MeanGreen61

SpaceRaider post from the Muts board. the Sun Belt salaries for head coaches were briefly discussed on wgns this afternoon...the link provided below also has links for the contracts for each coach in pdf format. in order of total compensation: FAU - Schnellenberger, $353,147 FIU - Cristobal, $282,100 UNT - Dodge, $266,625 MT - Stockstill, $254,800 Troy - Blakeney, $226,750 ULL - Bustle, $194,250 ASU - Roberts, $189,655 ULM - Weathebie, $130,000 Link: coaches contracts

Costing more than anticipated and behind schedule.

Redshirt most newcomers ? An additional year to learn system & mature.

CharlieNT73 has bedeviled the Muts with so many post about TD and his activities that they now have an "Official coach Dodge" thread. Got some funny stuff OFFICIAL COACH DODGE THREAD http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?S=349#S=349&a...88&T=648662

My man for the all time coach is Odus Mitchell. He dedicated 21 years to North Texas, is the all-time winning coach, sheparded the program thru important changes and was a true credit to his profession. If I had the bucks to fund the stadium, I'd name it Mitchell Memorial without hesitation !

IF the "miracle at Norman" were to happen, would the dealership(s) repo the Sooner players cars, SUV, pickups etc? Then they could adopt the old Nancy Sinatra hit, These boots are made for walkin', as a new fight song!

Let um stew in their own juices.

