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Harper is ready for football and soccer... She loves her Mean Green towel. It is like her blanky.

Hope I don't get criticized for posting this: http://www.meangreensports.com/sports/mg-club/spec-rel/043014aaa.html

And yet you stood by and did nothing.

By and large, they did a good job on this ranking, and provided good rationale. My ranking: 1. Larry Coker. National championship. What he has done at UTSA in such a short time is nothing short of remarkable. And the fact that he beat Coach Mac in the third year of their program's existence gives him the edge over Coach Mac, if the other factors don't. 2. Coach Mac. 3. Rick Stocksill. Every time I think he has started to lose his touch, he comes back with another great year. 4. David Bailiff. He has pretty much kept going what Todd Graham started, which is significant when you consider how bad it had gotten at the end of the Hatfield era. Plus, Bailiff is much classier than Todd Graham--I will always appreciate his tender restraint in not running up the score to 100 against us back in Dodge's 2nd (I think) year. 5. Bobby Wilder. What he has done at ODU is very comparable to what Coker has done at UTSA. 6. Doc Holliday. I have some doubts about his game day coaching ability, but he has made Marshall perhaps the class of C-USA. 7. Skip Holtz. I agree that he has done some impressive things in the past, but he has really looked lost since leaving ECU. 8. Charlie Partridge. Good recruiter, and he's already started proving that in his short time at FAU. We'll have to see how he is as a game day head coach. 9. Todd Monken. Southern Miss is awful, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt based on what he inherited. 10. (Tie) Jeff Brohm and the new UAB guy. I know nothing about them as coaches. But they have to be better than the last two. 12. Sean Kugler. Good NFL assistant. Bad college football HC. 13. Ron Turner. Good NFL OC. TERRIBLE college football HC in every facet.

The future of CUSA football is in their coaches. A respected coach such as McCarney, Coker and Holtz is worth the money. I had doubts about Bailiff and Stockstill but they are doing a nice job. Everyone else is pretty much potential. Solid coaches who have yet to excel as a college head coach. An established head coach usually can put together a very good staff and good coordinators and position coaches can really accelerate a program's rise. The second key is talent. Good coaches attract good talent but so can good recruiters. The AAC drained the talent level of CUSA by taking the best teams but there is still plenty of talent out there to be developed by good coaches. The key word here is develop because if the proposed changes go into effect the established talent will go to the P5 schools and the future all-americans will look to coaching staffs that can mold and motivate them into reaching their potential. To regain respect CUSA needs to quickly build three or four programs into perennial Top 50 teams. I would hope that one of them is Rice since they have a noted academic reputation. I think that Southern Mississippi, Louisiana Tech, North Texas and UTSA are strong candidates...Southern Miss and La Tech because they've had good success in the past and North Texas and UTSA because they have good, older coaches who may very well stay at those universities until they retire, regardless of success. Every team in CUSA needs to play their part by not being a "weak sister". Ideally, we don't need any team ranked below 100 in any year. That lends itself to good competition, attendance and reputation. An annual bottom feeder pulls down the conference.

http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/04/28/report-conference-usa-buys-bigger-slice-of-bahamas-bowl-pie/ Thoughts?

It almost seems like it's intentionally in there - like this story is meant to make you feel both inclusive and a jerk for no real reason. If you fall on the tolerant side, you walk away feeling good, but ready to...yell at an Anglican? If you're on the non-tolerant side, you walk away wondering why this is being celebrated...more than usual. If you're SE-66, you wait 2 days, then just say something pointless. See, there's really something here for everyone.

UNT Athletic Director Rick Villarreal will be speaking for the McKinney Rotary Club this Friday (5/2) at Rick’s Chop House in old downtown McKinney. There is a charge for lunch (around $12 or so). The lunch starts at noon. Rick will start speaking around 12:30 and should wrap up around 1:00. Anyone can attend, just mention that you are a guest of UNT Alumni Board Member Mike Robnett. Let’s have a good Mean Green contingent at this event! Rick’s Chop House 107 N. Kentucky St. McKinney, TX (214) 726-9251 I hope you can make it out and GO MEAN GREEN!!!

I'm enjoying the indignation of Chris Paul - a man who just a few years ago looked into Sterling's eyes and said "yup, this is the man I want to sign a contract to play for." The word was out on a what a piece of crap Sterling was (read those 2004 depositions if you want to get aroused in a limo sometime soon), and he still took the money anyway - then got Del Negro fired, whined about it, then re-signed when people agreed to stop blaming him. Cliff Paul has to be fuming about all of this.

