TheTastyGreek

Don't forget high school jerseys!

On the chance that this was a serious question (we've had a lot of "their stadium is better than ours!" jokes on GMG in regards to them)... The University of Phoenix doesn't own, operate, or in any way oversee the stadium that bears their name. It's a municipal stadium (more than 2/3rds of the total cost was paid by the state of Arizona, with an additional $10 million from the city of Glendale) and legal ownership belongs to the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority. The place is run by Global Spectrum, a facilities management company that handles a long list of various entertainment venues. You can read more about what they do and how they do it here. Of interest to North Texas fans: Global Spectrum has management or consulting deals with several college athletic facilities. Most notable (given the fancy new stadium forever on our horizon) is UCF's new football stadium. The others are with Miami, St. Louis, Ohio State, Old Dominion, Temple, UMass, Rhode Island, and two venues for South Carolina. Basically, their business is to handle venue management and daily operations as a way for non-corporate owners to run a venue with productivity similar to a private facility. For publicly owned stadiums/convention centers/theaters, it's a way to squeeze as much as possible out of the building. The municipality/public trust/university pays Global Spectrum a fee, and Global Spectrum (or one of the other firms in this industry) assumes managerial control and responsibility for the site. Instead of having the fancy building run by inexperienced and generally incompetent local government officials, the folks who run the day-to-day are (theoretically) experienced and talented professionals. The ownership entity still sets budgets and so forth, but short term tactical decisions and long term strategic planning are handled by the management company. Why does private vs. public operations management matter? Well, consider this: The Cotton Bowl, built in 1932, is owned by the City of Dallas and managed directly by the city. It's a decrepit embarrassment, horribly out of date and, at this point, essentially irredeemable. Meanwhile, the City of Pasadena has a quasi-private division called the Rose Bowl Operating Company that manages the stadium and a golf course. They don't operate to make a profit, and the not-really-private management model has it's drawbacks. But it works better than the Cotton Bowl's management has... Even though the Rose Bowl isn't thoroughly modernized, it certainly is well maintained and their leases run through 2023. Even though the Rose Bowl is a decade older than the Cotton Bowl, better oversight and management has allowed Pasadena's stadium to thrive compared to Dallas. And the Rose Bowl will still be running on its centennial. Even with the recent remodeling, I doubt the current Cotton Bowl will still be standing in 2032. Point being, private management theoretically keeps a facility working as efficiently as possible and as productively as possible. Whatever gets spent on the management contract should (assuming the contract is decent and the management doesn't half-ass the job) be recouped (and much more) through lowered costs and increased revenues. More corporate fun facts: Global Spectrum is primarily owned by Comcast's Comcast-Spectacor division, a many-tentacled sports management hydra. Facility management/operations, concessions, ticketing, marketing and branding, uniforms... Comcast-Spectacor has their snout in every imaginable subsector of monetizeable sports. If stuff like this doesn't become relevant to us within the next year or two... Be afraid. Be very afraid. ANYWAY... The point was that U of Phoenix is nothing but a corporate sponsor. They pay $150 million or so, and they get their name on that fancy desert terrarium for 20 years. Every Sunday (or rare Monday), they get statewide or national exposure thanks to NFL broadcasts. When it's BCS season, they get Fiesta Bowl and sometimes national championship screen time across the whole country. But they don't have anything more to do with AZSTA's stadium than American Airlines did with the one that Cuban and Hicks own. (I hope you people missed me at least a little bit while I was gone.)

They've won seven games and only lost ten. I'm eager to see the football talk vanish from this section, but while we're on it I'll just say that I don't expect we'll see seven total wins in the entire NT career of our current coach. And I don't mean seven more, I mean seven total. Quick edit to add that of their last four losses, three of them came by a total of four points. Then there's our game, where they ran out to a 21 point lead before losing. They're not uncompetitive, and I can't imagine they'll finish this season without snapping that road losing streak. Hell, I'd be surprised if they don't break it tomorrow. Worst case, they'll have it broken by February 12th when they play FAU on the road.

