gangrene

I'm not so sure about that. And I'm definitely not confident we could beat SMU this year and we supplied them their lone victory last year. Unfortunately (or fortunately, you choose), we don't play SMU again until 2014 so all we can do is debate who would win. And, I think both teams will be drastically different by 2014, for better or worse. How is that any different than rooting for UNT? I've been following UNT since 1977 and I, along with many others, have found plenty to bitch about over the years. However, I've found plenty to enjoy and be proud of as well. I really enjoyed winning the SBC and going to a bowl game four years in a row. That feat raised my expectations of this program again and I expect to get back to that level and, hopefully, surpass it. If you're happy with being a loser then I feel sorry for you.

One of the "ESPN Interactive Tuesday" poll questions was "Should MTSU be wearing all black?" - I didn't see the results but I took one to the gut when I saw UNT missing from another one of their poll questions: "Who will win the Sunbelt?" - the only choices were Troy, MTSU, FAU or ASU. I remember once upon a time when there was little doubt the Mean Green would be crowned SBC champs, now we don't even merit recognition as a top 4 SBC school.

Ok, now I wish I hadn't read this thread. I don't want to hear about us losing more players for whatever the reason may be. I can't handle the truth!!! I'm going to take a looooong nap now....someone wake me when we have a new stadium and a winning record!!

Umm...I think you might mean inducement, unless maybe your wife is in the hall of fame or something???

Try reading through this thread. Dodge Impressed at Cookout

Wow, now that's a loyal Mean Green fan!!! But the answer is still a resounding no. Go, and you'll NEVER hear the end of it. For 18+ years your wife will tell your child how his/her father found it more important to watch a crappy football team play than spend time with his newborn. At least that's what my wife would do. I'm still catching grief for dragging her to the 2006 NT-UT game in Austin when she was 5 months pregnant....and we watched the entire game on CCTV in the covered, air-conditioned End Zone club. Besides, this is your first born (warning, gushy comment to follow), you'll treasure those first few months for the rest of your life.

No worries. I'm certainly not in favor of firing Dodge, at least not yet. And, I agree, his recruits haven't been given proper time to assess just yet. I was just disappointed in the recruits that never made on the field and even more disappointed with the lack of improvement I've seen 16 games into the Todd Dodge tenure. These blowout losses, especially to CUSA teams, are disgusting and humiliating.

He's not a fan of Todd Dodge and he has his reasons.

The worst part of this ranking is that we actually deserve it and I don't know if we could beat any of the other nine teams.

Is this the Fox News Channel?? It must be...with all the spinning that's going on here. Smitty, I'm assuming you're talking about my comments on recruiting thus far under Dodge, but how are my comments below misinterpreted to read this???

The timing is absolutely horrible to be losing 77-20 to Rice.

It's thread topics like this that just put it all in perspective for me. Why have we sucked for so long?? Because too many of us expect to get our asses kicked week in and week out. "Hey, we weren't supposed to beat Rice...who cares if we looked worse than a flag football team of 5 year-olds?" or "Hey, our offense is improving because our QB only got sacked 4 times and our defense...well, they're getting better too because they held the opponent to 502 yards!!" It's always...someday...and...just be patient...give 'em a break. Bull shit! I expect to see some progress and I think this year's team looks worse than last year. I didn't expect to be 4-0 right now but I sure as hell didn't expect to be outscored 219-55 at this point of the season either. June Jones took over an equally "sucky" team at SMU this year. He's starting a true Freshman at QB and I'm already seeing a lot of improvement in their team from week to week. They almost beat a decent Tulane team (who, by the way, has a second-year coach in Bob Toledo that was hired exactly one day before Todd Dodge). SMU didn't give up and quit when they were getting beat 31-7 at halftime. They actually made adjustments for the second half. And, speaking of Tulane, they've had their own problems to overcome in the form of Hurricane Katrina (I'm sure the threat of another hurricane is something potential HS recruits never even think about) and they never have a big crowd at the Superdome. Yet, Tulane only lost to the new #2 AP team in the nation, Alabama, by a score of 20-6 and led #14 ranked East Carolina up until 1:41 left in the 4th quarter. So let's just keep on dreaming of "some day" and keep on being content with record-breaking performances by our opponents, resulting in the most lop-sided losses in the history of our program. Let's just keep on being satisfied with the promise of what might happen some day and not worry about being the laughing stock of the college football world. Let's just keep our expectations low and not hold anyone responsible for anything. That's the best way for UNT to become that premiere program we all hope we'll become some day. It's a wonder the NCAA doesn't kick us out of the FBS for being non-competitive.

