Schellas Hyndman ... apparently missed at SMU

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Here’s one for my friends in Dallas.

File it under, “I’m just sayin’ …”

When Hunt Sports Group announced Schellas Hyndman as FC Dallas’ new manager in 2008, a whole bunch of people breathlessly sought my opinion. At least three, that I remember.

I’ve known Hyndman for a long time and made no secret of my respect for the guy. Mostly, I appreciated the way he eschewed politics and just said what needed to be said. Hyndman was personable and, far as I could tell, had no problem with anyone who handled his or her business the right way.

Now, whether he would be a successful pro coach, I told everybody the absolute truth: “I dunno.”  We’ll all just have to wait and see, I said. The man knows soccer and he understands about leadership and the psychology of getting the best from people. But he was a disciplinarian, and whether he could put up with pro athletes, well, I just didn’t know.

As a pro manager, he was refreshingly honest, habitually maintaining that he was learning on the fly.  If you asked something like, “Do you think you handled this situation correctly?” you’d probably get an answer like, “Well, I don’t know. I hope so.”

FC Dallas was hot as a pistol in Plaxico Burress’ pants over the last six weeks of MLS 2009. It may have been the league’s best in that time, going 4-2-1 with a plus-7 goal difference. But the project took too long to arrive, the points gained over the previous five-plus months weren’t sufficient and Dallas was a playoff "also ran."  We’ll see if Hyndman’s roster makeover – generally going smaller and faster – can take the next step and become something more consistent over a longer season.

Meanwhile – and this is the point of this post – it is interesting to layer something else into the Hyndman conversation. The “something else” in question is this:

The SMU soccer program, long one of the nation’s elite, is on the skids.

As Hyndman left in 2008 he had taken the Mustangs to 14 consecutive NCAA Tournaments. Twice the Mustangs had gone to the Final Four. There was a concerning inability to win the biggie, but that’s about the only chink you could identify in Hyndman’s long reign.

Shortly after Hyndman left campus in 2008 I ran into an SMU alum who is fairly active in Mustang athletic matters, and reasonably high up the food chain. He said something that I found quite odd, something along the lines of, “Well, it was time for him to go, and now we can finally get someone really good in there.”

I found it an incredibly arrogant and thick-headed thing to say. But I held my tongue. It wasn’t my place to tell the guy he was being a big ol’ cotton-headed ninnymuggins (a really funny label I stole from the movie Elf.)

Well, here’s what they got:

In 2008, the Mustangs finished 10-6-2, got beaten badly in the first round of the Conference USA tournament (which SMU hosted) and missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years.

This year, SMU finished 6-8-2. Enough said about that bedraggled campaign.

All those years of critics proclaiming that Hyndman’s job was effectively a breeze because his was Texas’ only NCAA Div. I  program are now ringing a more hollow.

I wonder how that misguided SMU alum and fervent Hyndman critic feels about it all today?