Ranked SMU Mustangs gear up for ACC homecoming game

All right, welcome back. Grab your red, grab your blue. Get ready to cheer on SMU for their homecoming game. I got my blue shirt, my red tie. I'm ready to go, guys. You're on brand. We appreciate it. Say good morning to SMU president Jay Hartzell, athletic director Damon Evans. Good morning to both of you. Jay, I'll start with you. This is a big game. It is a big game. You know, the whole season has been a lot of fun, but it's building up to homecoming week, the game on Saturday. Great opponent. It should be a lot of fun. Yeah, so both SMU and Wake Forest are ranked in the AP Top 25. And this has playoff implications, maybe. Well, we hope. Yeah, we take care of business. We have a shot at the ACC Championship game. It's going to be Kevin Jennings' last home game. He's having an amazing career at SMU. So people should come out and watch it. Yeah, and y'all are bringing the hype here. With the cheerleaders. Oh, absolutely. The Spirit Squad, the Palm Squad, we want to do it right at SMU. It's an exciting time, and we really appreciate these young ladies. What do you all have going on at the campus? How are you kind of trying to hype this up? Well, you know, it's homecoming, as we all know. We want everyone wearing red and blue on Friday. But what's so important is that everybody in the community come out and support us. It's going to be the King of Dallas' last home game, and Kevin Jennings right here from South Oak Cliff. And everyone should know, we have two... 10 guys on our team from Dallas and 35 from the DFW. So we want to have a great time this weekend, but we're going to top it off with a win. All right, so building on what he just said, that's got to be a big plus for you. When some of the fans come and they want to see that local talent. Yeah, totally. It's a way for us to bring people in, help build the community. You know, Dallas and SMU are so interwoven, have been for over 100 years. It's part of why we're on this upward trajectory. And we want to embrace that and really have the whole city be proud. I feel like they're part of it. Okay, what's the site? I'm reading about a plane. A plane. Flying over. Red and blue banner. Come on, we have to do it right. We have to do the plane? This is not small time. This is big time, powerful football. This is not small-time. This is big-time, hardcore football. But it's a great institution. It's not only a celebration of SMU. We're talking about celebrating this great community that we've been a part of for so many years. Do you feel that when you get out on the field where it's bigger than just you, it's bigger than your job, it's bigger than just the game? I do. When you take a look at the partnership with Dallas, you're gonna see the Triple D logo on the field. When we look at what we're doing at SMU, we think about Dallas, the entire DFW area. How do we bring this community together and make everyone proud? All right, so you've got a shirt. Yeah, this is for you. Oh, okay. I want to show you what you're going to be wearing. I want to make sure you were set up for the weekend, too. Well, it matches my suit and shirt and tie. There you go. This is perfect. So you can be part of it, too. Yeah, this is perfect. So you guys have a lot more activities going on on campus, too? We do. It's a whole busy week. Yeah. Everything from culminates at the homecoming parade on Saturday morning, the people come out and watch and then of course the game at 11 but it's a it's a fun week a lot of reunion weekends people coming back to the hilltop and it's just going to be a lot of you know fun community and people to be able to hang out and get to enjoy it all. All right homecoming game is Saturday kickoff is at 11 it is at Ford Stadium. All right go Mustangs. Go Mustangs hurry up. Jay Hartzell Athletic Director Damon Evans. Ladies, thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, stay with us. We'll be right back. It's going to be a sunny day. Pretty nice, actually. But a front moves through tonight and Allie has all the details on that. Plus, a tanker truck driver has a close call with a train and it was caught on video. We're going to have that story when we come back.