Off the Froggie board. A past San Antonio Express News article. LINK TO ARTICLE http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/stories...ch.1ca3e1c.html Power brokers: How tagalong Baylor, Tech crashed the revolt Mark Wangrin Express-News Staff Writer It's hard to keep a secret around the state Capitol, especially when legislative talk turns from taxes to football. The Great Texas Football Rebellion So, in early 1994, when the buzz began that Texas and Texas A&M were preparing to leave the Southwest Conference, David Sibley went straight to a man he knew wouldn't deceive him. Sibley, then a Republican state senator from Waco, buttonholed William Cunningham, the University of Texas chancellor, at a reception. He asked him point blank if the rumors that the Longhorns and Aggies were planning to desert the SWC were true. Cunningham asked Sibley where he had heard that. He questioned the sources of the rumors. He tried to change the subject. What he didn't do was deny it. To Sibley, that was proof enough that something was up — something that wasn't going to sit well with state politicos with allegiances to either the six soon-to-be snubbed SWC universities or the communities served by those schools. Or, as was the case with Baylor graduate Sibley, to both. It was time, as one state politician with a vested interest in the matter later recalled, "to turn loose the dogs of war." The pack included Dobermans, a veritable who's who of Baylor and Texas Tech alumni. Ann Richards, then governor, and Bob Bullock, then lieutenant governor, were Baylor grads. Sibley held a high-ranking position on the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Tech unleashed its own influential alums: John Montford, president pro tempore of the Senate; Robert Junell, destined to become chairman of the House Appropriations Committee; and Speaker of the House Pete Laney. Sibley threatened a cut in funding for UT and A&M if they bolted on their own. Junell collared UT president Robert Berdahl and spelled out what was at stake. "As I recall, it wasn't a very veiled threat to cut budgets if Tech was left behind," Berdahl recalls. Laney doesn't recall any hints of reprisal. "We'd be a whole lot easier to get along with if our teams were in there, but I don't think there were any threats," Laney said. "We (the legislators) are temporary. We'll be replaced sooner or later." Bullock, who died in 1999, took the lead in galvanizing the Tech and Baylor factions. He called Bernard Rappaport, a Waco businessman then serving on the UT Board of Regents. Rappaport confirmed that UT's absorption into the Big Eight was imminent. Bullock went to work. It was Monday, Feb. 20, 1994 — Presidents' Day, a state holiday. Bullock began rounding up his troops. He called Cunningham and requested an immediate meeting. William Mobley, A&M's chancellor, and Dean Gage, A&M's interim president, were in Temple on a facilities tour when Bullock reached them by phone. Bullock wanted to talk — now. Mobley and Gage replied that they couldn't fit it into their schedules. Bullock bristled. "I would think that if the Lieutenant Governor requested a meeting you would show him the courtesy," Bullock said angrily. Then he slammed down the phone. Minutes later, the phone rang. Mobley and Gage had suddenly found time to talk. The plot revealed The group convened in Bullock's office in a state building next to the Capitol. On hand were Bullock, Cunningham, Sibley, Montford, Mobley, Gage and Bill Clayton, a former house speaker who now sat on A&M's board of regents. Cunningham told Bullock that, indeed, UT was on the verge of joining the Big Eight. By then, Bullock and the others were prepared to act — prepared to wield the monolithic clout that stems from rural politics and lengthy tenure — to buy Baylor and Tech passage out of the doomed SWC. The four other SWC schools — That School, TCU, Rice and Houston, all based in metropolitan communities — found few advocates for their interests. The fate of the three private schools in the group — That School, TCU and Rice — was of little concern to the decision-makers in Austin. Even among the four breakaway schools, unity was difficult to attain. One sticking point for a four-way exodus from the SWC was A&M, which still clung to aspirations of joining recently departed SWC member Arkansas in the Southeastern Conference. According to witnesses — and also Clayton's testimony in the 1996 misappropriation of funds trial of former A&M regents chairman Ross Margraves — Clayton balked at the idea of the Aggies joining the Big Eight. "No, you're wrong about that" Bullock told him. "You need to come with us to the Big Eight." It so happened that A&M needed two votes from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which governs construction projects at state colleges, to proceed with the construction of its $33.4 million basketball and convocation facility, which became Reed Arena. "Don't worry about it," Bullock told Clayton. "I'll get them for you tomorrow." On Feb. 24 — just four days after Bullock's round of emergency phone calls — the Big Eight officially absorbed UT, A&M, Baylor and Tech, and a new league was formed, using a name the Big Eight had curiously trademarked years earlier: The Big 12. That Capitol intrigue ended a revolt that had been in the works since the late 1980s, when UT and A&M officials first considered leaving the SWC. First, the Longhorns looked west, to the Pac-10. Berdahl found it appealing that seven of the 10 schools in the Pac-10 were members of the American Association of Universities, a group comprised of the nation's top 62 research universities. Distance was the main drawback. The University of Arizona, located in Tucson, was the nearest Pac-10 school to Austin — and still 788 miles away. Eight of the 10 schools were in the Pacific Time Zone, meaning a two-hour time gap with most of Texas. "Texas wanted desperately the academic patina that the Pac 10 yielded," recalls Berdahl, who went on to serve as chancellor at Pac-10 member California-Berkeley. "To be associated with UCLA, Stanford and Cal in academics was very desirable." Still, expansion in the Pac-10 depended on unanimous approval of the member schools. And Stanford, which had long battled UT in athletics as well as academics, objected. For UT, the way west never materialized. Course correction The Longhorns next turned to the Big Ten. Having added Penn State in 1990, the Big Ten was now made of universities that, in the view of UT officials, matched UT's profile — large state schools with strong academic reputations. Berdahl liked the fact that 10 conference members belonged to the American Association of Universities. Yet, distance remained a disadvantage. Iowa, the closest Big Ten school to Austin, was 856 miles away — but the appeal of having 10 of 12 schools in the same time zone was seen as a plus. But after adding Penn State in 1990, Big Ten officials had put a four-year moratorium on expansion. Although admitting interest, Big Ten bosses ultimately rejected UT's overtures. That left the SEC as a possible relocation target for the Longhorns — until Berdahl let it be known that UT wasn't interested because of the league's undistinguished academic profile. Only two of 12 schools in the SEC were American Association of Universities members and UT officials saw admissions standards to SEC schools as too lenient. "We were quite interested in raising academic standards," Berdahl says. "And the Southeastern Conference had absolutely no interest in that." A&M, meanwhile, had no qualms about flirting with the SEC. From the late 1980s on, administrators from A&M and LSU had several informal conversations about the Aggies joining the SEC. After talks with Miami broke down in 1990, the SEC's courtship with A&M grew more serious. LSU athletic director Joe Dean telephoned his A&M counterpart John David Crow to discuss A&M's candidacy. "Joe was going to sponsor us, do what was needed to be done," Crow said. "They would have liked to have had us." At the NCAA Convention in Dallas in January 1993, Dean reportedly met with Dodds and Crow to discuss a possible two-school move. Dean later told reporters that he believed UT was "headed north" — to the Big Eight or Big Ten — while A&M was the "most logical addition to the SEC." In response to reports of the meeting, a representative of A&M president William Mobley told reporters there had been no offer and "Dr. Mobley is firmly committed to the Southwest Conference." But in August 1993, A&M regents chairman Margraves flew to LSU for his son's graduation, taking time to meet with LSU chancellor William Davis to discuss the possible migration of A&M — and Houston — into the SEC. Margraves later said