NTXCoog

Still playing 6 home games at TDECU. OU is an additional neutral site game in the city of Houston. We have P5 Louisville coming to TDECU later in the year

Yes UH played some horrible teams but also beat 4 ranked teams and 3 P5 teams. Going to minimize that? Trying to schedule tougher. Stopped scheduling FCS for the future. But not doing buy games and 2 for 1s.

I don't buy this one at all. It still leaves WVU on an island by itself, and the WVU president is one of the three presidents on the Big 12 expansion committee.

How often is the #1 seed (or any of the 1 or 2 seeds) in basketball ranked in the 30s in the RPI?

True, but you factor in UH finished #8 in the AP and coaches poll, 13-1 record, and beat 4 teams that were ranked during the season including 2 teams ranked at the end of the season, I'd say that #34 looks like a major outlier and indicates a problem in their formula.

Nope... that 2.6 wins is the worst projected record. Someone will have less wins than that. And i dont buy houston as #40 either. But then again they had houston #34 at the end of 2015 after easily beating their #13 three loss FSU. Garbage calculations

Tulsa and Tulane I understand because they didn't leave until later, but Houston had already announced it was leaving, so why would you have looked forward to playing UH?

Thanks for the responses. Every article has this as "unprecedented" or "first team ever to move from FBS to FCS." Definitely not providing the full story.

As an outsider, can someone explain what really happened? I'd always thought that the UNT demotion was voluntary, but the UNT football wikipedia page says "the team was subsequently demoted to Division I-AA status by the NCAA." There were other schools that sent down to I-AA at the same time. So did the NCAA force UNT's hand to either make changes or get demoted, and UNT opted not to make the changes, sort of forced "voluntary"? Or was it strictly an NCAA action with UNT having no choice?

UH currently is against that too, but there's a time and place for different strategies. 1 and done buy games - When the program desperately needs cash 2/3 for 1 deals - when you're trying to build a fanbase and reputation when you don't have high enough home attendance to get a 1 for 1 only home and homes (against G5) - when attendance is high enough that you don't need money games to keep the program afloat G5 home and homes and a FCS home game - when attendance is high enough that you make more on home games than road games, and you want that 6th or 7th home game that's cheap P5 home and homes, maybe 2-for-1 with lower level G5s - most, if not all, games are sold out. season tickets are near or at maxed out. Donations and season ticket prices up to maximize revenues. This is the ultimate goal for all G5 teams. This is a progression, but programs can use combinations of these strategies or bounce back and forth between them. It's foolish to think a program at that buy game level can think they can skip straight to the end.

As an outsider, what surprises me is that UNT can't get a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 with a P5 team. When UH was still having major attendance issues in the early 2000s, we had buy games like UNT at Michigan, OU, and Bama, but we were also able to get 2 or 3 for 1 games against mid-level BCS teams like Okie State, UCLA, and Miss State. Robertson Stadium was only about 1.5k seats larger but Apogee has more premium seating so I don't think size is the issue. I know college football has changed quite a bit in the last 10 years, but it does seem that other schools in UNT's situation can get that 2/3-for-1. I wonder if UNT just can't get the money to work to their liking or want the immediate guarantee while other schools may be willing to take a potential loss to try to build a future fan base/reputation.

No offense, but Rice generally gets more and better P5 teams at home than UH because: 1) They'll do 2-for-1 and 3-for-1 and/or have their "home" games at NRG stadium. 2) They're generally considered an easier win. Even the OU-Houston game at NRG is considered a neutral site game, while Rice games at NRG are considered home games.

Stadium only holds 12k though, much smaller than most new HS football stadiums.

Rice brings zero fans to games at UH. Sam Houston brings more fans than Rice does. You can argue that game still increases attendance because the students love when we beat Rice, but the increase has nothing to do with Rice fans coming. The Rice/UH attendance increase is primarily one way. UH fans coming to Rice doubles their normal average. That's why it remains and will remain an OOC game but only if UH benefits. Notice that the latest renewal of the series is only for 2 years.

3 of UH's last 4 coaches that were considered very successful were P5 assistants (Briles, Sumlin, Herman). The only one fired was an internal G5 assistant "continuity" hire (Levine). Prior to that we had a G5 head coach that was a miserable failure (Dana Dimel). With that said, I don't think there's a formula that will tell you what coach will be successful. There are successful G5 coaches that were P5 assistants, G5 head coaches, lower division head coaches, high school coaches, NFL assistants or head coaches, P5 head coaches, etc. There are also failures from each of those groups. It's a matter of finding the right coach and giving them the right support.

