CHARLOTTE – Bill Armstrong put on his black duster jacket and excused himself from McCormick & Schmick’s in uptown Charlotte, walked the half-mile to the SMU team hotel at the Westin, got into a car with Mustang head coach Rhett Lashlee, his wife Lauren, and football ops- Principal Josh Nash and drove the three miles to a Cook Out on Freedom Drive to see their friend Carlesa.

Armstrong left a steak dinner with former Pony Express members Craig James and Lance McIlhenny to pick up 100 hamburgers and 100 cheeseburgers – and a mint chocolate shake for Lauren – and deliver them to the Mustang football team, which was playing the next day ACC Championship Game. A promise. A promise kept.

Catering for Armstrong’s jet fell through on July 22, 2024, when the SMU contingent, which included Armstrong himself, the Lashlee’s, Nash and the four players representing the new Power Four Ponies at the annual media day car wash, headed to the private hangar drove. They needed food. Fast. Athletes like Elijah Roberts and Kevin Jennings need nutrition.

En route to the private airport, Nash found a cookout where Air Armstrong was ready to take Lashlee back to the coaching school in San Antonio, an annual pilgrimage for every football coach in Texas – high school and college. Lashlee was driving the first SUV with his wife in the back seat and Armstrong in the passenger seat. Nash and the players were one car behind him. Everyone ordered burgers. Lauren Lashlee ordered everyone out and added a mint chocolate chip shake.

Carlesa was working at the Cook Out window on Freedom Drive that afternoon and could tell that these customers had a story. She began asking Lashlee and Armstrong questions. They told her Lashlee was the security guard for Armstrong, the head coach at SMU. She asked when they were coming back.

What happened next became SMU lore.

“7. “December,” Lashlee said confidently. The date of the ACC Championship game.

“What happens on December 7th?” asked Carlesa.

“Except Peal Harbor?” Armstrong asked rhetorically. “We’re going to play a soccer game.”

Will you come back to see me?”

“Carlesa, when we get back here on December 7th,” Armstrong said, “the entire team will be back to see you.”

Qualifying for the ACC Championship in your first year as a Power Four member is one thing. Another task is to coordinate an order of 200 burgers on a Friday evening with a few days lead time. Armstrong turned to Nash to get the ball rolling. It turns out that when a Dallas college football team wants to order 200 burgers on a random Friday night in December, it’s hard to convince a fast food chain that it’s not a joke.

Eventually, Nash and Armstrong’s assistants reached out to the company and directed them to the right Cook Out franchise. And that led to Armstrong getting Carlesa’s cell phone number. She called back immediately after Armstrong’s message and reminded her of the promise he had made in July. A promise that no one believed would come true for an SMU team that finished 7th in the ACC.

Arrangements were made and $1,000 worth of burgers were purchased. But there was a catch: The parking lot at the Cook Out on Freedom Drive wasn’t big enough for several charter buses full of football players and staff. And where would everyone sit to eat? So Armstrong, the Lashlee’s and Nash played Uber Eats, got the burgers and welcomed the newest SMU fan. The Mustangs secured her five free tickets to the game against Clemson.

The 200 burgers were loaded into the back seat of the SMU rental car and brought back to the Westin for players to eat while enjoying a relaxing Friday night filled with Uno, cards and video games. Armstrong told Nash to drop him off at McCormick & Schmick on the way back to the team hotel. He could still eat steak and drink wine with former greats and key figures in SMU’s athletic resurgence like Richard Ware and Connie O’Neill.

Armstrong wasn’t always the Grand Pooba of SMU football. He graduated from SMU in 1982 with his wife, Liz, and a life full of memories. He said he walked past the student pool on campus during his visit and declined to attend Stanford University to study at SMU. The area where the pool was located now houses Armstrong Fieldhouse, next to Ford Stadium.

His daughter, Leigh, bucked sibling tradition and attended SMU. Armstrong had raised his family in Denver and assumed that the next phase of his life would take place in Nashville as his other children went to Vanderbilt and put down roots there. His wife, Liz, is from New Orleans. Leigh’s enrollment at SMU brought Armstrong back to the campus he loved. And the scars had healed enough for him to help put SMU football back on the national stage.

The burgers were a small price to pay for something Armstrong says took 40 years to make. The Pony Express is back – literally. For decades, greats like James and McIlhenny and Eric Dickerson were overshadowed by college football and even by factions of SMU. All three will be at Bank of America Stadium Saturday night for the program’s biggest game since the early 1980s.

The new reality of NIL offers us a new look at the past. It also allows Armstrong to impact the lives of young men with money, networks and roadmaps for life after football in one of America’s largest markets. It gives him a glimpse into a world some of the players come from that Armstrong wouldn’t otherwise see.

“These guys really helped me and brought me a lot of joy,” Armstrong said. “I enjoy this shit, man. I forgot it could be so much fun.”