he came away from the trip favoring a move. The right fit Despite the repeated wooing from both sides, however, the relationship was never consummated. A&M administrators, apparently fearful of a backlash if the school made the first move solo, held back. UT wasn't interested and a suitable partner from the SWC couldn't be found. The SEC, meanwhile, backed off on expansion. "I don't think the powers that be wanted us to move alone, leave the Southwest Conference and its tradition," Crow said. Mobley, now a professor of management at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, says A&M's actions resulted from a strategic analysis of the SWC's future commissioned by the league's presidents after Arkansas departed. "It was a complex decision, a matrix of academic, economic and political factors for all schools and conferences," Mobley said. He added that those factors included academics and compliance, television money, scheduling and travel, existing natural rivalries and "support and political implications among various stakeholders including the Board of Regents, the Texas Legislature, Former Students, the Athletic Department, faculty, students, media, etc." Almost by default the attentions of UT and A&M turned to the one major football conference that was geographically nearest and competitively dearest — the Big Eight. It helped that UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds and Oklahoma athletic director Donnie Duncan were old friends. Dodds had once served as AD at Kansas State. And, of course, the Longhorns and Sooners were longtime rivals from annual October football showdowns in Dallas. Acutely aware of how the fast-moving world of television negotiations was changing the face of conference affiliations, Dodds and Duncan had, since the late 1980s, chatted informally about the possibility of UT joining the Big Eight. For a multitude of reasons, that move made the most sense. All of the Big Eight schools were in the Central Time Zone. The most distant school from Austin was Iowa State, 840 miles away. Like the SWC, the Big Eight was looking to improve revenues and in need of additional markets to increase its bargaining power for TV rights. Still, the Big Eight wanted to expand to 10 teams, not nine, so each school could play a round-robin schedule in football and still have two non-conference games. UT needed an expansion partner and the obvious choice was A&M. Both schools offered large alumni bases, rich tradition and solid academic reputations. Both excelled in a variety of sports other than football and basketball. Within a week of the meeting of political heavyweights, the expansion twins became quadruplets with the forced acceptance of Baylor and Tech into what amounted to a merger deal. Almost immediately, the deal paid off. On March 10, the Big 12 signed a five-year, $100 million deal with ABC and Liberty Sports to carry the league's football games. Denial, then denied Even as the fortunate four were cashing in, the forgotten four were reaching for their wallets — and having that chill-bump sensation of finding nothing. "It was a bomb," then TCU AD Frank Windegger said, "dropped square on top of us." Even when the administrators at TCU, That School, Rice and Houston received advance confirmation from those involved, some still refused to believe it. In February 1994, days before the league dissolved, That School AD Forrest Gregg privately asked Dodds if the move was imminent. Dodds said yes. Gregg told That School president A. Kenneth Pye of the conversation. Pye responded that it couldn't be happening, because the other league presidents hadn't said anything about it. Two days later, it came true. "We were in Dallas, with a long and illustrious tradition, and we thought that would work," Gregg said. That School wasn't alone in discovering that what it offered in positives was set off by what it promised in negatives. That School, TCU and Rice were private schools, and big conferences desire schools backed by state coffers. Houston, TCU and That School still bore the stain of NCAA probation. All thought they could deliver big television markets to a league in search of the same, but the Big 12 members felt that UT and A&M could deliver Dallas and Houston. There were brief discussions about keeping the Southwest Conference alive, but nobody could agree on whom to invite. And the TV money was quickly drying up. "There was a lot of indecision," said Steve Hatchell, who served as the last SWC commissioner then assumed the same duties with the Big 12. "Those four were not in the habit of looking around to find a place for themselves. The picture changed totally." That School, TCU and Rice headed to the Western Athletic Conference, a geographically widespread league that boasted one football national champion (BYU, in 1984) but modest accomplishments elsewhere. Houston, believing its future was to the east — the school had once coveted an invitation to the SEC — cast its lot with a new league formed from the nucleus of the old Metro Conference, called Conference USA. Baylor and Tech — one a private school, one a school that had to pull out the stops just to be admitted into the SWC 26 years earlier and neither in major television markets — were simply happy to be included in the Big 12. "As luck and fate would have it, Texas Tech had some very powerful members of the legislature," said former Tech AD Bob Bockrath. "Candidly, if not for the influence, it'd be the Big 10 — that's taken, so some other name. I don't think Texas and A&M saw Tech and Baylor as equal partners." Former Baylor AD Dick Ellis said: "It was a battle of the haves and have-nots. Baylor, we kind of snuck in. I'm sure there's resentment from That School, TCU and Rice." Short honeymoon While the forgotten four stewed about being jilted, the honeymoon that followed the marriage of the fortunate four and the Big Eight was short. Officials of the new league were quickly saddled with two contentious issues: initial eligibility for athletes and arrangements for a football championship game. The SWC expatriates wanted entrance requirements that were stiffer than those mandated by the NCAA. Nebraska, sustained through the years by more lenient standards, objected. Suddenly, the process of forming the Big 12 became a clash of priorities and a dispute over how priorities shape integrity. Cornhuskers fans howled about UT arrogance. UT supporters saw Nebraska's reluctance as a cynical, self-serving way to keep the Cornhuskers on top. "Nebraska and Texas were jockeying for position," said Bill Byrne, the A&M AD who then held that position at Nebraska. "Nebraska was the 800-pound gorilla in the Big Eight. Texas was the 800-pound gorilla in the Southwest Conference." In December of 1995, 10 months before the first Big 12 football game, the league's school presidents agreed to allow each Big 12 school to admit two male and two female partial qualifiers each season. Still, Nebraska officials wanted to delay implementation. League presidents voted 11-1 to put the rules into immediate effect. That was the second major defeat for Nebraska. The Cornhuskers had dominated Big Eight football — they won back-to-back national titles in that league's final two seasons — and they opposed the idea of a title game, fearing one upset could ruin a season. In the summer of 1995, league presidents, warmed by the prospect of a title game providing another $10 million in revenue, voted 11-1 to put in a championship game. Nebraska officials also blamed UT for the league's choice of Dallas as the site for league headquarters, a decision that dislodged the conference from its old Big Eight base in Kansas City. Adding to the early acrimony was the league's choice of Hatchell as the Big 12's first commissioner, another decision driven by Texas schools, Nebraska officials charged. It was fitting that the first Big 12 championship game, held in St. Louis on Dec. 7, 1996, matched No. 3 Nebraska against 20-point underdog UT. Even the ticket offices got into it. In a conference call to set up the will-call ticket windows, a Big 12 official asked Nebraska's representatives what they needed. "Two tables and three chairs," came the reply. He posed the same question to UT officials. "Two tables and four chairs," said UT's ticket manager, earning a round of high-fives from his staff. The underdog Longhorns, using a bold pass play on fourth and inches at their own 28-yard line in the final minutes, had the final say on the field, too, winning 37-27. Nearly a decade later, Berdahl, an academician not normally given to moods of vengeance, can't contain himself when he recalls those early growing pains of the Big 12. "It was," he says, "a real sweet victory."

