oldguystudent

It is well established that I am not the X's and O's football expert by any means. That given, I remember three primary offensive plays over the season: 1) Screen pass a la the West Coast offense 2) Cam Montgomery run straight up the middle 3) 50 yard prayer to Fitzgerald There simply has to be more variety in the play calling. Someone pointed out that we didn't have the speed to challenge the secondary. Maybe what we need is to bulk Riley up and put him in the backfield. He could be UNT's very own Cordell Stewart. He's already got the speed and the arm. He just needs the size to take the hits. Create options for ourselves in absence of down field speed. With the playbook as it was this past season even a football neophyte like me could see what was coming a mile away, and that can't be good when going against capable defenses.

A two quarterback system? Do they both line up in the shotgun? How does the center know which one to hike the ball to? In all honesty, I have no emotional investment in either quarterback. My objective opinion of Riley at this time is that he needs to double up at the buffet line and hit the weights before he becomes viable. He's too small and too fragile for the big time so far.

I've been putting some thought into this. If the NCAA refuses to have a playoff, unlike every other sport at every other level, then the notion of a national championship is just absolutely absurd. Here's my solution. D1A football is essentially to the NFL what minor league baseball is to MLB right? Does anybody clamor all over each other to declare a national champion of minor league baseball? Nope. It's divided into several leagues, each having their own champion. So here's my proposal: Get rid of the national championship altogether until the NCAA bends. With the transformation of WKU complete next year there will be 120 D1A teams. Disband the Sunbelt conference and distribute those teams among the other ten conferences. Gerrymander a bit with the teams in the remaining ten conferences until you've got an even 10 conferences with 12 teams each. Now pair the 10 conferences into 5 leagues. This allows for an 11 game in-conference schedule and 1 rotating "sister conference" game for a total of 12 games. Create five bowl games -- Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange and Cotton. Assign two conferences to each bowl (Big 10, Pac 10 for Rose, Big 12, SEC for Sugar, et al). So the Rose Bowl effectively becomes the championship game for the newly (or not so newly) aligned Pac-10/Big 10 "league". Send the champion of each league to its assigned bowl game, and don't worry about a national championship. Now there are five major bowls that all 120 teams have an equal shot at getting to. If, independently, the Armed Forces Bowl, Sun Bowl, New Orleans Bowl, Motor City Bowl, Meineke transmission gear shift knob bowl, etc. want to continue operating, so be it. Those can continue to be, as they always have been, nothing more than exhibition games that give the alumni a great excuse to throw back cheap cocktails at dawn.

Texas wins, but Texas lost to Texas Tech who once lost to UNT sometime in the early 1890s, so Slippery Rock should be the national champs, right?

Over a period of how many years? Bottom line, no adjustments to the most simplistic playbook in all of college football, no wins. Just remember. It's a football plan.

Unfortunately, they haven't been playing pissed. They've been playing stoned.

Any better as in TWO quarters of competitive football?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I believe I read somewhere that one of the stipulations of being 1A is to have at least 6 home games every other year. Since we only had 5 this year, don't we then get 6 next? As for who we schedule, until we can beat somebody, anybody, I think it's really neither here nor there.

I didn't realize that. Pretty poor when you think about it. So every other conference had 3 or more bowl representatives and we're jumping up and down like a bunch of kids on Christmas morning with over full bladders when we get two representatives, one of which begged and pleaded to play for free. This conference needs to step it up a couple notches. ETA -- Am I mistaken in my impression that this whole division of the haves and have nots has its origins in the BYU national championship of 1984? Didn't that really upset the powers that be?

It's either one division of FBS schools in which a win is a win is a win or it's not. Divide it into 1A (BCS), 1AA (the other 5 FBS conferences), and 1AAA(FCS). Admit to the division that already exists and delineate it, or shut the hell up when a Utah or Boise comes along and let them play. The way things are currently set up, it's like a win over the Detroit Lions really shouldn't count as a win towards a playoff appearance. Incidentally, did anyone notice during the Rose Bowl when they listed the bowl records of the conferences that only ten conferences were listed? The Sunbelt was conspicuously absent.

What am I missing? Looks like he did decent at UNT, really well in the CFL, and only had the one season as head coach in the NFL.

