Cerebus

Yes but they were pretty close when they coached there:

It looks like there has been a failure to communicate goals, but leadership is very much oriented to accomplish two tasks:
Acquire Texas Tier 1 status, as recognized in HB 51. Become a leading research institute in the state of Texas. To accomplish this over the last several years the school has:
Spent millions on Talon, an HPC (super computer) that allows current researchers to perform complex work here.  Instead of having to farm out work to other places, for example Sandia National Labs.  This in turn attracts more competitive faculty.  Think of it as building an IPF for BioEngineers.   Created a new Strategic Plan for Research and poured millions into accomplishing those actions/goals. Built the Life Sciences Complex to increase lab spaces, both for instruction and research.  Those lab spaces are top notch, I would stand them up against any school in the country. Just finished remodeling the Science Research Building, this is almost all for new research laboratory space.   Funded new research clusters, that have drawn very good faculty to the university.  This is very expensive.  To draw a top chemist from another research university for example, is probably going to cost $3 million in startup alone.   We have become more selective in our admissions, this is directly related to HB 51.  We have increased staffing in teaching roles in order to make sure faculty can focus on helping PHD candidates.  We have hit the 200 PHDs a year goal for HB 51.  College of Arts and Science is being split, so that the sciences part can go into their own college.   The president promises to throw additional funding at them, in return he is expecting federal grant expenditures to go up, also a HB51 goal.   So maybe the message hasn't reached off campus.  But I am pretty sure most people on campus (faculty/staff/administration) have a pretty good idea of leadership's goals.

There are a lot of good reasons for why North Texas can't recruit as well as Alabama.  There are no good reasons as to why we can't recruit as well as FAU, UTSA, and FIU.
When  we are getting blown out by those schools in recruiting, it's inexcusable.
The Wren™ should know fans find this inexcusable.  He should put pressure on SL and the coaching staff to make it better.  SL needs to find the problems and fix them.  If some of those problems are resource shortages, The Wren™ needs to find out how to fulfill that need.  
This is where you, the fan, comes in.
We don't need to flood recruits with tweets, that's a violation.  Falling on the ground and banging our hands and feet on the ground and crying that we want better (in person, or on the internet) isn't good enough.  If we really want to recruit better we need to help provide those resources.
I have heard some people talk about not buying tickets or giving to the MGC because they are so unhappy with this class.  That is counter productive.  When the last AD was here, I could see why people would be so fed up with him that they would go to that nuclear option to demand change.  I was one of those myself.
However, this is a new AD.  He needs to be held accountable, but it's not time to try and resource starve the program because he needs to go.  Give him the resources he needs, and then hold him accountable.
Of course, this is also something the AD needs to spearhead.  If he needs $X to increase travel, or hire a social media expert, or a graphics guy etc., then reaching out to the small/medium donors should be part of the plan.  I think a lot of people would pitch in $20 or $50 for some goal.  That adds up.
 

What's crazy is that you're a UTSA grad and a member of the Rowdy Road Grillers, make an account that pretends to be a NT/UTSA fan, and then subtly take every jab you can at NT.
That's flat out crazy.  Seek help.  

In Rust we trust.  

SMU version:
 

I hope as soon as the new AD actually starts everyone who upvoted will take the time to email him and tell him what a great job Reggie is doing.  

Folks.  Remain civil with one another.  
If a mod or admin asks you to remain civil, arguing is just going to get you a vacation.  

There is also the value that a school gets for just having a FBS football team.  Right or wrong, schools without them (unless you are one of the Ivy League school) get looked down as small time by much of the public.
 

I've made an addition to the spreadsheet, the growth between 2002 and 2004. You can see that between those two dates we added 864 MGC members, and 4,285 season ticket holders.

Now, of course we need some context for this growth. The latest alumni numbers I have seen from the University state 300,000 alumni, with 225,000 of them living in the area. Of course most of those people became alumni long before the current AD was here.

Enrollment has grown from ~29,000 in 2002 to ~36,000 in 2014. Everyone of those students pays the Athletics Fee, but it's not by choice.

I think recent grads are the best metric to compare MGC growth. Unfortunately I don't have official numbers for the number of alumni who graduated between 2002 and 2014, but I do have numbers for 2008-2013¹. In those five the University awarded 41,102 degrees, an average of 8,220.4 degrees a year. Lets round that off to 8000 to be conservative (even though we know it's too low). I know 2014 degrees are "over 8000" but I don't have an official final number. So I think 8000 is an overly fair number per year for the last six years,

This still leaves us with no data official data for the first six years. We know enrollment grew about 24% over those years, so we could take that percentage off the average degrees awarded number, but I am going to be extremely conservative and say that we take off a full 50%. So lets assume for the first six years we awarded 4000 degrees per year.