Post on the smoo board by Stallion indicates that Rivals has 110 Texas players already making committments for the '08 class! That's about a third of the total number that signs LOI's each year. He did add that smoo has none of the 110. Thread title is "Bennett is looking for that 1 in a 100 type player" Text "according to Rivals, 110 high school players in Texas have already committed in the Class of 2008. Bennett's still looking for his first."

Plumm, please drop your ridiculous comments about me being concerned because of buddies, sources, another 25 years etc. You turned a simple thread on a donation that helped the athletic department and a name being used that you don't like for the practice fields into the History of the World III. Show this footer on all your post to TD and he'd probably laugh & tell ya to grow up ! "Why would UNT officials subject Todd Dodge to what they have now (apparently) decided to subject him to with all his future practices at the MG Village's practice fields which will now be named after the very one who gave us DD Ball, numerous condescending radio comments aimed at his very employer & then the final icing on the cake--the black jerseys."

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE CLOSE OR PUT THIS THREAD TO REST ?

The practice field name IS NOT the big deal that one or two are trying to make it. If some could put money where their mouth is, we could start building a new stadium tomorrow ! Please, let this thread fade away in peace.

Mac did donate $1million to UNT athletics. Donate $1million and bet you too can pick a name. Shoulda, woulda, coulda doesn't really count much unless you put up the greenbacks.