I don't think DeLoach got a pass. But his defense didn't have Jeremiah Chapman, Aaron Weathers, Brandon Monroe, Montey Stevenson, Derek Mendoza, Maurice Holman, and Blake Burruss on it. When you take a team that was average and turn them into the worst squad in D-1 football, that's atrocious. When you take the worst defense in D-1 football, subtract a strong core of talented, proven performers, and then come up with the worst defense in D-1 football... That's still unacceptable, but I'm more inclined to give you a year to see whether you can improve or not. Especially when you've got a proven track record of building a defense here. If we didn't have an adequate defense in 2006, Mendoza probably doesn't get roasted like he did in 2007. If DeLoach had the players Mendoza had in 2007 (not a knock on the younger guys, I still haven't given up on their development), we probably don't have the worst defense 2 years in a row. Youth is not an excuse. But youth is certainly a mitigating factor. The other reason I'm inclined to give Gary another year before even questioning things is because of our situation at D-Tackle. The injuries there... Again, I don't mean to disparage the talent or effort of anyone that suited up for us at DT last season, but I think it's fair to say that we're far from proven or settled at that spot. Start with a young, unsettled, inexperienced crew. Take away our most established and experienced player in Joe Miller, then take away Charlie Brown on top of that (who was out of position from DE already)... Let me go at it from this angle, because there's no question in my mind that Eddrick Gilmore is a fantastic athlete and a very, very talented defensive lineman. When Gary DeLoach looks down his depth chart and decides that Eddrick is his best available option at a DT slot... That tells me something. Eddie is tall, fast, and under 250 pounds. When a guy who knows how to assemble, plan, and coach a championship caliber defense thinks that's his best remaining option (redshirts aside) for a DT... The problem isn't coaching. Even Zombie Landry can't coach Gilmore to 280 pounds. I'm not making excuses for DeLoach. Last place is not an acceptable place for us to be. That's not where job security comes from. But we didn't get Gary DeLoach from District 6-5A and Gary DeLoach didn't oversee the complete collapse of a previously adequate defense. His predecessor wasn't fired strictly due to outcome, it was outcome in light of regressed performance from an established team of players. When you have no track record in college, few to no peers who defend your performance, and you take proven talent and get the worst results in D-1 football out of them... Yeah, you're likely to get fired pretty quickly. When you're a proven commodity and a small-scale legend at North Texas, you take over a roster with much less proven (not potential... proven and demonstrated on the college level) talent, and you're operating as best you can under the Southlake Carroll Con Man... I'm inclined to give you a year (or maybe two!) before I start questioning things. I know Gary DeLoach can make a North Texas defense work. Not just work, but DOMINATE. He's been successful here and elsewhere. I know he can do it. If Gary DeLoach can't build a successful defense under Todd Dodge, I don't think anyone can.

I'm just glad this whole transfer ugliness is all behind us now, and we don't have to worry about it anymore. At least things can't get any worse!

Why would we need to add two women's sports?

Capricorn One, man... Capricorn One. Watch out for that O.J.

This rule only applies to contact by the schools. If Vizza calls Rice, A&M, or Chico State and says: "I want to transfer", that's not a violation of the rules. They just can't ever contact HIM without written permission from Rick V. He can call them every day and twice on Sunday if he wants to. Nowhere, NOWHERE in the recruiting section of the NCAA handbook does it say that a student athlete or their family can't approach schools. What it does say is that the schools can't contact THEM, even if the student athlete/family have already initiated contact. If Vizza calls Mack Brown, Brown can't call him back. And Brown can't give him a scholarship for one year after Vizza leaves without a release. And if no written permission is given, Brown can't arrange to have Vizza's tuition and expenses paid during the transfer year. But Vizza or family can call Mack Brown every single day if they want to. Brown just can't encourage him to leave North Texas. You can't encourage them and you can't financially support them for one year unless you have the written permission of the original school. But you can talk to them about anything else any time they call or visit you. As an aside.... I really, REALLY don't have time for this sort of shit today. This will be my only post on the subject until Friday at least (my official long-awaited(?) return). I'll leave it to the lawyers on this board to parse things any more finely than I have here. The very next rule in the book is a very, very interesting one given our current state of affairs: If I were Rick V, I'd think long and hard about whether I want to play hardball with the Vizzas and have all my football dirty laundry aired in front of a non-athletics forum. Even if you win, you lose. And if I were Todd Dodge, I'd think long and hard about the possibility that before the end of 2009, I might be out of a job and MY son might want to transfer to another school. When Riley has 3 years left to play 3, is he going to want to do it under a different coach, if necessary? And how will he feel doing it at an FCS school due to spite from a jilted North Texas?

Tina knows the facts.

If Alabama loses, my national championship game has Utah taking on Boise State.

Once again, we disagree(?) respectfully and come away with a greater understanding of each other's views. We're definitely very different people with wildly divergent views, but if I ever meet you I'll give you a totally heterosexual manly hug. If this whole Quoner friendship falls apart, I think you and I should look into getting an Odd Couple reality TV show.

