VideoEagle

Don't count Liberty out yet. The still have Ian McCaw as their AD and even money for him to work. He's great at building programs. And, no, he won't hire Briles.

I'm not so sure. The Mac wanted WKU and MTSU, but only as a pair. It was widely reported MTSU simply didn't have the money to make the jump. The exit fees are NOT very much and I doubt they are enough to fund a move. As for La Tech, again it is a lack of resources. SMU President Turner, who headed the AAC search committee, said in several articles the main criteria was institutional and financial support to growing their programs. He complimented UNT for being the leader among the CUSA schools moving for this commitment happening BEFORE any chance to move up happened. DOING that was why he said UNT was to first school on the expansion list even though we haven't won as much yet in football. La Tech seems to pride itself on doing "more with less" which is nice, but won't get a school moved up. Combine that with La Tech's reputation as a school that "doesn't work well with other schools" means they are going to have a very hard time moving anywhere. In the AAC, I've read opposition to them from Tulane, Memphis and Tulsa. La Tech must spend a lot of dollars they don't have to move up. And the Sun Belt teams have made it very clear they don't want La Tech, at least not yet.

A good evaluation of where we are. Yes, we are much better than we were when Littrell and Baker arrived. We still have problems and these are mostly more difficult to solve.

Some of this is a function of the NCAA lifting the annual signing limit for this year and next. With the limits in place, then signing too many JUCO or Portal players with less than four years of eligibility remaining mean that down the road you team is going to be short on players. Not sure what they will do in four years when all these portal players start running out of eligibility.

Paterson did not like the idea of the Portal.

I have never, EVER heard of someone on terminal leave making major personnel announcements. if Baker had been in charge Sunday, he would have made the announcement. Since he was no longer in charge, Smatresk did.

Well written! Great take! I completely agree.

No

No, he wanted to change to a run based program from a "throw first" philosophy. If he'd stayed, he might have been able to do so. But, Tech hired him away from us. Moore's replacement DID wreck UNT athletics. Bob Tyler managed to get the NCAA to start investigating a losing team! Those who keep saying we need to just fire Littrell and get the "right" person should remember we might end up with another Bob Tyler!

At the end of the day, I think you're right.

Littrell had at least basic media training that you NEVER, EVER publicly, "on the record," comment on situations "above your pay grade." That's day one of any media training.

According the SMU's President, he recommended UNT to the AAC because of the leadership and overall direction of the Wren Baker and the athletic department. From what Turner wrote, because of Baker and Smatresk working together, UNT was the first school Turner thought should be added! So, according the the head of the AAC's expansion committee Baker was a major reason we got to move up. I'm not sure who from the AAC leadership that says otherwise.

It is a nice change to have someone hired away instead of being fired or "retired." I have faith in our BOD regents - especially Mr. Ryan - to put together a search team. Good that we are doing this a head of most other schools that will be searching this year.

Great idea!

A number of professors have season tickets. I think a higher percentage of professors go to multiple games a year than students!

For those who have been to a New Orleans Bowl, I strongly recommend the experience. New Orleans is great the week before Christmas - not packed but everything is open. There is a reason NOLA is one of the top tourist and convention destinations in America. Albuquerque is not!

I noticed in the Dallas Morning News a handy chart that listed the results of all the games of the 131 FBS teams. Yes, there are is at least one regular season game to be played - Army/Navy. But mostly everyone is through all the regular season games and are starting into the post season. Here's a summary of the number of wins each team got. To get 8 or more wins puts up in the top 34% of all teams. Only 24% had four or less. That puts a total of 55 teams in the mushy middle at about .500 with 5, 6 or 7 wins. 49% of all the FBS teams ended with a winning (7 win or more) record. I'm working on entering "how many wins did winning FBS teams get against other winning FBS teams." I know there is a lot if talk about Littrell not having enough wins agains teams with winning records. So far, it appears very, very few teams actually have most of their wins against FBS teams with over .500 records. Among the ones that don't are TCU, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, USC, Tulane, UTSA, Alabama, Tennessee, Penn State, Troy, Clemson, South Alabama (no wins against winning FBS teams!), Washington, K State, Cincy, UCF, LSU, and Air Force. I haven't found one yet, but I'm entering starting with the 12 win teams and going down from there. I noticed only four of the fifteen teams with 10 or more wins did NOT play a FCS team. It appears most if not all of the SEC, ACC and Big XII play a FCS team.

Ol’ Ugly is better than Ol’Nothin’. - Darrell Royal

I think you can find Abner Haynes name in one of them!

I'm guessing you haven't seen any Willie Fritz interviews. I counted four cliches in under two minutes. BTW, it's very difficult to hear the questions in Tulane press conferences also. And, the questions after the first couple appear to be designed to elicit quotes needed for the reporter(s) to fill out articles or video packages.

Even high school concession stands are starting to take cards only.

It's not just registering the trademark. You have to be willing to pay to defend it in court when challenged. Most trademarks aren't likely to be challenged, but I suspect the battle flag would be, often!

The international name recognition of Rice is unbelievable!

That's not a bad thought. We know it was a committee of university Presidents who came up the initial list, not the Commissioner. And it at least appears they ran that list by ESPN and the other media partners to come up with a combination of schools to add that would maximize the media payout. it took six of us the balance the loss of the three going to the Big XII. Likewise, it took the Big XII adding four to make up for their loss of two. I’m not certain either the AAC or the BIG XII got as good a deal as they could have with their original lineups. But both have done well enough to make both conferences happy.

Oh no! Trying to please the Eastern schools - ECU - was how CUSA ended up with an extra bunch of (at the time) questionable schools. ECU left anyway and CUSA was stuck with too many lessor schools in the east. No chance ECU is leaving anytime soon as there's no where to go. Any additions should not be geographic but based on the strength of the support of the program.