The Fake Lonnie Finch

Now I'm really old. The UH coach who recruited him was just leaving Tulsa Union when I went up to Tulsa for grad school. Looks like a hell of a recruiter for the Cougars.

Stupid. Just throw NMSU and Idaho in the conference and make two seven-team division (MAC-like). La. Tech, UTSA, and Texas State to the Sun Belt. Throw in Lamar and USA, who is coming eventually anyway, and make it a two-division conference as well: East Arkansas State Florida International Florida Atlantic Middle Tennessee South Alabama Troy Western Kentucky West North Texas UTSA Texas State Lamar Louisiana Tech Louisiana ULM Hells damn bells! Throw UTEP and NMSU in with the West, and we could simply walk away from the eastern-most elements of the Sun Belt and have our own conference. Everyone should get off their high horses and swallows a little pride. The whole thing is stupid and annoying. It's gotten so ridiculously stupid. I know it's about the money, but that's what makes the whole damn system a charade. The BCS, the NCAA, all of it. It's not about "amateur athletics" anymore. It's about the "traditional powers" cutting off as big a slice of the pie as they can. Just walk away from the bastards. Can't the F'brains that run programs in the Sun Belt and other conferences just grow some balls and ignore the "traditional powers"? Make it real. Make it semi-pro. Do something else besides making all of these stupid false gestures towards "amateur athletics" and the BCS. Call their bluff! Start paying the players in the non-AQ conference and see how fast the BCS charade comes down. Cowards. Liars, thieves, and cowards. Every last damn school president and athletic administrator that continually perpetrates the ongoing fraud of "amateur athletics" in the 21st Century Television Contract world. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Monkeyfarts.

This whole thing is stupid. Can someone please tell me why the WAC and MWC don't just join up and form one conference? It makes the most sense geographically.

I like that he's patient. Doesn't seem to jump around alot. Waits for his hole, then hits it. Good discipline.

I think that's saying something about the job these coaches are doing. Their enthusiasm is getting the interest of some darn good players. Still so pumped about Swarn!

Jeez, I'm getting old. The C-State coach recruiting him is Tim Duffie. I think I remember Duffie playing for Texas Tech in the late 90s. Just doesn't seem that long ago. I also think Duffie played at Carter, so this one might be hard to pry away. But, I'm hoping we can. I'd like to see us take this kind of kid, put 20-30 pounds on him, and move him to linebacker, the way TCU has done so well; and, OU as well with their linebacker who was a running back in high school, Travis Lewis.

Love the class that's being put together. Much more emphasis on defense. That, I love. It doesn't matter what type of offense you run if your opponents can't score on you very often.

Any schools offense tends to look worse when their defense is crappy. Dickey's offenses looked fine when our defense was doing well. Utah State and New Mexico haven't exactly been Baltimore Raven or Pittsburgh Steeler clones. Defense wins championsship, not offense. Count the number of championships Mike Leach and Hal Mumme rang up at this level. We're looking at a big, fat zero. Steve Spurrier won his national title the year he hired Bob Stoops to coordinate his defense. Defense, yo. If Texas State plays good defense, Mickey Mouse could be their offensive coordinator and be fine.

Agree. Great marketing (thanks to the movie Fletch and word of mouth), average burger.

This is awesome. We got a kid a Stoops brother wanted in their secondary. This is huge in my book. I never thought I'd live to see the day when we were taking recruits from Mike, Bob, or Mark Stoops! I hope his teammate joins as well. This Justin Gaines fella, he can recruit! If he can coach as well as he recruits, we'll be in tall cotton in short order!

There's nothing wrong with reminiscing about Hayden Fry. It's just the Dodge eating a cheeseburger thing...what was the point? The man and his son are gone. They didn't do what they set out to do here. It's no big deal. Not every hire is the right hire. This isn't the only hire in the history of college football that didn't work out. We seem to cling to failure around here. Dodge bangers banged on Darrell Dickey for year with no particular point to make. Why do we have to play it out with Dodge? It's no less pointless with Dodge than it was with Dickey? I'm sure the Dodge bangers understand by now that he failed here. There's no point in rehashing it to them week after week.

A place where the obsessed one way or the other can keep posting to themselves without interfering with the North Texas football talk? Maybe make it a VIP-type thing where only those who want to discuss them can go do it in private?

