rcade

I'm glad you weren't hurt in your car accident, but to me that has nothing to do with the issue of expecting a leader to be a leader. When you're involved in an accident that's going to put the news headline "UNT president strikes 2 pedestrians with SUV" in the paper, that's a negative reflection on the school. Smatresk cares about UNT's reputation, presumably. The best way to manage the situation was to issue a short statement right after it happened so the press and public did not think he was hoping to cover it up. It's weird you think that a personal sense of entitlement drives me to say this. It's hardly controversial to expect accountability from a leader of a public institution. Here's a comment from the DRC website by someone claiming to be one of the pedestrians:

Comparing either of those things to hitting two pedestrians with your car is absurd.

Your expectations are awfully low for the president of a public university of 37,000, who is paid $505,000 a year. A small-town mayor who hit two people with his car would be expected to tell the public what happened. Why is Smatresk exempt from that?

Our conference winning streak spanned four seasons. It began in 2001 and wasn't broken until 2005.

What I know is that you're trying too hard to police the tone around here. Even if that was a worthy use of your time, it's futile. Until we start producing Ws, a lot of longtime Mean Green fans just as committed to the school as you are will be completely fed up.

He's the leader of a university. That job makes his actions a reflection of the school, and as such he has a responsibility to be accountable. There's more at issue here than his own personal criminal or civil liability. If the circumstances are as minor as the story describes, he could have issued a statement through the school explaining that the day after it occurred. Getting ahead of a story is usually a smarter move than letting it look like you had something to hide.

For me, "Fritz wins" is the only part of the sentence that matters. I want a winner in UNT no matter what playing style it takes. I think a lot of high school players care more about winning than winning with style. Those Dickey teams didn't seem to mind grinding it out during the four-year winning streak. I can remember a lot of fans being happy too.

This isn't a "personal matter." He's the president of UNT and struck two people with his car. It looks bad for Smatresk to say nothing about this when it happened. Instead, he waited to see if the media found out about it, and when they did offered no explanation. As the school president, I think he'd expect more from other leaders at the school who work under him.

You're cheerleading too hard. Just because you like the hire doesn't mean it wasn't open to fair criticism. There's a case to be made we should've gone another direction and hired someone with head coaching experience and a stronger Texas background, just as there was a case to be made when McCarney was hired that he wasn't the right choice. Littrell hasn't proven himself yet, and pretending otherwise just to be go-team-go is a bunch of hot air. Those of you who think there's too much negativity on GMG should put the blame where it belongs -- on RV. Negative feedback is a rational response to the product he's put out there the past decade.

After all the talk we'd pay $1 million a year, the actual salary is a bit underwhelming. We'll be paying Littrell a good salary by CUSA standards -- around 3rd or 4th of all the coaches, if I understand how USA Today's http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/rankings work -- but not enough to make the football world think that UNT is stepping up its money game. The claim he took less pay so assistants could earn more is unproven. Absent a credible source, I am skeptical that is happening.

NT Daily reporters are not university employees. If the school told the Daily not to report something, the reporters and editors there would report it -- and report the attempt to censor them. This is a silly conspiracy theory. Sidway covered FC Dallas, had finals for the fall semester and the Daily doesn't produce editions during finals. All three could have caused him to set aside his RV interview plans until the holidays are over. Also, RV is by many accounts done when his current contract expires. He's hardly someone you'd curry favor with to build a sports journalism career.

I don't buy this. There are plenty of college assistants at a stage of their careers where they would have considered an offer to work under Dodge at UNT, especially if the job title was a promotion. He could've found ambitious coaches looking for their first shot to be an OC or DC in FBS, for instance. The biggest obstacle back then for attracting coaches under Dodge wasn't him. It was the salary we could offer. Austin Westlake has a live audio stream for the game at WestlakeNation.Com. It's weird how professional the broadcast sounds.

Clutch free throws by Tac at the end! Nice win.

WFAA is reporting on video of the shooting. A former Dallas prosecutor who has seen it:

Here we go ... listen on KNTU. This is only the second time we've played LaSalle. The first was in 1990 at the Montana Classic and we lost 71-66. REVENGE!

That criticism comes from the left, from libertarians like Radley Balko at the Washington Post and from far right black helicopter types. Balko writes about criminal justice and civil liberties, particularly in the context of the war on drugs.

The problem with this idea is that bad guys aren't the only kind of people who see you looking scary. If you're dressed like a soldier going house to house in Fallujah, what do you think innocent people and children are going to make of that? There's a societal cost to police looking militarized, and I think it also affects the mindset of some cops and members of the public. It makes police work into an us vs. them situation.

Thanks for the link. I've never seen video of the end of that game and the goalposts being torn down. I was Daily editor and caught hell from our journalism profs for running a photo of the goalposts coming down on our front page. It's cool to see what got me in so much trouble. :-)

Every beer he drinks should be green too. And his only liquor should be absinthe.

A lot of college football coaches are sneaky -- look at Bobby Petrino. Littrell could be saying all the right things about RV and UNT leadership while privately having reservations. The salary and proximity to Oklahoma would make a lot of us, in his position, willing to silence our doubts. I don't think we'll know Littrell's level of belief in UNT until he's tested by adversity.

I know you want to blame Obama, but you're out of your mind if you think this is a new mentality. The public has always wanted information quickly after a police shooting or a major crime. They want that information so much I earned a bachelor's degree in providing it. (In hindsight, I should've double-majored. I do most of my work now in computer science.)

True, but it wouldn't take much information for cops to quell a lot of speculation and doubt: Where did the cop encounter McMillan, what words (if any) were exchanged, how far were they apart and what did McMillan do before the cop fired? I passed along a tip about the Reddit user to the NT Daily. If he checks out as legitimate, his account helps clarify what appears to have taken place.

Injuries on offense. They've lost Steve Smith, Joe Flacco and Justin Forsett in the last month. But they were a pretty average team with those players healthy too. But on the bright side, their kicker sings a nice "Ave Maria":

I was a news reporter for over a decade at the Star-Telegram. Police often told us an account of what happened in a shooting, based on the officers and witnesses who were there, long before any investigations could be completed. Police departments choosing to provide little information after a shooting is a good way to make the public suspicious.

Here's that person's comment history on Reddit, which shows he had a history of talking about living in Denton that predates this incident: https://www.reddit.com/user/BitchYouAintNoNerd This also appears to be him, based on a username he includes in a Reddit comment: https://www.instagram.com/raul.s92/