VideoEagle

Did the NCAA drop the "you have to be admitted to a FBS conference to move up" rule? How is Liberty moving up without a conference affiliation on place?

Yes, a spirited but civil discussion.

If you read the original article in the Virginia Pilot, it reads that both ODU and Liberty fans are excited about this game. The teams have played each other before with Liberty fans traveling well to ODU. The ODU AD hopes Liberty will be on the ODU schedule beyond 2018. It also notes this is a single game, not a home and home. Single games always come with a guarantee while home and home only rarely do. ODU also wants to be on Liberty Flames Sports Network with goes to "potentially 80 million homes." ( Don't pretend to know what "potentially 80 million" actually means, but the ODU AD is excited about it.) It's NOT that ODU has more prestige than NT, it's a combination of in state school plus no return game plus home opener all combinig to make it worth more to Liberty to get ODU than us. It also appears Liberty now has four FBS home games scheduled for 2018: ODU, NT, Troy and NMSU. As for Liberty not being FBS today, well that ship sailed when the NCAA granted them permission to move up. In the eyes of the NCAA and all football playing colleges in the country, Liberty is FBS starting next year. Some fans might not like it, but that doesn't change the fact they are FBS.

Two and ones require us to buy a one and done home game from someone. That's fine except two for ones don't generally give us the pay out to afford a buy out game.

It's not just an in state school, but one with whom they have a significant history having been conference mates before.

Awhile is ok. Just don't go full UNT90 for the next four years!

Thanks! You are the man with the tailgate plan!

Good news for both us and the league. I didn't realize only three places submitted bids and from that list I'm not at all surprised it's going to the Star.

So far that's not a problem as the AAC is tied with the MAC for teams in the access bowl. I notice no single team has repeated yet, either.

While I agree with the general scenario, I think you might be off on some specifics. Last time there was discussion with the Pac, they really were not very interested in Texas Tech and today TCU has shown they can keep up with a P4/5 level of competition. Combined with TCU's verses Tech's academics and TCU is likely a better PAC fit. Whomever are the Big XII remnants will be able to pick whom they want from the non-power conferences but I know number of Big XII teams would be happy to be rid of a conference member on the East Coast. I'm not sure they really want ECU, UCF or USF verse someone who is a more regional fit. Remember the TV dollars are going to drop and the need to build regional rivalries will apply to the new Big XII as well. You assume anyone from CUSA, Belt or MAC would jump at the chance to join the AAC no matter what teams happen to be left IN the AAC. But everyone remembers the last time there was a major reshuffle and the name on a conference patch will mean a lot less as the TV dollars drop verses the TEAMS within that conference. Everyone will need to build rivalries to drive ticket sales and donations to make up for the lost TV dollars. The names of AAC, CUSA, Sun Belt and MAC will probably stay to insure NCAA tournament autobids, but the teams in each are likely to shift around.

I find it interesting to see so many posts on Facebook suggesting this is equivalent to Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon had to fire both his Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General as they opposed the firing of Archibald Cox. In this case, the DAG went to the AD who went to the President to suggest the firing. Last night, CBS 11 was interviewing retired FBI agents who agreed with the firing. The FBI is supposed to turn over the results of an investigation to the Justice Department who has career prosecutors - NOT political appointees - decide if a prosecution should occur. The FBI Director isn't supposed to make that decision.

The problem is announcing the first of what might be multiple scheduling moves before all the other moves happen. WB wrote in his tweet changing a FBS schedule is like moving across four lanes on 635 during rush hour. I remember reading about a single canceled game about a decade ago that forced over a dozen schedule changes to something like six or eight different schools. It is no where nearly as simple as school X has an opening in year Y. The problem is, we the fans don't know either what the actual challenges are nor what the actual options or schools involved are either. Was Army canceled or delayed to an as yet undetermined date. Did Army or NT as for the move? This uncertainly is compounded by a distrust by the NT fans of the athletic department. Most fans don't have the delusional "a will not believe ANYTHING the school writes, says or does," but most of us are predisposed toward a "trust but verify" attitude. When you're negotiating contacts, you simply can't talk about how the negotiations are going without causing problems. There is a reason the leaks from when unions are negotiating with management always are done by the side wanting to slow or change the direction the negations are taking. WB is in a damned if you do or damned if you don't situation. I wouldn't have let the Liberty scheduling get out until more pieces were in place but I don't know if it got out intentionally. On a side note, I'm curious how the Liberty fans got an FOI request forced on a private institution.

Correct, they are transitional and not bowl eligible until 2019. However every team that plays them in 2018 gets to count it as playing an FBS team, not a FCS team. CBS suggests they are a good fit for the Sun Belt that will be losing Idaho.