What ? No talk about how young and inexperienced the team is ? How we'll have to be patient and not have expectations because they are learning a new offense ? Geeze TD may be putting companies out of business in Denton that make "Mean Green crying towels". How refreshing !

Off the Froggie board. DAVE CAMPBELL’S TEXAS FOOTBALL ORIGINAL RANK - FINAL RANK - 2002 RECRUITING CLASSES 1. ut - 12.19 (10 point scale)-105.1 (100 point scale) 2. TCU - 1.88 (10 point scale)- 68.5 (100 point scale) 3. Tech - 2.18 (10 point scale)- 58.7 (100 point scale) 4. ATM - 6.4 (10 point scale)- 50.2 (100 point scale) 5. Baylor - 2.78 (10 point scale)- 47.5 (100 point scale) 6. UTEP - 0.45 (10 point scale)- 48.3 (100 point scale) 7. UNT - 0.15 (10 point scale)- 45.5 (100 point scale) 8. UH - 1.51 (10 point scale)- 41.8 (100 point scale) 9 Rice - 0.00 (10 point scale)- 38.9 (100 point scale) 10 SMU - 0.68 (10 point scale)- 30.2 (100 point scale)

First game at old Eagle Stadium in 1947 and a few since

"What are people gonna say after my boys whip 'um?"

Looks like ULM is startin' to pick up some early committments. They have verbals from a DE and OL so far. Here's an interesting post concerning prospects. Wrom: UIVOTQNQEMSFDULHPQQWOYIYZUNNYCGPKYLEJGDGVCJVTLB To: ALL I received several updates from people who attended (watched) the Warhawk football camp last Saturday. Here are a couple of interesting notes ... The two primary areas of focus are QB and DL. ULM has made four offers to QBs (Check out www.WarhawkNation.com for a lilst). A 5th offer is likely to be made to a kid from TX (6'3" 210 lb) who has made a soft verbal to one of the better Conference USA programs. However, the kid attended the Shreveport camp and then visited the campus last week with his parents to attend the Monroe camp. Look for the Warhawks to take the first two commits. [For grins, keep an eye on Ruston's presumed 2007 qb (a possible 2009 candidate?). He's just a junior, but he's legacy ... members of the 40-something crowd will remember his dad quite well.] At DL, (not surprisingly) the staff has placed a premium on size. Of course the Midlothian kid has already committed. He plays at 220 in HS but will likely add 20-30 lbs and play on the line in the 245-250 range at Louisiana-Monroe. One of the local schools sent 3 DLs to the camp, including two 2007 prospects, both of which fit the bill for size. Look for ULM's 2007 class to be more heavily weighted with TX recruits than before. I'm told the student-athletes from Louisiana by and large are having increasing difficulty meet the new NCAA standards for core classes. Charlie has three coaches spending some or all of their time recruiting the Dallas/Houston/East Tx markets (Luke Wells, Steve Farmer, and Kirk Botkin), so it should be no surprise that our first two commitments to the 2008 class are from Texas. Expect more.

