rcade

They're 45 minutes from my house, so I know this one: It's a historic black college in Daytona Beach. But I've lived in North Florida 18 years without hearing a word about their football program. They don't even generate any interest around here. Another RV fumble.

Fritz makes $500,000 a year at Georgia Southern with a max bonus of $287,500. He made $35,000 in bonuses in 2014-15. McCarney made $721,600 a year with a max bonus of $945,000. He made $0 in bonuses in 2014-15. Source: http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/

You didn't read the second line. The engraving reads: Never Forget This Was a Good Hire

I want all of the Texas schools in CUSA to build decent programs so that our games with each other increase in stature. But do I feel sympathy for their failings? No. I'm too focused on ours.

HELL NO to Mangino. Mangino's out of head coaching six years and only lasted 21 months as Iowa State OC before he was just fired. He had a great 2007, but was dumped two years later. At Kansas he was notorious for his lack of self control and anger issues. In one incident, after getting 21 parking tickets on campus at the same spot, he saw a student employee had written him another, chased him down in his car, then got out and screamed at him for over 10 minutes. Given his extreme weight, I'd say he's a pretty old 59 for a build-from-scratch job that needs a lot of vitality. And he'd start bad-mouthing UNT when things got tough faster than you can say "I saw Coach Mangino at Golden Corral Buffet."

I don't think other openings matter too much, unless they're at schools and conferences close to UNT/CUSA in the FBS pecking order. Any coach who might be offered a job at a big school isn't going to take our offer just because we made it quickly. He'll wait to see what's out there for him. A bigger factor is whether we offer more than we did McCarney. His compensation was good for a CUSA coach (fourth overall), but it seems like $1 million is where we can start hoping for a splash coaching hire.

It was a mistake for Canales to kick a field goal when we were down by 21 in the third. But I do think he's done some good things since he became the first head coach we've ever had twice. I like the way he talked after the game today too. I hope he can make our beaten-down team believe in themselves.

I lived close to TCU's stadium in 1994. I don't remember a football culture like the one that video depicts. Instead, the place was cavernously empty on game days and the team had two winning seasons out of the last 10 under Jim Wacker. Media attention was sparse and general fan interest in DFW was low. While I agree with you that UNT should have developed a better football culture, a lot of TCU's came about because of winning. We have to win to see those kinds of changes.

You have an inexhaustible list of suggestions for work somebody else should be doing. This isn't a professional PR campaign. It's a grass-roots effort by some fans that will either spur other fans to action or not. We're not going to plan out "messaging" and "strategy" like we are trying to get Americans to switch from Bud to Coors.

I want everyone associated with UNT athletics, the school president and the Board of Regents to sign a pledge: "If I ever say it is tough to recruit at North Texas, that comment can be taken as my immediate resignation."

I should've put money on that. The banner plane would be a squadron. ;-). Jeffrey Wilson gaining 138 yards on 17 carries was pretty good, but I don't think that was what kept their scoring down. Our defense got bigger and meaner at halftime.

Horrible tragedy. The crash happened at 10:31 a.m. She looks drunk in the mugshot. How is somebody getting blotto at that hour?

If you think the coaching hire will be made with urgency, your process would still be going on when RV announced the new coach and set us on his path for another 3-5 years. We need as many fans as possible contacting Smatresk to say they're ready for a change at AD. That requires a public campaign that can reach as many people as possible who care about Mean Green football. I did contact Smatresk. I got a generic response about my mail being received. He then made public comments that made it sound like he's committed to business as usual and RV made a bunch of public comments that showed zero recognition of our problems and dismissed his critics as a "minority." It didn't seem like complaints like mine were being heard.

We had to destroy Mean Green Village in order to save it.

Then what is the way to get a positive result? Let RV pick a third coach, start giving money again and hope really really hard?

Marshall's a 27-point favorite with a 59 over/under, from an odds site I just checked. But the weather looks rainy. I'm going to be bold and predict an almost respectable 30-13 loss with some nice running stats for the Mean Green.