Saw this tweeted by Eric Capper but haven't seen it posted here. Enjoy... No one does bizarre like Conference USA. From the top of the list to the bottom, the stories of how coaches arrived at their jobs are strange at best. Larry Coker won a national title at Miami, and couldn’t get hired anywhere until UTSA came calling. Skip Holtz had success everywhere he coached, then bottomed out at USF and caught on with LaTech. Then, of course, there is Ron Turner — merely a longtime respected NFL assistant who decided to take a flier on the FIU job. Crazy, all of it. And that’s just the beginning. http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2014-04-20/conference-usa-coach-rankings-larry-coker-skip-holtz-doc-holliday-david-bailiff?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Coach Mac is such an asset to this program. We're seeing the benefits on the field, in the classroom, in the media, and on the staff (with NT becoming an attractive place for assistants to develop and further their careers).

Why do we have to have this same stupid drawn-out argument every time someone mentions Dodge in a thread? I think everyone here gets that Dodge was a terrible college HC, so it really doesn't merit discussion or debate. This thread should have been wrapped up in 4 posts, tops.

In the midst of the bowl run, we had a student vote that failed. In the midst of one of the worst runs in collegiate football history, we had a vote that passed. Next question.

If someone picks me up one, I will pay them for it.

The Baghdad Bowl, I heard that was a possibility too ?

I was wondering the same thing. A lot of logistics issues for the school and for fans.

Exactly. Who pays for this? How do you expedite 100's of passports for players and personal from announcement to game time?

I was just passing along what bit of expertise I have acquired, and no, it did not come from my "friend" in Longview - I have not spoken to Mr. Hubbard in years; but regardless, take the information or leave it. Suggestion: Why don't you or ragpicker or someone else on the board - those with strong feelings that UNT fans can be accommodated via special equipment - follow up with the individual that I mentioned (as I said, he is the Revenue Manager for the Texas Eagle train) and see what you can work out - or the local person in Ft. Worth that you contacted before? I would love to see it happen; as i said, great fun on the Mean Green Amtrak trip in '79. BTW, one passenger coach holds about 80 passengers, so if the folks on this board are suggesting a large group going via Amtrak to Austin and back, one car is not going to help much. Oh Silvereagle, you are right - there is often a passenger car, or sometimes two, sitting in Ft. Worth. It/they are used to "protect" the Texas Eagle and the Heartland Flyer (OKC to FTW) when there are service/mechanical problems with a car traveling on those trains.

Did you ever use those tickets Jerry Glanville kept leaving for you?

There were two, Derek and Ryan. They both graduate next Friday; Ryan being Cum Laude in both Undergrad and Graduate School.

There is around a handful of players, several of them starters, in grad school.

Connor looks great for a guy that was just came in from a high school. Lots of highlights of him too.

Well I understand there is a history on Sterling that was public knowledge, yet all these now shocked and aggrieved players and coaches had no issues taking millions of his dollars, knowing he has had this history or racism, guess the Benjamin's help the players and coaches that are so offended go blind. Typical. Sterling just needs to sell but think he will stand-off and not be rail roaded.

Just saw that on twitter right after, lol. I was going through that list thinking "I bet we might offer Green soon, the way we've been offering outside receivers."

I agree with your assessment completely. Wanted to highlight these two.. Doc Holliday - As Gray Eagle noted, CUSA needs some headline grabbing programs and Holliday is at the helm of the most likely this year. With a hugely successful year, the Thundering Herd can find themselves getting national notoriety to the degree Northern Illinois and Jordan Lynch were last year. Since they're not on our schedule until they come to Denton for the CUSA championship game, I'm hoping they have a monster year. Skip Holtz - I thought he was overrated by this ranking because of your point. Seems it's largely name recognition and reputation still remaining from his East Carolina days. Because so much of staff crossed paths (either in passing as either party were coming/going or by working together there) with him at USF, I'm sure they'd have a unique perspective on him and his program management.

Totally contingent on who the assistants would be.

It will take a lot of coordination, and luck, to pull this off. Amtrak's Texas Eagle is packed during the summer months. On a normal train there would be little, if any, excess capacity to handle Mean Green fans for the trip to Austin and return. For this to work Amtrak would have to allocate passenger coaches to deadhead from Chicago to Dallas/Ft. Worth to pick up Mean Green fans. Since the trip would require fans to leave on Friday and return on Sunday, it would be necessary for Amtrak to disconnect the extra cars in San Antonio and put them in siding from Friday night until Sunday morning (since the Friday train would be returning to Chicago on Saturday morning), and then add the cars to Sunday morning's train north. After our fans departed the train at Ft. Worth and Dallas, the cars would then have to be deadheaded back to Chicago. An additional problem is Amtrak has a shortage of excess equipment, especially in the summer months when most of the extra equipment is added to its various trains to handle the summer crowds. Amtrak might possibly be willing, but it would take a lot of coordination among a lot of entities for it to occur. The Amtrak employee to contact to get this started is Griff Hubbard at the Longview, Texas station. Griff is the Revenue Manager for the Texas Eagle train (Chicago to Los Angeles) and would be able to help begin the process to pull this off - if it is possible to do so. BTW, the last Mean Green Amtrak fan trip that I am aware of was in late September, 1979, when Mean Green fans, cheerleaders, and Scrappy boarded the Lone Star train at the old Sanger depot. Amtrak had agreed to stop the train (Houston to Kansas City) in Sanger (Sanger was not a normal stop, but for Amtrak, and us, it was a simpler time) and load us for the trip to Lawrence, Kansas where the Mean Green played the Kansas Jayhawks. Jerry Moore was the NTSU coach and we lost rather badly - and the Kansas fans were real asses to their visitors. While it was not a pretty sight, the fans had a great time on the trip north and then roaming downtown Lawrence that Saturday night following the game while waiting for the 2 am arrival of what was the LAST Lone Star train going south. The train was eliminated from Amtrak's schedule the following day because of budget issues. My group spent our evening at Paul Gray's Jazz Place. Great Jazz and it was the first place I had ever encountered INTELLECTUAL graffiti on the walls in the men's room - only Plato's and Aristotle's phone numbers found their way to the walls of that men's room. GMG