From the "Police make a second arrest article," the UNTPD obtained arrest warrants. From the same article it seems there nearly a month from when the UNTPD started on the case and the briefed President Smatresk. So much for Smatresk controlling the investigation! Vito even has an explanation for the confusion as to if these are students or not. Great reporting on this by @Brett Vito !! Once again, this is nothing like the Baylor rape case!

Great column Brent! I wish I'd seen it before I posted a message in another thread as I'd have quoted from it.

Yes he is. Suggesting the UNTPD is incapable of investigating students who are doing work for the university - volunteer or paid - is wrong and implies a terrible assumption. He alleged that since the UNTPD reports to the UNT administration, the administration thus controls all of the investigations. That is not correct and for it to be correct requires the officers of the UNTPD to lack any sort of personal integrity. Almost every police department had administrative reporting to a city or county authority such as a city manager, a commissioner or in a very few cases directly to a mayor. When civil authorities try to interfere, their are system in place, either formal or informal, that let the police departments report this. It comes out, it always comes out. As for an unscrupulous journalist creating a hit piece on NT, yes that can happen. But there are a LOT on journalists who would be very happy to listing to a representative of a department explain the truth, then the journalists investigate that is report what the truth. Discrediting unscrupulous journalists is a major coup for a news organization that can pull it off. Everything I've read so far suggests this the kind of thing a vice division in a police department would handle. This isn't good, but it's certainly not disastrous, especially since by every indication to rational people the University has done everything strictly by the book. The RA reported the incident, the UNTPD investigated, the Denton DA had warrants issued and arrests have been made. There could be more to come, but right now everything is exactly by the book. In fact, the University administration went beyond what is required and hired an outside law firm to investigate if there is some kind of culture within the school that encourages this kind of behavior. They then sent emails to lots and lots of us stating the administration wanted to do everything possible to prevent this from happening again. They did not have to do either of those things. They did and are giving the impression to rational people they are doing everything they possibly can to fix the problem. UNT90 chooses not to believe anything the administration says, writes or does. He writes over and over ad nauseam that anyone who disagrees with his view must be wrong. Not only must they be wrong, if the write anything in disagreement they must be coordinating their messages with the athletic department, the University administration and even the now fired athletic director and basketball coach. He has added that anyone suggesting he is incorrect is guilty of "cyberbullying." I personally do not think this is a healthy attitude, but I'm not a trained psychologist. EDIT- by the way I didn't give outoftown a down vote for his post.

Promise?

But I'm 59. And although it took less than an hour, there is a Twitter to Roku fix.

No one can I guess.

Liberty is a FBS independent. That's a very, very tough way to run a football program unless you are Notre Dame or BYU. Liberty isn't at the level of either of those and thus I don't think they will be buying out a lot of games. Don't forget from THEIR viewpoint, playing at NT is a winnable game for them! I prefer doing one and one's verse a money game paired with a FCS home game. Wren has shown a the schedule isn't completely locked down so perhaps he is working on deals with more regional FBS teams.

The Texas Rangers do no step in to investigate every case of pimps recruiting new prosititues. They investigate when there is some reason to believe the local police either don't have the resources or somehow messed up the initial investigation. Neither of those are true here. The Rangers don't step in because an individual with a self stated distrust of any statement by anyone in administration at North Texas thinks they should. The Rangers need an actual reason.

Lots of "ifs" in there and there is no reason what so ever to believe to the kids wouldn't have done something like this anyway. What we know for certain is IF we would not have GM as our coach. Wren being willing to wait a year to get GM makes me believe the choices available at the time we not as good. And no matter who happens to be the coach at the time, college kids make bad decisions and get into trouble! To my knowledge, no coach has found a way to prevent this. What the better coaches do is get rid of the players after it happens.

It's a winnable home and home with a FBS team, something that's far better than a game against any FCS team. Checking FBSSchedules.com, I see Liberty also has a home and home series scheduled with New Mexico from the Mountain West Conference. And games scheduled against P5s Baylor, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech. I don't understand the convoluted thought process that some how it's fine for P5s to play Liberty but it's some how "beneath" NT. We need six wins and the more of those against FBS teams the better.

It's like Texas weather, just wait a minute and someone will create an app for that. I've had success streaming Twitter feeds via Chromecast to my TV sets. I've also got a six year old Sony Blueray DVD player that connects to the internet. At first it just had Sony and Netflix as streaming services but now it's got Amazon, Hulu, the ACC network, Deutche Welle and at least a dozen more. Every time it does a software update, more services seem to be added!

The complication is cable companies and the program providers have become the same company!