rcade

Why would the Mean Green have fans? Because people who graduated from UNT have a stronger lifelong tie to UNT than any other school that plays football. Because even in down years it's still a good time to be at a college football game drinking beer, eating nachos and yelling obscenities when they run a draw play on third and long. Because the Green Brigade is great. Because we have a Victory Cannon. Because supporting a school you didn't attend more than you support your own school causes genital shrinkage. Everybody knows this. Ask Craig Miller. He knows it better than anybody.

The people leading this effort are a bunch of venture capitalist types and former NBA player Grant Hill.

Holy crap. I had a flashback to us being in CUSA with UTEP. Judy was our commissioner. Our games were on Stadium right after American 7s football games attended only by player's moms.

I don't see a problem with our AD reaching out to the good ol' boy network of other ADs as everybody grapples with constant realignment chaos.

If this happens I'll be sad to lose a Texas school in our conference, even though it is a Texas-sized trip to get there. Edit: UTEP is not in our conference. Who knew? Not me.

Looks like he dabbled in music 4-6 years ago:

The lack of a written agreement was dumb. But there may be communications that left a paper trail about the offer, such as voicemails, emails and so on. That assistant coach's emails are subject to FOIA requests so the media could be digging into them. After throwing for 5,913 yards and 59 touchdowns and running for 3,583 yards and 38 touchdowns in four seasons at Holy Cross, Sluka is unlikely to have transferred to UNLV without the incentive of an NIL payday.

It would be improper inducement in some states, but in others would not be illegal. Nevada has one of the most lax NIL laws in the U.S. It mainly prohibits an athlete from entering into an NIL contract that conflicts with any contract between the school and the athlete. It also requires athletes to disclose their NIL agreements to the school and has this provision: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/81st2021/Bill/7714/Text I guess that class was too late to teach Sluka to get the deal in writing before coming to a school.

Why should he give up his final year of eligibility to a school that made a false promise of NIL money? It's not like he can go back and get paid that money after the season. If they didn't care to make it right now they would be laughing at him if he asked for it later.

Per Pet Thamel of ESPN, Sluka said that a UNLV assistant coach made a verbal agreement promising he'd get a minimum of $100,000 in NIL money if he transferred there and all he's been given a $3,000 moving stipend. After he tried to get them to honor the agreement they countered by only offering him $12,000. If that's true I can't blame him for leaving while he could still redshirt. Though it is yet another thing that is screwing over fans of college football. It seems weird to me that anyone -- athlete or collective -- would do a deal verbally, but this is just a $100,000 deal. Neither side is playing in the big leagues here. While people are asking what school is going to trust him, I think a question just as pertinent is what athletes will trust UNLV? If you can't uphold that deal for a quarterback you're not worth talking to in the NIL era.

The pitch is slightly more TV money than the existing G5 conferences and whatever the PAC-2 is willing to share from the enormous pile of money the departing schools left behind. Personally that's not enough for me to want UNT to join. But I can't say I'm thrilled that UTSA got invited to the "We Reject the PAC-12" party and we didn't.

Choking hazard Boba Fett or the replacement?

As a Mean Green fan I'm unfamiliar with this 3-4 but if it's a new thing it just might catch on. Great win. Four more to 7!

Nice, but can we get a green Yeti with a logo of a diving eagle whose bloated stomach contains a T giving an N the business from behind?

I don't think any G5 conference has unquestionable dominance in era of NIL and transfer portal chaos. Everyone in the G5 gets a big chunk of their talent poached after the season. The new PAC is a lot of Mountain West, whose top ranked team was unranked in 2023, No. 24 in 2022 (Fresno State), No. 24 in 2021 (Utah State), No. 24 in 2020 (San Jose State) and No. 22 in 2019 (Air Force). Doesn't look like dominance to me. I'd just call it one of the better G5s.

I don't see any chance of the new PAC-12 being treated like a Power conference. The big college football powers, along with ESPN and Fox, see a lot of money in a Power 2 that looks like the NFL. ESPN talking heads like Kirk Herbstreit spend a lot of time delegitimizing the ACC, hoping to nudge it towards a PAC-like collapse when the big schools chew their foot off to escape the bear trap. If we moved from the American to the new PAC, it would be joining another G5 with a slightly better TV deal.

I don't know defensive schemes but against good teams our 3-3-5 looks like VIP treatment for running backs. They always get to skip the line. Even a half-decent running game is going to look strong if the backs are always scampering past the big dogs.

The bar was probably a conference championship or a meaningful win against an OOC opponent, such as bowl game victory. Littrell couldn't do that from 2019-22. How many FBS head coaches get that long without either and stay in their jobs?

It sounds like you miss pre-2019 Seth, because everything you listed is from that era aside from Mason Fine's senior year, three more bowl games and the 2022 CUSA championship (all losses). Everyone misses that Seth, but something changed after he pulled his name out of the Kansas State coaching search in December 2018. We went from this happy youthful Coach-Taylor Seth ... ... to this much richer much unhappier live-action-Fred-Flintstone Seth:

What part of the Seth Littrell era do you miss most -- the .500 records, calling a six-win season a success, never winning a bowl game or shitting the bed every time we played a bigger OOC opponent after 2018?

Getting back to the topic I can appreciate going for a defense-minded coach next time we hire. Everybody wants offense offense offense. We might get a better caliber of coach if we put more value on a defensive guru. Ironically the coach who brought us the best sustained defensive performance was an offense guy. Darrel Dickey came to Denton after seven jobs as an offense assistant coach or OC, then after he was fired has worked nine more jobs on that side of the ball.

Being a North Texas fan means becoming a connoisseur of catastrophe. You develop refined taste for what separates a normal loss from one for the ages.

Going to a bowl shouldn't be enough. After giving Mr. 500 the boot can we at least raise our definition of success to 7 wins?

No. We need to see how the Mean Green play in the AAC.

The SFA offense scored 13 points, their quarterback overthrew open receivers all night long and they only got 67 yards on the ground. Saying they played better than we did today is saying nothing at all. We stunk in all phases of the game. It was a total performance.