I'll admit that I've been disappointed on the DL front. With QBs, it's exactly what I thought we needed, two preps and one JUCO. Love that the JUCO, Thompson, and Baine will allow the preps to redshirt. I've been waiting for good neews out of the recruiting end of this thing. And, I've got to tell you, while I've been anxious, if Swarn is the type of recruit we begin to land now and in the future, it's worth the wait and a little worry. I think maybe some of the problem is that in the past we haven't had the type of players that many BCS schools were fighting for. Guys like Swarn with legitimate options all over the country (Arizona and Iowa) - that's the type of player we want. We've had very few of those. My hope is that that our roster full of "diamonds in the rough", "projects", and "stealth recruiting" signees will be coached beyond their potential, mix with Swarn-types, and turn this program into Big 12-2 worthy. I know I dream big here, but I just can't help believing that if Mike Stoops wanted this guy that he isn't a legitimate BCS-type safety. And, if we can draw this type, then why shouldn't we be aiming for the Big 12-2 instead of the MWC or C-USA? The Stoops brothers have long earned their spurs as secondary experts. If this guy was a Stoops guy and ends up here, that's major. We get one or two of this type this year, and half a dozen or more next year, this thing will jet from doormat to BCS noisemaker in short order. There's no reason that we can't dream and achieve the things TCU, Boise State, and Utah have dreamed and achieved. It begins with legitimate coaching, which we now have, and the players with big time potential to execute their marching orders on game day. I'm a bit scared at this point with the recruiting, but very eager to see the end result. Even if we don't get Swarn, I'm encouraged that this level of recruit is now giving us serious looks.

Happy if the commitment is true. I'm getting really worried about the DT situation. We've barely got enough bodies there to play a 3-4 much less a 4-3. Jones is a very blue collar place north of OKC. If we get this kid, he'll be hard-nosed.

Blankenship is different than Graham in that he's not ever going to go anywhere else. He's already long had a home paid off in one of the better parts of Tulsa. He's been in Tulsa virtually his entire adult life. He's already set and doesn't need the money. As a Tulsa grad, I'm not crazy about the Blankenship hire from an experience standpoint. But, from the perspective of looking at the human aspect, he's just a good guy. Money wouldn't drive him.

Amazing to think about, two years ago, no one would have dreamed UTSA, Texas State, and UNT would have all have former BCS head coaches leading their programs. This is about to get serious.

I agree with the things rcade posted in this post.

What kind of weird life have I led - one alma mater fired a high school coach, and a few months later another hires one? My sports karma is cursed! Cursed, I say!

Nolan Richardson was the first, jumping from Tulsa to Arkansas in the mid-80s. Then, Tubby Smith from Tulsa to Georgia, then Kentucky in the mid-90s. Then, Bill Self from Tulsa to Illinois to Kansas. I remember going to the Tulsa/UTEP battles in the early 2000s. I coveted Jason Rabedeaux and Billy Gillespie, even though Rabedeaux's second squad caved in, and Gillespie's initial squad was a rebuilding project. I thought they were better than the guy who replaced Buzz Peterson and the guy who replace him. Funny, I think both are out of college basketball now.

Honestly, I'd like the worm from the bottom picture with the colors of the top picture. The two helmets from 1973 to 1993 were the best we've ever had. Give me the logo from 1973-1982 on the colors from 1983-1993. From the 21st Century, keep only the black facemasks.

I doubt Tulsa would be very competitive in the Big East. Tulsa's defense is sketchy. It lives and dies with it's gimmicky offense, which can work in non-AQ conferences. But, even so, SMU's defense shut it down this year. Look at the national title game, two very gimmicky offenses, but a defensive struggle to the end. Defense wins championships. Tulsa doesn't have it. Graham was good at outscoring his C-USA opponents. The Big East will have better defenses. Having earned a degree from TU, I'm happy that they've done well in the mid and later half of the aughts. But, I'm as realistic about their football as I am about UNT, my undergraduate alma mater. Right now, it looks as if UNT has more upside than TU. And, that's definitely something I couldn't say a year ago. Tulsa's AD has made the huge mistake of not even interviewing Steve Kragthorpe, even though he was the architect of their resurgence and lives in Tulsa with two kids in high school there. The AD will mistakenly hire Bill Blankenship, Garrick McGee, or Chad Morris, all of whom will be in over their heads. TU will take an inexperienced head coach over one with experience. Even setting Kragthrope aside, TU's AD is not even interviewing anyone with FBS or FCS head coaching experience. It's a mistake. Tulsa isn't the type of program that can just reload on its name and history.

Tulsa had 21 commitments, basically its 2011 class was done - nine from Texas, four from DFW area schools.

Among its 2011 Texas plunderings, TU had three Area Top 100 players at WR alone committed to Graham & Co. Surely, Graham & Co. will not be foolhardy enough to think Tulsa-quality recruits will work en masse against weekly Big East competition. It stands to reason, then, that some of these fellows are now in flux. Here's hoping that McCarney can pick off one or two. Or, am I now drinking the Mean Green Kool-Aid?

You're asking me to crawl inside the skull of a 21-year old kid and try to figure out what he's thinking? I didn't even know what I was thinking at 21...especially after spending many hours at the Flying Tomato and Rick's Place before stumbling home with the latest ingénue.

As part of the agreement, neither side is allowed to comment on the matter, and the settlement states that it should not be "construed as an admission by USF or Leavitt of any liability, wrongdoing or unlawful conduct whatsoever." Um...I wonder where I've heard this before? People with law degrees surely don't know how things get settled. Nah!