I think if you're going into a BCS/NYE6 bowl, your program has already changed. You don't luck into those. Generally there is some history even if you take steps forward and back. UCF may be down right now, but they've done that before. They were 4-8 in 2006, CUSA champs in 2007 then 4-8 in 2008. 11-3 CUSA champs in 2010, 5-7 in 2011, and 10-4 CUSA champs in 2012. They are the most up and down team I've ever seen, even more than UH which had a history of that in the 70s and 80s.

From 2000-2002, the UNT program might have been better than Houston. Definitely better on the field. The right coaching hire makes a huge difference.

Wow... as a fan of another school who only follows UNT a little, I know some but not all of the RV stuff. I just read his bio on the UNT sports website. Based on that, I don't know why you complain. "Rick Villarreal has established his place as one of the most progressive and successful athletics administrators in the nation." "He is also responsible for creating the organizational foundation for a department that has seen unprecedented academic and competitive success during his tenure." "an administrator who can raise money, build facilities, direct championship teams with quality coaches " "Villarreal led the Mean Green to a premiere position in the Sun Belt Conference" "The ultimate recognition of Villarreal's success was realized when Conference USA announced that North Texas would be joining the flourishing league beginning in the fall of 2013. The undeniable achievement that Villarreal led North Texas to in the Sun Belt Conference was a critical factor in making the department and the university as a whole attractive to other leagues. " That's quite an enhanced bio.

While some ADs get fired, others leave for higher profile jobs. For example, Mack Rhoades left Akron for Houston after only 3 years. He left Houston for Mizzou right at the average AD tenure. If RV did have the success with team results, facilities, and fundraising that caused him to get offers from P5 schools for more money, would he stay loyal to UNT or would he be gone?

Google the headline and click the link. That usually gets around that

Is that a function of there being more bowls? For example, UNT teams under Hayden Fry never went to a bowl despite have a .500 or better record 5 of 6 seasons including 9-2 and 10-1 seasons. There is no doubt in this modern era of football that those teams would have played in bowl games.

FOIA

Disagree. Have you seen aTm's claims to national championships? They won a national championship in 1939, but in 2012, they claimed 2 more. Why would anyone think that SMU fans are elitist/racist? Some quotes from the ponyfans topic: Still baffled why a kid would pick Memphis over SMU and Wake Some people just like slumming You date any beautiful women from the hood? Ignoring that SMU has a much more prestigous degree than Memphis , why, upon graduation, would anyone want to look for a job in Memphis (Trustee in prison, probation officer?) as opposed to Dallas (Bank executive, Real estate mogul, Lawyer, etc, etc, etc)! And I won't even go into all of the racist posts any time UH is discussed. That tradition goes back from "Cage the Cougroes" to now.

Rutgers was an AAC conference game, not a P5 B1G opponent.

Why would TCU schedule a neutral site game at AT&T especially for UNT with their new stadium? They might do it again for the Advocare Classic like they did for LSU and Oregon State, but that game isn't inviting UNT. Hell, they had Bama and Wisconsin last year. TCU would prefer a buy FCS home game which would make more money than a neutral site game vs UNT that no 3rd party is going to pony up money for. They could do home & home or 2-for-1 with UNT if they dropped SMU and wanted to have another nearby game. Baylor already has a neutral site game at AT&T vs Texas Tech every year. They aren't going to add another one. OU already has a neutral site game in DFW too. They aren't going to lose another home game for a neutral site unless a 3rd party pays for it like this year's Texas Kickoff Classic in Houston, an area they need to recruit that they don't otherwise have a physical presence in. I'm all for UNT trying to get creative to get improved schedules, but the Rice deal is fairly unique because of UT's declining presence in a market they desperately need to try to keep hold of. By the time they play Rice, it will be 10 years since they played in Houston. Note in the article I linked to earlier said people identifying themselves as UT fans in Houston has dropped 30% in the last 5 years. They are trying to keep aTm (and to a lesser extent Houston) from totally shutting them out of that market. One problem for UNT trying to get Big 12 schools to play in DFW, especially neutral site, is that the Big 12 teams already play in DFW at least every other year. They already have a presence for recruiting and for media market retention.