Aquila_Viridis

In the non-athletic realm, I will take this opportunity to mention that in the latest Forbes rankings, NT moved up 17 places from 570 to 553. In the US News rankings we are still in the National Universities group below #200 that does not get a published rank. But at least the Forbes one is some good progress.

Why stop with Texas?? It makes sense for the country, the whole world, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, and all the other universes!

We need $12 million a year and we can get most of that from a larger student fee. It does not matter what all those other schools do. We just need to win against the schools we play and not play schools we have no chance of beating.

No way was he going to say he's gonna do something about the bball coach right away. And I think his focus immediately should be on doing everything possible to promote the football program. So I have no issue with it. I am confident that bball will be fixed when it can be fixed. I am very happy with the statement about getting 'little' things right. There are hundreds of such things that NT has done wrong that collectively make the difference between how a great program conducts itself and how a shabby one does.

I think there is significance to it and I am encouraged by the hire though I would like to have seen NT hire someone else's not interim AD. I do not know about the limitations of what NT could do for compensation though. It is getting very tiresome watching our giant university limp through limitations that much smaller universities don't have. I can only hope that our new AD has it in him to finally move NT past this frustrating and enduring era.

I would expect Old Dominion to be a much more attractive candidate than LT since OD is outspending the rest of the conference by a mile and is in a metro area not the middle of nowhere.

See. It works!

Now if only you'd had them make the cake in the shape of an outstanding coach, we'd be getting into the Big 12. But seriously, WOW!

What I meant was a mistake, was using up capital for a stadium, at a time when it should have been used to find a way to fund a much higher level of coaching staff than we've had all these last several years. And by capital I do not mean only money. Then maybe by this point in time we could be fixing the stadium problem. Even today we are going very cheap on coaches. That stadium won't get us in the Big 12, but if we had been winning all the last several years, NT would be on the list regardless of a dump stadium, cause we could just play the games in Dallas or Arlington til we built one. Again, one of the worst mistakes I've ever seen, and not being on the list at this critical time is one of the consequences.

Well I do regret that I put everyone in the same boat. So no, I should not address all of the club level group collectively. However, my point is that more and more I feel that there is a set of people, and definitely not all in the club level, that care more about the game as a social event. In fact, at one point I felt this group was very desperate because they were concerned they might lose this social opportunity altogether. For this relatively very small group, the social aspect seems more important to them than winning or having a team is important even to the rest of us. I see this social model sort of working right now for Ole Miss. But it won’t work for long. And it took them a LONG time for it to bear any fruit. And Ole Miss is about as different a place from NT as there is anywhere. This is not going to ever work at NT. There are too few such people for NT. For NT, there are a lot more people who care, or would care, about winning. But I have never heard an NT president say ‘we are committed to winning’. Yes we needed a new stadium but not right away, and the money for it would have come if we had been winning all these years. People said, ‘well we need it to recruit’. No, not with a high profile coach, then the stadium would not have been needed for that. And look to the pitiful extent it has actually helped with recruiting and to the game results from that. That was one of the worst mistakes I have ever seen and we are living the consequences now. I think the leaders at NT can’t even imagine what would happen, if they got committed to winning, set a higher fee on the incoming vast number of students (so known up front) and used the money to hire a coach and staff who would - for certain, not maybe - have extreme success at our level (and no I don’t condone extreme discipline issues), then experienced sustained winning, and even more importantly - competitiveness against P5 opponents. That little stadium would not be able to contain all the people. You have like 7 million people down there within a short radius. It takes a very tiny fraction of that to make 100,000 people. That number of people is not going to come out because of the fine venue and tailgating. I do think there is a group of people, that have had opportunities to be heard, who do not want to see that happen, and that makes me really angry. Maybe the university has only heard the viewpoint of these socializers, because for the most part they're the only ones still around. Of course the university is not going to get the input of many people who care about winning, because those people are mostly not around due to lack of winning. And the university has not made much effort to go out and ask about it, and even if they did, a lot of people they might ask would not even understand because the concept of it is so foreign. But if they saw it, then they would understand.