Rick Villarreal has made around $3 million dollars in salary during a decade in which our football team won 31% of its games, putting us in the bottom 10 of all FBS schools over that period. That's a lot of money. Why do you think he's paid so much? He's expected to deliver a product in football and basketball that successfully markets the university. It is not a personal attack to call in public for one of the university's best-compensated employees to be accountable for poor job performance after 14 years on the job. Smatresk has replaced an AD as a university president. He's unlikely to view a "Fire Rick Villarreal" banner in personal terms. He will assess Villarreal in business terms. If he decided to stick it to disgruntled fans by keeping Villarreal, it would be an act of self-destruction. The failure in revenue sports will become an albatross around his neck too.

Our efforts to become Texas State occurred long before our name change to UNT in 1988. Texas State pulled it off by first becoming Texas State-San Marcos in 2003. They had to know a lot of people would just call them Texas State, and in 2013 this helped them persuade the state lege to let them drop the "San Marcos." It's a brilliant bit of marketing that will pay dividends for them for many decades. In the 1970s and earlier, several Texas schools wanted to become Texas State, according to this story by historian Michael Phillips (a friend of mine, coincidentally). He mentions the desire to become "Texas State" in an article about how the Texas A&M University name change in 1963 was received on that campus: http://jmichaelphillips.blogspot.com/2012/01/earl-rudder-and-era-of-radical-change.html At this point, the North Texas region is more populous than 33 states and DFW is the largest metropolitan area in the South (fourth largest in the U.S.). Being the largest public school in an area this big and economically powerful, and having the name University of North Texas, is an enormous asset.

Bingo. It is stating the obvious that banner donors and most GMG diehards are not writing six- or seven-figure checks to influence UNT athletics. If we had that kind of money to buy us a big voice on campus, we wouldn't be complaining here. We'd be having a private come-to-Jesus meeting with RV and President Smatresk about how our money has bought us a ceaseless series of Saturday ass-whippings. But people who think average fans don't matter should never complain about attendance. Average fans can collectively contribute a lot of money, and you can't fill a stadium with just 17 big donors.

The wider college football world will stop calling us North Texas State when we put a winning team on the field that makes a strong impression on them.

I think a large majority of UNT fans want a change at AD. The poll here was 93% in favor of firing Rick Villarreal, the banner was funded in around 30 hours, fan attendance has plummeted, the Mean Green Club membership level is dismal and there's no one on GoMeanGreen or anywhere else making a positive argument for Villarreal's performance on the field in football or basketball. Many of the people who oppose the banner concede that they are not Villarreal supporters. They just don't like the tactic because mean people suck. Even the Denton Record-Chronicle and UNT beat writer Brett Vito have become openly critical of the dismal state of our revenue sports under Villarreal. You're not making a positive argument for Villarreal either. Instead, you're attacking a group of longtime fans for trying something out of sheer desperation. Half the time you post ridicule that our efforts are puny and will amount to nothing. The other half you beg us to stop because we could cause dire consequences forever. Make up your mind.

That's not how buyouts work in athletics. The buyout is for McCarney's future money owed to him in 2016, 2017 and 2018. He's not getting it in a lump sum now -- it's still going to be paid over time. One of the terms is that we owe him less if he takes another coaching job, based on what that job pays. That's another reason we wouldn't pay him it all up front.

A lot of fans are going to see the banner who don't read GMG and don't read the media outlets that have written about it. Assuming that the number of people still going to games this year can accurately be described with the word "lot."

Can you name a single FBS school that has an independent fan organization with actual power? UNT leaders could be as deaf to your hypothetical Not the Mean Green Booster Club as they are to fans speaking out today.

I hope you're right because I'd like to see these players achieve some success (and our giant freshman class to see its first win), but our defense is giving up basketball scores. That puts a lot of pressure on an offense which is still a work in progress.