Sporting his signature visor, except with a new logo and colors, Chad Morris took the podium in a packed Hughes-Trigg Student Center on December 1, 2014 in front of a blue backdrop with an SMU logo that looked a little more reddish-pink than usual.

He dove right into his promise of bringing an exciting brand of football to the Hilltop and leading one of the biggest turnarounds in college football. Visions of national championships danced in SMU fans’ heads for the first time in a long time. But his next words mattered just as much.

“It’s going to take a lot of work, it’s going to take a lot of effort by the guys that are on this board and the guys that are in that team room today,” Morris said that afternoon.

In short: it’s a process. Even with coaches like Morris and his staff, these turnarounds don’t happen overnight. We can’t lose sight of that. It’s how we’ll keep the season in perspective, no matter the win-lose record.

Keeping that perspective is difficult when the season-opener comes against a top-five team. Let’s use a hypothetical example. Fast-forward to Friday after the clock hits zero vs. Baylor. For most of the game, two Mustang offensive linemen tried to double-team Bears defensive tackle Andrew Billings. But he consistently powered right through them because he’s a special mix of size and burst, not because someone blew his block, demonstrated poor technique or was late arriving to help double-team.

In the heat of the moment, getting frustrated over the inability to block Billings is the only thing that matters. But after taking a step back, it really doesn’t matter. SMU is no less of a team because it couldn’t block Billings. The inability to block him shouldn’t affect our opinion of how the team as a whole played. It’s not going to ruin the season. All it does is shifts our attention from the process.

Enough of the hypothetical talk. What truly matters is how SMU plays. The attention to detail, precision and effort from the players and coaches will show up on game day. All of that has been present in the weight room and during spring and fall camp.

Here are a few examples: SMU ran 38 scripted game scenarios in its dress rehearsal scrimmage, staging everything from fights to injuries to premature touchdown celebrations. It covered every detail of every remotely possible game situation.

Offensive lineman Kris Weeks shed 30 pounds of weight and dropped his body fat by one-third. In the spring, he looked sluggish and in danger of losing his starting right tackle job. But in fall camp, he looked like one of SMU’s best linemen after his productive summer in the weight room. Freshmen defensive ends Michael and Delontae Scott weighed 220 and 200 pounds (respectively) when they signed their letters of intent in February. At weigh-in the day before fall camp, they weighed 246 and 233 pounds.

These stories show that the players have put effort and attention into the finer details of the process of turning the program around. I’ll call it processing the process. It’s buying into the culture change and doing the work needed to achieve Morris’ vision of greatness.

Morris said in the spring that his expectation this season is for the team to give its very best. We’ve seen the players do that already, and there’s every reason to think that will carry over into games. Even when the excitement of a win or the frustration of a loss start to build, we have to remember that this season is about processing the process and competing. That’s more important than wins and losses, and when Morris beams about his players’ effort and progress in a post-game press conference, you’ll agree.