Posted on the Muts board by Space Raider. Posted on Sun, Jun. 10, 2007 Coaches play shell game of summer At USC and across SEC, large classes on signing day create season of angst in bid to meet NCAA limits By JOSEPH PERSON - jperson@thestate.com In February, with the ink barely dry on national letters of intent, the signing day buzz at South Carolina focused on the number 10. Steve Spurrier’s third USC recruiting class was the highest-rated group in school history. It cracked the top 10 in the national rankings of every major recruiting service. Four months later, as the humidity settles over Columbia for the summer, Spurrier is crunching a different set of numbers, trying to find room for the 31-player class while keeping the Gamecocks under the NCAA’s scholarship limits. It is a shell game played by nearly all Division I schools this time of year, when recruits finish their high school classes and, in some states, mandatory exit exams. As coaches learn which signees failed to make the grade, the coaches make arrangements to place the players in prep schools or junior colleges. If schools still exceed the 25 scholarship newcomers the NCAA allows each year, coaches will approach signees about “grayshirting,” a relatively recent phenomenon in which players delay their enrollment until January, thus counting against the following year’s scholarship numbers. While the process occurs everywhere, it appears to take on greater urgency in the Southeastern Conference, whose schools signed more players than any of the other five BCS conferences during the past six years, based on an analysis of recruiting classes from 2002 through 2007. SEC schools signed an average of 25.1 players per class during that period, according to Rivals.com’s recruiting database and information found on the schools’ Web sites. Big 12 schools had an average of 24.7 signees, followed by the Big East (24.3), Pac-10 (23.2), Big Ten (22.1) and ACC (22.0). The reasons for the disparity are varied. Coaches and recruiting experts say public schools in the South are likely to produce more nonqualifiers than other parts of the country, forcing teams to sign extra players to account for academic casualties. Also, schools on NCAA probation — something the SEC is all too familiar with — often try to re-load quickly after the expiration of sanctions, which often include scholarship reductions. That was not necessarily the case at USC, which returns to the full 85-scholarship allotment this year after losing two scholarships the past two seasons for violations that occurred during the tenure of former coach Lou Holtz. Whatever the reason, Spurrier does not want to make a habit of signing more players than he has spots. “I certainly haven’t always done that. We don’t like to do that, but sometimes it just happens that way,” Spurrier said this week. “You have a few that you’ve been recruiting and they want to come, so you go ahead and oversign. Then you’ve got to work it out with a grayshirt, or if you have some that you don’t think will qualify, it will work itself out.” During the past six years, USC has assembled some of the country’s largest recruiting classes, at least among the major conferences. The Gamecocks have signed an average of 27.8 players. Only Oregon State (29.3) and Mississippi State (28.0) have signed more. Clemson signed 23 players per year during the same period. Applying simple arithmetic principles to the 85-scholarship limit suggests that schools with the largest signing classes also have the highest attrition rates. USC’s 28-player class in 2005 was signed three months after the arrival of Spurrier, who dismissed a handful of players for disciplinary reasons and did not renew the scholarships of several others. This year’s numbers were more a product of momentum. Spurrier landed a couple of unexpected commitments when prep school teammates Ladi Ajiboye and Clifton Geathers, both of whom spurned USC in 2006, contacted USC recruiters and said they wanted to play for the Gamecocks. Oregon State signed 35 players in February, the fourth consecutive year of 30 or more signees for the Beavers. Including USC, the SEC had four schools with 30-member recruiting classes or larger. Mississippi State (34), Tennessee (32) and Auburn (30) were the others. Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer could not recall signing a bigger class during 15 years in Knoxville. “It’s basically to get the upper hand on being able to place a young man that you don’t think is going to make it academically,” Fulmer said. “You can only have so many in a class and an 85 cap, so you just work the process the best that you can — youngsters that you would like to have some say on where he goes to junior college, prep school or wherever.” J.C. Shurburtt, the Southeast recruiting analyst for Rivals.com, said many of the big schools in the South are forced to go overboard on signing day to offset signees expected to fall short of initial eligibility standards. “It’s a sad reality that in the Southern states there are more kids that don’t qualify academically,” said Shurburtt, a South Carolina native. “The schools, by signing more than they have, (it) kind of serves as insurance policies.” A 2005 study by the Manhattan Institute, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, found that Southern states lag behind the rest of the country in high school graduation rates. Seven of the 10 states with the lowest graduation figures were in the South; South Carolina was ranked last at 53 percent. Spurrier said “academics” likely were part of the reason that SEC schools signed more players than other conferences. That is not an issue at Vanderbilt, which does not offer scholarships to potential nonqualifiers, according to Commodores coach Bobby Johnson. Vanderbilt signed an SEC-low 14 players this year and has averaged 21-player classes during the past six years — four fewer than the conference average. “When I first got to Vanderbilt, our fans came up to me (and said), ‘So-and-so school signs 30 a year and we only sign 18,’” said Johnson, a Columbia native who arrived at Vanderbilt in 2002. “I said, ‘Well, you can only have 85 on scholarship. No matter how many you sign.’ “You’ve got to pare them down somehow. I’d rather have fifth-year seniors coming back playing for me than a hotshot freshman.” Johnson suspects some schools use big freshman classes to squeeze out unproductive upperclassmen — a practice he referred to as “planned obsolescence.” “Unless you’re one of those 15 schools that have All-American after All-American lined up — Florida, Southern Cal, Texas — you can’t afford to have two or three defensive backs that can’t play dead in a movie,” Shurburtt said. “You can’t afford to have offensive linemen that don’t work hard in the weight room. So you’ve got to have guys to replace them.” But Georgia coach Mark Richt dismissed the notion that SEC schools were loading up on players, as legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant and former Pitt coach Johnny Majors did before the NCAA implemented scholarship limits. “In the end, you’re only allowed 85 at one time, so you’re not stockpiling,” Richt said. “What some people don’t understand is there may be a kid or two within a class that knows if everything hits right on the button that they may end up coming in the next midyear. So they know that ahead of time. “But then attrition here, attrition there, by the time you get to the first day of class, they all get in.” It is not always so neat and tidy. Georgia Military defensive lineman Jarriel King, a North Charleston native who was part of Spurrier’s first USC recruiting class, plans to re-sign with the Gamecocks after failing to qualify two years ago. This year Spurrier anticipates as many as three signees will come up short academically. That still would leave the Gamecocks a couple of players over the 25-player limit for initial enrollees, perhaps leading to a grayshirt or two. “We still don’t know exactly who all will be here in September. But we’ve got a very good idea,” Spurrier said. “So far it’s worked itself out.” Reach Person at (803) 771-8496. ARTICLE http://www.thestate.com/188/story/87414.html