I understand your points and I agree wholeheartedly. It's not the kids that are still on the team that make me doubt the quality of the recruiting classes. It's those that have left the team or never qualified that have me doubting the quality: Alonzo Horton (3-star JUCO), Justin Edwards (3-star JUCO), Marcus King, Evan Fentriss, Justin Padron, Evyn Roman (AKA “Hair”), and two highly touted JUCO OL that are still out of shape four games into the season. These classes could still very well turn out to be great, but I am disappointed that they will not reach their potential. Of course, I'm aware injuries and non-qualifications are a big part of the game. It just seems we've been hit with more than our fair share. When two of your eight 3-star recruits don't even qualify and another one of those 3-star kids shows up to play 100 pounds over weight.

I'll never abandon this team or my school but I had hoped to see a little more progress at that stage in Todd Dodge's tenure. Screw me for wanting to win now and not being happy with failing miserably. A couple of wins in the next three games and I'll be a little happier. Get the athletic fee referendum passed and I'll be a lot happier. Do both of those and get verbals from a few Texas State 100 and I'll be ecstatic and shut my mouth!!

Who is this mysterious Brenham recruit Coach Dodge signed? I follow the recruiting circles pretty closely but, still, it's possible I might have missed one. I just checked the 2008 UNT roster...no players from Brenham. Whoever it is, it's most definitely not one of the top prospects I was hoping we'd at least get a nibble from...I know where they signed. I'm not saying Dodge can't recruit talent and I much prefer his open records style to Dickey's stealth technique. However, getting the best talent (that nobody else seems to want) from state title teams isn't proving to be the recipe to success.

If anyone is looking for some new headgear for this week's game, you might be interested in this site: Paper Sacks

Exactly. We have no pipeline to SLC much less any other school in Texas that Dodge was so-called "connected" with their head coach/coaching staff. I remember reading how close Dodge and the Brenham HS head coach were, yet I've seen no fewer than 5 excellent FBS prospects sign with other schools while UNT has had no fewer than ZERO Brenham prospects sign. The jury is still out on several of our current players that played for Dodge at SLC but, aside from Riley, none of the others had any legitimate FBS offers. It was unfortunate that Fentriss suffered a career-ending injury (I would have loved to see him play against Rice) and it seems like Padron dissed us for the enemy across town. The legitimate SLC kids never really thought twice about UNT. My two biggest concerns about hiring Dodge were his lack of experience on the collegiate level and his ability to recruit FBS talent. I was pleasantly surprised on the recruiting front and I thought the first two recruiting classes were phenomenal but now I'm no longer convinced. There's still a lot of time left on determining the success of those two classes but we've already lost a LOT from each of those two classes. If re-rating/re-ranking our classes were to occur now (as sports writers normally do after the class graduates), I guarantee our classes would already be ranked much lower than they were on national signing day.

Awareness and excitement of UNT football was at a very high level a mere 22 months ago. We were the talk of the town in all the media and even garnered some national attention for our bold hire of a successful high school coach. We had the attention of a lot of high school players that hadn't previously even considered North Texas. Many praised our decision to hire Dodge (while only a few ridiculed it) and predicted unprecedented success for both Dodge (moving on to a BCS school in the near future) and UNT. Has all of that momentum already faded off into the sunset??

Now that's FUNNY!!

Good point...I was trying to forget that FIU will take a better record into this game than we will.

The only one I caught grief from was my wife, who knows absolutely nothing about football. She saw that I had the game on the television and commented, "North Texas ALWAYS loses." And just laughed. North Texas football has become soooo embarrassing these last two and a half years. My coworkers view North Texas football as so insignificant that they don't even bother mentioning football and North Texas in the same sentence.

Don't forget, we broke FIU's 23-game winless streak last year with a 38-19 loss. The previous year it took us SEVEN overtimes to eek out 25 points and win 25-22 at Fouts. I'm only predicting that we will be this week's pillow fight GOTW, with the loser going winless in 2008.

I think most of us would settle for a 90 degree or even 30 degree turnaround right now.

I don't think we could beat Idaho's cheerleaders right now.

Sorry, I wasn't more clear. I was commenting specifically about the notion that Dodge may be in over his head. I wasn't pointing the finger directly at the defense as much as I was at the head coach for thinking that the defense we had last year could succeed at the collegiate level. Ultimately, the final decisions for all schemes come directly from the head coach...or at least they should. I was merely saying doubt regarding our decision to hire a HS coach crept into my mind when the OU coaches found our defensive schemes so basic they couldn't resist ridiculing them in public. That was the first sign.