rcade

Not much love in Ruston for a team leading CUSA West.

On Comcast Xfinity here it's airing on FCSC (Fox College Sports Central), channel 724.

Time to make your pick. We're a 30-point underdog with a 63.5 point over/under from the last Vegas line I saw. It's 58 degrees with light showers in Ruston. I'd love to pick another Canales-led win here, but dammit, Jim, he's a doctor, not a miracle worker. I think we'll be down big in the fourth but get some garbage time scores to make it a bit more respectable. La. Tech 46, UNT 23

I think it means "I'm really pissed off someone at UNT leaked my interview."

Posting on this board is a waste of time? I wish someone had told me that 13 years ago.

Don't let them get you down. If everyone mutes you, we'll raise money to put your comments on banners.

A 43% winning percentage would make us worse than two-thirds of FBS teams. You need to set your sights higher. We didn't build a new stadium and increase our coach's salary to the $700,000 range to be mediocre.

If we bring Dickey back, would it be a package deal with Diet Coke Boy? He's a Diet Coke Man now. They grow up so fast!

Small minded? It's funny how little needs to happen before you believe good times are ahead. A few school officials offer some organizational platitudes about positive change -- the same kind of platitudes any new official would say in their position -- and you're a true believer on here attacking dissenters. Let me guess: You're a team player with a can-do attitude. There's no limit to what we can achieve as long as we pull together. We're good enough, we're smart enough, and doggone it, people like us! There is no new leadership in UNT athletics re-inventing how things are done. There's RV, producing excuses instead of wins. Until that changes, some of us are withholding financial support on the principle that you don't throw good money after bad.

Why would you say he's broken -- isn't he coaching another big Texas high school with "lake" in the name? That's a good omen for him.

This is like losing 38 to 14 and saying "take away just four plays and we win that game 14-10." Those plays happened. UTSA gave up points on big plays too. Both teams were extremely inept through long stretches of the game. Suggesting we dominated the game isn't borne out in the stats. They had 31 first downs to our 19, 475 total yards to our 371 and 15 more minutes of possession.

I like Canales. But I don't think turning a total disaster into a partial disaster is enough to justify the $700,000-or-higher salary UNT can afford to pay. He would have to turn UNT into a good team for me to think he's worthy of consideration. That would require winning everything but the Tennessee game and playing well in that loss. But we're 29-point dogs to La Tech. We're probably not having feel-good conversations about Canales next week. The only way I see Canales being a viable option is if we get into the dire situation where nobody we want is willing to come here.

If RV is on the way out the door in the near future, that's more reason to keep him away from the football hire. A prospective new coach with options is going to need somebody in leadership who backs him and will be around for a while.

3-4 is a 43% winning percentage. Would you want UNT to hire a coach who won 43% of his games if his name wasn't Mike Canales?

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I don't feel bad because a player you talked to is upset. I'll bet he was more personally invested in McCarney keeping his job than RV, but RV wasn't worried about the players having sadfeels when he fired their coach. The players have bigger things to worry about than the AD's job. They have a few more games left to salvage their season.

I don't understand how players could quit on a coach at homecoming. Even if you don't like your coach, it's your reputation on the line as much as his. No player wants to make SportsCenter for the worst-ever FBS loss to an FCS team. They're playing for an interim duck in Canales, but that hasn't stopped them from putting in a strong effort.

LOL. Didn't fans used to yell "draw" all the time on third and long, knowing that Dickey was going to call it again?

Well said. The losing bothers me, but the acceptance of losing bothers me more. Upgrading our facilities should have made losing less acceptable, because millions in student fees and donations were spent on those with the expectation of better days ahead. Instead, RV asks that we accept his losing records in football and basketball because we have better facilities.

The New Orleans Bowl victory was 13 years ago, only one year into RV's tenure as AD. He didn't hire that coach. RV inherited that success more than he created it. We had success under Johnny Jones in basketball, but for five years we haven't had a winning record in our conference and never won our conference tournament. RV's record there is not an argument to keep him in his job. As for the Heart of Dallas Bowl victory, it wasn't enough to save McCarney's job. How can it be used to save RV's? For the past 10 years, our football team has won 31.8% of its games -- not counting this season: http://football.stassen.com/cgi-bin/records/calc-wp.pl?start=2004&end=2014&rpct=30&min=5&ss=on&se=on&by=Wins That puts us 111 out of 118 schools. Why do you want more of the same?

Not for long, if RV makes the next hire. It will show that UNT's leaders are far too comfortable with mediocrity. I can support my alma mater without paying any attention to RV's dumpster fire.

Nobody is proud of failure. No alumni or fan left the worst loss by an FBS school to an FCS school in history and was feeling pride. Whether you're proud of the entire school isn't the issue. We're talking about a specific part of the school -- an athletics program that pays the coach and AD $1 million a year in combined salaries. The only reason to pay that kind of money is to put a product on the field in the top sports that wins and gets alumni fired up and thinking about UNT when they open their checkbooks. If we're willing to suck forever and still express our rah rah rah Mean Green pride, we could go back to being the largest school in the Southland Conference.

Can we stop talking about UNT athletes as if they were children in a Pop Warner league? The banner is about 14 years of failure under RV. If the athletes can accept that McCarney was fired for his win-loss performance, they should be able to understand why fans want to hold RV accountable for his dismal performance. These are people who understand being judged on your performance. It happens to them every time they take the field. If they don't perform, they can lose their spot on the team. What you should have told that athlete was that fans are tired of seeing athletes like him come to UNT and experience no success, so we want a new AD who can change that.

It's easy to say in your twenties that you're going to support UNT athletics no matter what forever. Let's see how you're talking in a couple of decades when they keep finding new and bigger ways to disappoint you, and you start to fear that the last words you'll hear on this Earth are RV saying "my last 13 hires were good at the time I made them."

Fair enough. I do care, but after 14 years of RV's version of UNT sports I'm ready to either see a change at the top of athletics or stop caring. I like beer, too, but it tastes better when I'm not crying in it.