He's listed on wiki as being fired after one season in New England in which he went 1-15. I guess he wasn't ready for the speed of the NFL game.

Troy aside, I've always wondered how the big programs get around that. I doubt Lawrence Phillips was leading the way among NCAA Rhodes Scholars. We used to make fun of J.R. Rider at UNLV that he went be J.R. because Isaiah was too difficult to spell. UT is the top APR school in the Big XII. Given their recent history of chronic thuggery, you can't convince me that those kids are writing grade A research papers. I honestly don't know what academic standards UNT holds its athletes to. I do wonder what convoluted curriculum some of the big boys are coming up with though.

Didn't you forget the Sunbelt on that list?

What constitutes impressive if not beating four ranked teams with the fifth being Miami?

For those keeping score at home, the PAC-10 went 5-0 in their bowl games. Yep. Weak conference they are.

As I understand it, knee-pad graduation has come and gone. Unsanded, splinter filled wood surfaces are now preferred.

Here's the post. Who knows if it's authentic though. ETA -- Here's a little gem from the thread:

helmets...with stickers

Howie Long made a great comment in the post game commentary. He got this really angry look on his face as if the Cowboys had once been his team and said something along the lines of "The most valuable and well known brand in sports does not make a winning team environment in the locker room." (very poorly paraphrased)

Try taking my beer at the next tailgate and find out!

Aw, c'mon guys, this letter could've been written by anybody. Watch. Hello Mean Green fans. I am a graduate of UNT UC Irvine and for obvious reasons am a little frustrated with the performance of their athletic programs as of late. (as in, they don't have a football team) I am not a local guy, have not been my whole life, was accepted to your institution out of high school the blue, chose to go elsewhere here, then ended up at the Fouts Field orange lot at UNT somehow. Anyway, I want to start by saying that I am not a bandwaggoner, a fairweather, or any other cliche term for a bad fan. I don't mind supporting a losing team every now and then, as it makes success that much sweeter. That being said, there are a few reasons as to why I am officially announcing my "jumping off" of on to (and not using double prepositions) North Texas football. Personnel moves (ever see Todd Dodge dance?) , my relationship with the AD (he shook my hand), etc, has led me to do this - not just their on field performance (their performance in the karaoke was stunning). We would be a mid-tier talent on the Div 1AA level and it is truly sad. But Scrappy makes me do a happy dance. SoAs I said, local guy CA import, almost went to your school am going to your school, have been following you already for a number of years I'd heard of you once when you joined the Big West for football, and I want to support a local team. I came here also because there is no way on God's green earth I would ever support SMU sports in any way. (on this point we agree wholeheartedly) I do plan to buy season tickets next season by the way. I do intend to milk the system of free student tickets for all it's worth while I'm a poor, starving student. So answer me Frog Mean Green fans - Can I join you?

I say this as a guy who doesn't really understand the game to the point where I really saw the zone defense at work for the first time and understood what I was seeing, so take my comment with a grain of salt. What I saw was that coming out for the second half, UTA wanted it more, plain and simple. They challenged every pass and every shot. They pressed and made it hard to cross midcourt on every possession. UNT just didn't look like they were up to the task. Now for the part the makes me a glaringly ignorant fan, it just looked like UTA figured something out about us and made adjustments at halftime that we either didn't see coming or couldn't counter. As for Vereen, if somebody would get that kid on a strength and conditioning program, he'd be plain scary. His shooting for a guy his size was just lights out. Unfortunately for him, that weight rendered him out of breath pretty quickly. We really needed to capitalize on that on offense when he was lumbering around the key trying not to pass out, but we didn't.

Saw this little gem on my alma mater's message board today. 1,900 people at a game, most of them for the other team, and they're tickled pink over it! And...gasp! They had to wait in line to buy tickets (for those who don't know, the Bren Events Center has exactly TWO ticket windows). Now what's the over/under tonight? I'm guessing we beat this 1,900 mark with our eyes shut for this holiday non-conference game.

Now I wish Tasty was around this month. I'd love to know if it's ever happened. Would probably have been pretty far back. Didn't SMU play pretty mediocre ball from the 50s through the 70s?