout Kobe Prentice, who snagged a touchdown pass Friday, said the Bears’ 483-yard performance against Auburn was only a taste of things to come.
“All the receivers agree we could’ve done even more as a whole,” Prentice said. “Whether it’s blocking or catching more balls, nobody is really complacent in the performance we had. I feel like we haven’t really seen what we can really do yet.”
The Bears will head up I-35 to take on SMU at 11 a.m. Saturday at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in Dallas. The game will be broadcast on The CW.