I think midst still means midst. If the vote was after the first bowl but before the other three??? Don't be fooled, when dodge came here he was a very popular and well known coach by the students. That made a difference to the next student vote ( despite his awful winning percentage)

Cause in your mind, anyone that doesn't agree with you is a racist. Sterling is like many of a certain elitist class who constantly preach the right thing in public, but thinks it doesn't apply to him personally because he has special rules. And he convinces himself that it's ok by telling himself how much he does for the poor black man who could be nothing without his help. And he believes this has to be that way, because he has an NAACP award, after all. I mean, he gives lip service to black people and throws them the scraps from his table, doesn't that allow him to not associate with them if he pleases? He is a piece of crap and I'm glad the NBA kicked him out of the league. People who hide their real ugly beliefs behind political correctness are the worst kind out there. Glad he was exposed.

https://twitter.com/jucorecruiting/status/461248227484766208

Poll Results So Far: Dickey: 1 Dodge: 0 Hara-Kiri: 3

Dude is definitely a bigoted scumbag. No doubt about it.

Yes, the main takeaway from this whole thing is that he has bad PR handlers.

Dickey. What's the worst that could happen? He might run the ball predictably on first downs, even against a stacked box and count on his defense to win games. All the while promising in the Spring and Fall to "open up" the offense. Nah, we'd NEVER tolerate that around here.

Solid, knowledgable post.

I just wanted to say to the original topic: well done boys, coaches and tutors.

I amazed anyone would openly admit knowing him if they didn't have to ... much less start as thread about him... (disgusting person) I sure would not want to claim him as one of our own... does us no good to have this here.

He'll be able to buy his wins again. Marble Falls is proving to require too much coaching ability.

Austin chapter putting together a pre game gathering. I believe at a bar owned by NT alum. More details available soon.

Game plus a $41 case of imported beer?

For a game or a system? Latest generation console games are $59. The consoles run between $400 and $500.

Looks like someone else is the sensible person here...all I did is ask very pertinent questions. If that makes you feel insecure, then so be it. And haha...I am glad you're not "going to create fantasies about how things were" while you attended the school. That would be kind of strange. You just clearly don't understand what generalizing does to an institution, so I'd just try to prevent that if I were you. You can say the UNT tax program or perhaps business school focuses to some degree on curves but you don't know about the rest of the programs. My point is that it works the same way at every other school and hence it's very dangerous to generalize based on a school's brand name.

Good god man, It's not like I kicked your puppy in the nuts or anything. I did the tax program in the accounting department from 2008-2011. Sorry to step on your sensibilities. The degree has been very good to me. I'm in a great place of work thanks to the degree and contacts I made while at UNT and attending athletic events. That said, I'm not going to create fantasies about how things were while I attended.

Some of you guys are hilarious. If Tulane and Rice students are scholastically good enough to get into the school, shouldn't they be pulling commensurate grades? It's a great achievement for UNT. Why on earth people would damn it with faint praise is a real head-scratcher.

Hopefully Dan Wolken was fired for his dumbness.

Yeah but it also fired Dickey after one and a half bad years, immediately following four bowl games.

When we eat at Esperanzas, we are usually the only non-Latino customers there. To me that says a lot about how authentic they are.

Good to know. So we are now down to lack of money or an AD's foolish pride for the reasons Benford remains. I think you have posted multiple times that the money is there for a buyout, so...

UNT: The only school where the ONLY qualification to keep your job is being besties with a major donor. (Lowers and shakes head in disappointment).

I get what your saying, but TCU has a good recruiting tool called conference affiliation. They could snag 3 or 4 WR's in the next couple classes and maybe in just one signing class that are bigger, stronger, and faster than Thomas. That would leave him standing there on the sideline googly eyed asking what about me. At 6'3 he would see the field at North Texas. It's just the way it is.

#UNT is 13th in the nation in red zone offense. Only #MeanGreen & Louisville are in the top 15 in both red zone offense & red zone defense — Joe LJ Letsche (@LJ_1310) November 20, 2013 If you don't follow him you should. His Mean Green coverage is excellent.