For Rhett Lashlee, it comes back to some video tapes.
His parents divorced when Lashlee was just three years old, leaving a young Lashlee without a father figure at a crucial time. So his grandfather had an idea. He taped local Arkansas and national San Francisco 49ers football games on VHS and mailed them to his grandson. They were just what Lashlee needed. Whenever Lashlee was bored and there wasn't a game on, he'd pull out a tape.
"I wanted to be Joe Montana when I grew up," Lashlee said, "and then I wanted to be Bill Walsh."
When Lashlee's mother Judy remarried a few years later to Phil Phillips, a former high school coach, it fueled Rhett's sports passion even more.
"Most kids watched cartoons," Judy said. "He was watching ESPN."
Lashlee was a star high school quarterback but long had the makings of a future head coach. He was cast as Gus Malzahn's golden boy prodigy, working under Malzahn as a player and then as an assistant across almost two decades highlighted by two BCS National Championship Game appearances at Auburn.
But it took going off on his own for Lashlee to figure out the last pieces to make it all work. Now he's back on the biggest stage, this time as a program's leader.
Lashlee, 41, has SMU in the College Football Playoff in the Mustangs' first year in the ACC. The Dallas private school known for Doak Walker and the Pony Express spent almost 40 years in the wilderness and slowly built its way back, with help from a coach who unlocked the last level of the program's potential.
"When the pressure is the highest, he's at his best," Malzahn said. "There's not a whole lot of people who have that."
Before Malzahn was Lashlee's mentor or coach, he was the dean of students for seventh through 12th grade for Shiloh Christian School in Arkansas.
"I got in trouble a few times and sent to his office as a seventh-grader," Lashlee recalled. "That was the first time I officially met him."
"It must've been something like his shirt wouldn't tuck in," Malzahn laughed. "He was a great kid."
On the field, Lashlee mastered Malzahn's offense right away. He went 40-3-2 as a starting quarterback in high school, setting a state record for wins and reaching three state championship games, winning two. His 171 passing touchdowns are still the fourth most in high school football history.
"He had the 'it' factor," Malzahn said. "That special thing the special ones have as a player. He has the same as a coach."
Lashlee walked on at Arkansas and backed up Matt Jones before a shoulder injury ended his playing career. He came home after graduation, reconnected with Malzahn, who had taken over at Springdale High School, and started helping with the quarterbacks. When Malzahn was hired as Arkansas' offensive coordinator in 2006, he brought the "Springdale Five" football players with him, including highly touted quarterback Mitch Mustain. But he also brought Lashlee as a graduate assistant.
Lashlee's coaching career was off to a fast start -- and then it stopped. Malzahn went to Tulsa, and Lashlee chose not to follow. He still can't fully explain why. It was just a feeling. He stayed in Arkansas and married his wife Lauren, whom he'd met in school.
"It was almost like ending my opportunity to be a college coach, because those opportunities don't come by," Lashlee said. "But my gut, it didn't feel right. I got married three or four months later, and our first 22 months of marriage, I was not a coach."
(Malzahn looked elsewhere and on a recommendation hired Mike Norvell from Central Arkansas as his graduate assistant. Norvell, now Florida State's head coach, just hired Malzahn to be his offensive coordinator after Malzahn resigned as UCF head coach.)
Instead of Tulsa, Lashlee turned to print media, of all things. He and his brother-in-law started a high school sports magazine in Arkansas, with Lashlee handling the business side. Now known as VYPE, it's still doing well. But six months in, the itch to coach returned.
"He knew pretty quick it wasn't what he was supposed to be doing," Lauren said of the magazine. "And I knew, too. He just had a passion for coaching."
Lashlee stayed in touch with Malzahn, and when the latter became Auburn's offensive coordinator in 2009, Lashlee joined him again as a graduate assistant. They won the 2010 national championship at Auburn with Cam Newton at quarterback under head coach Gene Chizik. They went to Arkansas State for a year, then came back to Auburn with Malzahn as head coach and Lashlee as offensive coordinator, then reached the 2013 national championship game.
Players joked that Malzahn and Lashlee were like a mom and dad coaching together.
"We had different parenting styles but we were on the same page," Lashlee said. "I knew my role was to come in behind and support. We made a good team. Coaching is about those relationships."
Along the way, Lashlee became a hot name in coaching circles. He interviewed for head jobs, turning down some offers. It seemed a matter of time before he got a big one. But he kept getting the same question in interviews: How much of this offense is you and how much is Malzahn?
Malzahn had a love-hate relationship with calling plays. He'd hand the role off to Lashlee, only to take it back, back and forth. The act of calling plays is only a small part of the coordinator job, but it draws the most attention from decision makers.