Posted By Stallion on the pony board. Texas Football didn't have a particularly high assessment of the 2007 SMU Recruiting Class aka "the greatest Class in modern Day History": 1. Texas 5.71 2. Texas A&M 3.43 3. Texas Tech 2.33 4. Baylor 1.84 5. TCU 1.18 6. Houston 1.08 7. UTEP .59 8. North Texas .45 9. Rice .35 10. SMU .28 Being the eternal optimist that I am I believe Texas Football is way off and Phil Bennett's 6th recruiting class is much more mediocre(as opposed to dead last). I'd definitely put SMU's class ahead of Rice and North Texas but I'm just a cheerleading homer. BTW according to Texas Football, their scoring system "assigns points for players who appear in the top 100 lists compiled by Texas newspapers and Internet Scouting Services. Bonus Points were added for national top 100 lists and for nationally ranked out-of-state and junior college players. This system is completely unfair to Coach Bennett who we know doesn't recruit off Top 100 Lists-generally doesn't even bother to offer them. Newspaper lists suck because they measure pre Senior season guesstimates which often has very little to do with how hard a player was actually recruited.

Known committments - Rivals TEXAS Texas - 20 A&M - 18 Texas Tech - 7 North Texas - 7 Baylor - 6 Rice - 4 Houston - 4 TCU - 2 UTEP - 1 SMU - 0 SUN BELT North Texas - 7 FIU - 1 FAU - 0 Arkansas State - 0 ULL - 0 ULM - 0 muts - 0 Troy - 0 WKU - 0 OTHERS Tulsa - 3 La. Tech - 1

I'm with you. The Dickey era is HISTORY. Dodge Ball & the future is much more interesting !

Interesting post by galojay on the Belt board. Fundraising in the Sun Belt (Main Board) posted by galojay , Bowling Green, KY, 06-15-2007, 09:31, from 161.6.161.130 The newest data from the Council for Aid to Education is out for 2006. Just thought it would be interesting to see how support for each school differs. Some of these schools are really missing the boat on alumni support. That is going to be crucial for any school to succeed. Note, these numbers are voluntarily offered by each school. Three of our members chose not to report. Also, as everyone knows, Denver is private. Comparing Private schools to Public schools is apples to oranges. I listed them in ranking order. Total Support FY06 (million) Denver 34.4 UNT 18.6 FAU 17.6 WKU 14.5 FIU 13.9 MTSU 13.1 USA 6.5 ASU 6.3 ULM 2.5 UALR 1.6 ULL na UNO na Troy na Alumni Participation FY06 WKU 16.5% Denver 8.3% ASU 6.7% MTSU 5.1% UNT 4.0% ULM 3.8% FAU 2.1% USA 2.0% FIU 1.8% UALR 0.3% ULL na UNO na Troy na Endowment (million) Denver 223.3 FAU 168.7 WKU 85.7 FIU 80 UNT 67.5 UALR 46.8 ASU 39.8 ULM 38.1 MTSU 29.8 USA 27.1 ULL na UNO na Troy na

Hopefully this is already sinking in with our Mean Green. Wondering how many games we lost in the past two years because of stupid penalties & lack of execution ?

Riley is up as a 5.7 3-star.