My point was that Brown built a bowl team elsewhere before his rough start at UNC. He wasn't an unknown quantity on the college level. As bad as he started at UNC, at least his employers could look at his Tulane record and see that he had come through before.

Brown had already been successful as a college head coach elsewhere before his rough start at UNC.

Sat on the student side for this game, and I thought the band was fantastic. I may be favoring them because I think the band director is hilarious (usually puts on a better show than what's on the field) and I was within hearing distance of his loudspeakers. The band was great and Scrappy was great again, too. There were a few guys in the stands who were trying to lead a "Mean Green" chant while Brock Stickler was laid out, but it was because they were unaware of the injury.

This is my last night. Then it's radio silence until 2009.

One of the main reasons I thought it was time for Dickey to go was because he retained Flanagan after the SilverEagle incident. Dickey stood up for a guy who probably should have been fired. The next year, Flanagan assaulted a fellow coach. Dickey put himself out there for RF, RF screwed up again; Dickey took a risk that on its own justified his termination. Monday, RV meets with a head coach who has shown me nothing but a mountain of evidence that he isn't capable of succeeding as our coach. If RV decides to retain Todd Dodge, that's his decision and he's the one in position to make it. He gets paid to make decisions like that, and if he decides that Dodge is the best way forward, so be it. But if he decides to keep Dodge and it turns out he's wrong... I think he's put himself on the line for a coach who doesn't deserve it. And the consequences should be the same.

Gilmore and Russo on the ends, DeSoto and Ross at the tackles. This was the first game where I've seen that line, and it played pretty damn well as a unit. Not worldbeater good, but better than adequate. Looked tougher against the run than when we had to play tall, lanky Eddrick inside, and got much more consistent pressure in the backfield than we have the rest of the season.

I noticed Gilmore lined up on the end, too. And he had his best game of the year.

I'm saying that having been there, too... If there were 9800 actually inside the confines of Fouts, then there must have been a line of 1,500 men and 1,500 women waiting to use the bathroom at all times.

Good stuff, as always. Will you be in the chat?

No, you were much closer to right than the official tally. There is no way on earth that there were almost 10,000 people in that stadium. It was more than I expected, but 5-6k sounds about right to me.

Not only did I attend every home game, I also attended the K-State game, the Rice game, and the ULM game. Caught the WKU and LSU games on TV. The only games I didn't witness with my own eyes were Middle Tennessee and Florida Atlantic. This was a much better game. Talking afterwards with some of the folks from the tailgate, the term we came up with was that this was the first loss we had that wasn't a "Fire the Coach" game. Rather than getting embarrassed, we played hard and reasonably well and just got beat by a better team in a tough game. You are obviously seeing things very differently than I am. I've never gone so far as to say Dodge should be let go, because it's not my call and I'm just another dumbass fan with no expertise in this area. But I have said that I have very little hope that Dodge will ever be successful here. If we had lost 11 games the way we lost today, that would be a different situation. If we had lost the 10 games we lost last year the way we lost today, that would be a different situation. But having see a lot of games under this coach, I just don't have any faith in the man. I don't even have much hope. I truly, deeply hope to be proven wrong. I want North Texas to win, and I don't care if the coach on our winning sideline is Dodge, Dickey, Hitler, or Lee Harvey Oswald. Whoever gets us wins (and runs an honorable program), I'm glad to see it. I don't think I'm a doom and gloom guy. I'm not a bitter fan who can't ever be satisfied. I think I'm pretty reasonable and optimistic when it comes to North Texas sports. When one dominates the other, it's optimism over reason... That's why I made all those road trips this year. But I just can't see this guy winning games for us. The team he had last year was a hell of a lot better than a 2-10 team. This year's team wasn't as good, but I think they were capable of a lot more than we saw them achieve. The decision making, the play calling, the unjustified arrogance... I don't think he's got what it takes yet and I don't think he's willing to admit to himself that he needs to learn and adapt to be successful at this level. Either Dodge will return, or he won't. If he does, I hope, I hope, I hope I'm dead wrong and we start winning again. All I want is for this team to succeed. But there isn't much I've seen or heard in the past two years that leads me to believe this guy is the one to make it happen for us. Rick V or Dodge will be the ones to make the decision about who our head coach will be next season, and we'll all just have to hope for whatever we think is best. As to what that is, a lot of fans will just have to agree to disagree.

He knows how to beat Alabama on the road.

There are two ways he could be gone before next year. You may be sure, but I haven't ruled either of them out yet. Not saying that either is likely at this point, but I do think that both are likelier than many recognize.

Alive. Only without the happy ending.