"You reach a point where you have to sink or swim on your own, keep growing and cut your teeth," Lashlee said. "I needed to go do it somewhere else, fail and figure out who I was as a coach."
"That last year at Auburn was challenging and he'd kind of lost his joy for the game," Lauren said.
She knew they had to get out of Auburn and start fresh. She didn't expect the landing spot to be UConn. No one did.
UConn athletic director David Benedict had spent 2015 to '16 at Auburn and got to know Lashlee. When the UConn head job opened in late 2016, the two spoke about it. UConn instead hired Randy Edsall and brought Lashlee in as offensive coordinator. The Huskies jumped from 122nd in yards per play allowed to 83rd in Year 1, a more dramatic improvement than the numbers indicate.
In Lashlee, Benedict saw a future head coach; Judy says Rhett had been shaking hands with eye contact since he was six years old. When the SMU head coaching job opened that fall, Benedict says he recommended Lashlee to SMU athletic director Rick Hart.
"You could tell he was a great leader," Benedict said. "It was very apparent that he had the ability to engage beyond football, with other people in the department, with donors. You could see him being successful in all the different environments that head coaches are required to have success."
Lashlee did leave for SMU, but as the offensive coordinator for new coach Sonny Dykes. Dykes had come from an Air Raid background, much different than Lashlee's coaching style. The two worked on an offensive scheme together, but Dykes let Lashlee run the show. They went 10-3 in 2019, SMU's best season since 1984, and Lashlee took the OC job at Miami.
When Dykes left for crosstown rival TCU after the 2021 season, SMU fans and donors were furious. They immediately wanted Lashlee to come back and take over, and they wanted to give SMU football all the money it would take to succeed. Hart was deliberate with his search, but it was an obvious fit.
"The way he treated people, his knowledge, the relationships he had with players, that's why we circled back to him two years later," Hart said.
Lashlee knew from his first stint that SMU had everything in place to compete except membership in a power conference, and that invite finally came from the ACC in 2023. Before they left the American Athletic Conference, the Mustangs went 11-3 (the second-most wins in program history) and won their first conference title since 1984.
Getting the program to that next level of success came down to fixing two longstanding problems: defense and late-season swoons. Dykes went 25-10 in his last three seasons at SMU but was 4-8 in November, and the 2021 defense finished 84th in points allowed.
"A lot of what we did under Sonny worked, let's double-down on that," Lashlee said. "But we had to become a program that finishes. It hadn't been since 2009 that SMU had a winning record in the month of November. When I came back, we finished well that first season, then did everything we could to get a championship-level defense."
The Mustangs are 11-1 in November under Lashlee, and led by defensive coordinator Scott Symons, the SMU defense jumped from 119th to 11th in scoring defense in 2023 and sits 27th in its first ACC season. Symons was a semifinalist for the Broyles Award given to the nation's best assistant coach, and he recently signed a multi-year extension to stick around, a huge keep for the Mustangs.
"People think you can't play fast, explosive offense and good defense, but he cracked the code on that," Lashlee said.
Two strong transfer classes made for an ACC talent bridge, including 13 new offensive and defensive linemen this year. By the time it joined the league, SMU ranked fifth in the ACC in 247Sports' Team Talent Composite, which is based off the high school rating of players, ahead of schools like Louisville and NC State. Now with a power conference and success to pitch, high school recruiting is following. The Mustangs' 2025 recruiting class ranks 32nd, according to 247Sports, and features four four-star recruits. That would be SMU's highest finish in the modern recruiting rankings era.
"Our ceiling is as high as anyone's," Lashlee said. "We've got the things you need here."
Lashlee, too, signed a new contract extension. Boosters have vowed that if Lashlee leaves one day, it won't be over money. He's unlocked that last level of potential on the Hilltop, culminating in this week's CFP game.
Judy Phillips says her son doesn't get choked up often, but he has three times recently when talking about SMU's senior class.
"Going through (issues) with his dad has helped him be a father figure to these players," Judy said. "We've had a blessed life, but he saw the other side of what can happen when there's addiction and things going on. It's helped him mentor these kids."
Lashlee refers to his stepfather Phil as his dad. It was a crucial relationship at a needed time. Being a coach is hard on family life. Lauren says Lashlee truly makes the family and kids his priority as soon as he walks in the door.
"From the moment our boys were born, he tells the kids every night, 'I love you, I'm proud of you, and I believe in you,'" Lauren said. "Growing up with an absent father, he believes in our kids and shows that."
Lashlee's been on this path for a long time. He waited for the right moment to make a program his own. Now he heads onto his biggest stage, all a part of the plan that began with those old tapes.