That would leave us with an estimate of 72,000* degrees awarded 2002-2014. Again, I think that is a very low ball number, but I wanted to be conservative since we only have date for half the range.

We stated off with 211 MGC members in 2002. Some of those members stopped giving, some of them went to that great big stadium club in the sky. New members joined and by 2014 the MGC totaled 1075.

In the period of 2002-2014 the MGC grew by 864 members, while the university added (conservatively) ~72,000 new alumni.

If anyone has better data sources, or sees any flaw in my numbers or logic, please advise.








¹UNT Publication: Institutional Research and Effectiveness 2013-2014 Fact Book
*((8000x6)+(4000x6))

After the 2001 season the AD published the Game Plan For Success. This thirteen page booklet laid out the plans of the department to meet their mission, which included "Position(ing) the Mean Green to compete in the upper echelon of intercollegiate athletics and attract top athletes from the Metroplex...."

It went on to layout current MFG and FB season tickets numbers, and goals for each. All numbers from 2001 are taken from that booklet. The 2014 MGC numbers come from me hand counting the numbers off the AD website. The 2014 FB season ticket numbers come from the twitter link above.

Before we get into the details, here are the numbers:




Here are the header meanings:

2002 Actual: Number of MGC/FB Season ticket holders per Game Plan For Success (GPFS).
2004 Goal: Goal numbers set to be reached by GPFS.
2014 Actual: Number of MGC/FB Season ticket holders per AD Website/Twitter respectively.
Diff: How short we fell of the 2004 goal in 2014.
Avg Yearly Change: Average MGC/FB Season Ticket Holders added per year between 2002 and 2014 seasons.
YTG: Years to Goal, number of years with Avg Yearly Change to reach 2004 goals from current.


The year 2004 goals included:
*10,000 FB Season Ticket Holders.
*3,000 MGC members.
*40 MGC district directors.
*$600,000 in ad, radio, and sponsorship sales.
*30 spring/summer events.
*$10 million in capital fund raising for athletics.

Just for UNT90, GPFS also listed some scheduling goals, including:
* Only two "money" games per year.
* Goal to have six home games in twelve game seasons.


I'll leave the interpretation of this data/performance up to the reader. If you have any questions about the data sources, hit me.

Updating board software is the worst thing TTG does.

Magic bullets. They are hunting for magic bullets. Now the magic bullet seems to be to get P5 teams in Apogee, that will fix everything.

No on really wants to face the fact that the only way to build this program is to win consistently for years. Mainly because we have never done it at any level. But thems the facts.

Show up for the seniors. They aren't contractors, they are alumni. The coaches, AD staff, etc will come and go, but the seniors will always be alumni.

I would be happy if we could get a simple count of MGC members and season ticket holders. Sure, they might be embarrassingly low, but at least we could then continue to track them.

I guess if they were released, and were embarrassingly low, and then 14 or 15 years later they were... still embarrassingly low, people would be afraid of being held accountable.

Seven for eight, not a bad week for the Aardvark.

Important thing to remember about this is that the payout to the G5 conferences from the playoff system isn't equally shared. Conferences that do better against the other G5 earn a larger share.

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LOL - Why are you guys so proud of playing in some place you rent? It isn't your stadium. Stop bragging about it. Especially since I know every single one of you would love to have an on-campus stadium.

You act as if Apogee fell out of the sky and it just landed in our back yard. We earned that stadium:

The students voted to pass a fee. I know you guys have problems with students supporting UTSA, but here they want a successful program.
The alumni stepped up and donated money for it. Some gave millions, some gave thousands, but they gave.
The administration went out and found major corporate donors. Those donor's didn't give some free chicken coupons, they gave millions of dollars.


So if you come here Saturday, enjoy a real college atmosphere.

When Boomer goes off, find out why he has 12 brass screws, that's called tradition.
Those 10,000 people just behind your teams bench? Those are called student's attending a football game.
The place you are sitting in? That's called a 78 million dollar commitment, not a rental.

If DW is going to play, then lets make sure he gets a ton of playing time.

This years schedule is about as good as it's ever going to get for breaking in a new QB. Two of the first four are are at home, including an opener against someone we are a double digit favorite, one of road games is someone at our level, the only huge challenge is @GEO.

New QB's make mistakes. Let him go out there and make them and give him some experience by the time conference play roles around.

This is in no way a shot against DT. I hope he goes out there and dominates, wins conference MVP gets us a bowl win. However, if you have a talented backup who can push him, lets see what that guy can do and if he is the future or not.