The reasons your access comment struck a nerve are: (i) the reason you get access are because the program is small time, thus it is taken to mean that you want the program to remain small time; and (ii) you juxtaposed it with Alabama which (a) can only be taken as bragging, and (b) tells everyone you have essentially jumped ship when it comes to caring about success of a program. There were no positive reasons to mention (ii), so you should not be surprised that it makes some of us sick. I am so tired of bandwagon fans like all the Steelers fans all over the place who have never been to Pittsburgh for example. That's the kind of thing you're doing. For people who invested in the stadium Club level, I hope you enjoy your hobnobbing. Pandering to the few of you is what has the program in the toilet. No doubt you find that sentiment ironic given your support. The university thinking such few would dig it out is one of the fatal errors they made.

To anyone who thought the stadium would 'vault the program forward', I take this fine opportunity to say 'I told you so.' What we needed much more was a major level up in coaching. Failure to direct the necessary funds to that is why there is no one in whatever stadium the Mean Green plays in.

So much for the 'The old boss was holding him back.' concept. What a loser!

What in the world caused you to mention him? I didn't see anything to be excited about.

Stay your fixation. Most of our opponents' fans are not that clever.

We no more need to change our name than USC needs to change theirs. Keeping the name tied to the region was smart. It is an awesome region, unlike for example Western Kentucky or Southern Mississippi. Just need to do everything possible to promote people thinking of the metropolitan area as 'The North Texas Region'. And unlike USC who has an entire metro further South in San Diego, there is no more Northerly region in Texas. I agree NT has made progress in some absolute ways since the 80s, but relatively speaking, other universities in the state have made so much more progress that in some ways we essentially regressed.

The situation is never hopeless. All it takes is leaders who think it's important on their own. As long as the leaders think, 'well I'll ask around and see if very many people think it's important' then there will be failure. On the other hand, when they just decide to have a successful program and then do have one, then if they asked around they would find a lot of people who care. That's what being a leader is about. We haven't had that before. Maybe we have that now. There has been a lot of change.

I love the presence of the eagle logo which previously was pretty much limited to athletics. Great move!

I could not tell what the purpose of the meeting was really supposed to be. Do the decision-makers really need to be told to stop running one of the 40 largest colleges in the US like one of the smallest? I guess so, because this little get-together seems like exactly that. It seems like 'cart before the horse'. Instead, hire the right AD and he already knows all the stuff that needs to be done. If NT hired from within, it would cement NT's place as one of the most disproportionately bad athletics programs in college sports, for decades to come. Loved the 'see the results' comment. Yes and you will see those results for another 15 years. So this is not a time for just winging it, or DIY as seems to be happening. On 2014 numbers, there were 36 universities that had more full time undergraduates than NT. Of those, only 6 had athletics programs on par or less than NT. The rest were all well-recognized names. Any expectation other than quickly becoming a well-recognized name is a waste of time. And by 'well' I mean not only the high level of notoriety but also being recognized for doing well. That expectation will guide who should be the AD, then he will lead without the need for consultants.

It's a trap.

It made me so angry that I made a facebook account so I could comment. How liberating.

Damn. I value my privacy so I don't use facebook, or I'd post some extreme comments on that pile of trash. The foolishness that goes on down there is incredible. Based on the article, the only sensible idea from it is NT should hire someone from A&M.

Forget about filling the stadium, not on the horizon right now. And no to playing whatever team your buddy went to. All that matters is winning games. The question is, how are we going to win games? The answer is more money. You aren't going to get hardly a drop of what is needed, from the little bit of attendance from your buddies. I think you have made it about yourself not the university; the event and not the result.

We don't need to do any different conference. We should go full in on the higher student fee concept. It is our opportunity to differentiate, because we ARE different. UTEP for example has all of 13,000 full-time undergrads, to our 24,000. Another $12 million a year will make us a consistent winner in this conference. Some students will complain, but others will take their place. And they are all borrowing so much for other charges with no idea what those are going to, that the complaint about athletic fee would be hollow. Yes our total subsidy will be bigger than most everyone else, but WE are bigger (a lot) than most everyone else. That seems to be routinely forgotten.

The MWC geography is not comparable. I have been in favor of MWC for a long time if ever available to us. But short of that, I am not interested in being joined with TX State, Rice or any of those schools in Louisiana and MS and not NMSU either. I don't think there is long term upside in it. We have to look forward at what has potential to grow into something.