The Fake Lonnie Finch

Right. None of which reflects on Vito, that's the point. The thrust of the thread began with bashing Vito. We all know full well that the program is largely ignored expect when there's bad news. We have a culture of ignore - the administrations ignore, the athletic directors, the coaches, the students, the fans.... It's like a perpetual cycle. That's why people who raise up and demand better stick out like a sore thumb. Anyway, Brett does a good job covering UNT athletics and we are lucky. Many other area schools would love to have dedicated writers.

Exactly. But, in reality, the DFW networks ignore local college sports, no matter who it is. And, there are some pretty good local programs. Dallas Baptist's baseball program is one that comes to mind. We don't get any love from the networks, generally, unless it's a scandal or we're in some post-season tournaments. You'd think they'd be making more of our basketball program's three consecutive 20 wins seasons. How long has it been since any team in this area has done that? Maybe Billy Tubbs at TCU in the late 90s. Still, that's 10 years ago. Anyway, with so many newspapers nearing bankruptcy, we're pretty fortunate there's still funding for the little ol' DRC! Brett does alot more than just cover football. He's always got something on the other sports at UNT.

Being someone who favors Alabama when it comes to the SEC, I never was a big Fulmer or Tennessee fan. However, he was part of the whole feel of Tennessee football, whether or not you were a Vol fan. He'd been there as an assistant or head coach since 1980. It just won't feel like watching a Tennessee game without seeing Fulmer there on the sideline. Something's just not right about it. Some coaches you don't really like adds to enjoyment of beating them. For instance, if we ever beat FAU, I think most of would like for it to happen while Howard Schnellenberger is standing on their sideline. There's something to beating a team when it has a coach as its standard bearer. Beating Texas when it had David McWilliams or John Mackovic, no biggie, or Oklahoma when John Blake was the coach. They weren't the faces of those programs while they were there. You knew they'd be gone someday. I'll still be happy when Bama beats Tennessee. But, now it'll just be like, "Eh, it's just Lane Kiffin, anyway - what else do you expect?"

Brett does a good job. Journalists aren't supposed to be cheerleaders. Besides, Dodge has no idea what it's like to be under real media scrutiny. Ask guys like Houston Nutt (two losing seasons in 10 at Arkansas, final season: 8-5, Cotton Bowl), Paul Pasqualoni (one losing season in 14 at Syracuse, final season: 6-6 Champ Sports Bowl) or Tommy Tuberville (two losing seasons in 10 years, final season 5-7) who throw together decades of winning seasons and are forced out of their jobs. Or, ask Gary Gibbs (no losing seasons in six years, bowl in final two years) or Frank Solich (no losing season is six at Nebraska, bowl every year), who won at Oklahoma and Nebraska, but were fired for not living up to the expectations there. Ask Mack Brown who gets critiqued for every small detail, in or out of his control, that surrounds UT. Ask Phillip Fulmer (two losing seasons in 17, final year 5-7) a former Tennessee player who led his alma mater to a national title, but was forced out after one down year. The list of coaches fired after doing well is long, so the reality of it is this - Dodge is lucky that no one really pays attention to us. If more people paid attention, he'd have already been fired. Dodge has no expectations weighing on him the way the majority of college coaches do. He's lucky. And, if he can't handle one local beat writer reporting news instead of cheerleading, then he's not cut out to be a college football coach (as if the on the field product and off the field circus don't already offer proof enough of that).

What doesn't hold water? They've actually begun construction. We haven't. They've gotten the city of Carbondale (population of maube 25,000) to pony up $20 million. Student fee are kicking in another $41 million. They say they're $13 million short, which says to me, they've gotten $8-9 million in private donation including the $2 million donation that begat the article. To ask how they did it.... How would I know? My guess is they called alumni and others with interst in SUI and asked for money. That's generally how fundraising works. I do know this, whatever pitch they have used with the city and private donors needs to be duplicated here. The population of Denton is probably almost triple that of Carbondale. And, Denton has Dallas and Forth Worth both within 45 miles to hit up businesses and other UNT-friendly individuals. The closest big city to Carbondale is St. Louis which is about 100 miles away, weaving mostly through cornfields. The point is, don't blame the fans and alumni for whatever budget shortfalls we have. There are people hired by the university to be responsible for those things. So, if they aren't getting it done, show them the door and get people in here who can do it. The ideas are endless. Look at Barak Obama. The guy raised a billion dollars on small donations through the internet. Ask. Ask, ask, ask. Ask for $1 from those that can give $1 and $1 million from those that can give $1 million. Seriously. If they're doing it in the cornfields on the southern border of Illinois at an FCS school, our administration and athletic department ought to be able to do it. You don't have to have slick brochure and what not for everybody. Just get a phone bank and have people start dialing down the phone book. Of course, you need to show more to people who are giving more. But, goodness...get out and ask everyone around and take anything they give. The other option is to pool money for lottery tickets, which I've suggested in the past and which just worked out for 10 cubicle-dwellers at Chubb & Sons up in New Jersey. Do it all. Take the Steppenwolf approach - fire all of your guns at once and explode into space. But, damn it, do something other than watch every school in America with and without a football program pass us by. At the rate we go at things, Amberton University will have a college football team and stadium up and running before our new stadium is built.

Dude, my wife's from Mexico and she laughs at this kind of garbage. We have children's books that are supposedly written in Spanish. The grammar errors are glaring. Your problem is two-fold: first, illegal immigration; second, your opinion of marketing. As long as wages are unreasonable in the eyes of business owners, they will default down to the illegals. The illegals, who rarely have more than our equivalent of a sixth grade education, are going to work because they'll make more doing seemingly menial tasks here than they could ever dream of in Mexico. For the best evidence of this, look at the prices of new homes in states that are Union labor-infested, then compare them to the prices here. As far as marketing, the leagues don't care, they just want to make money. The NFL made Vince Young its rookie of the year in 2006 for throwing 12 touchdown passes and 13 interceptions. You think they were really all that concerned about his stats? His jersey sold. And, that, my friends, is pro sports. Wherever a buck can be made, they're going to make it.

The Dickey buyout on the books is not the fault of the "fans and alumni." Sorry. You are hard pressed to find contracts that pay coaches if they find work elsewhere. These are specific clauses that the schools' attorneys and athletic departments include almost 100% of the time. In fact, the Dickey situation with us is the first (and dumbest) I've ever heard of! That ours didn't include the no pay upon future hiring clause is no poor reflection on us, the fans and alumni. It's yet another example of the bumbling and outright ignorance that occurs in our athletic department. Also, it is the job of the athletic director and administration to raise funds. If they need to light a spark under the student body, they should do it. Students go to school and have plenty of other things on their minds and little money to spare. If the athletic department and administration couldn't sell them on the idea of a student fee, that's not the students' fault. And, you don't have to be a big player to understand what needs to done, and then go get it done! Here's an example of an FCS getting it done: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news...e&type=lgns Perhaps, we should consider hiring SUI's athletic director. He doesn't seem like a guy waiting around for donors or the student body...or even the city. He goes out and hustles them himself. He and the administration there have gone out and gotten things done at a school that, believe me, is out in the middle of the cornfields of Southern Illinois. Anyone else who has ever been to Carbondale understands that it's not exactly a thriving metropolitan area, teeming with big businesses. We do not have ourselves to blame. The blame lies solely on those who are hired to make the things go. Students don't rise up and start spontaneously throwing extra money at their school. And, neither do alumni. Alumni have families, mortgages, and businesses as their main priorities. If the project, whatever it is, can't be sold on its merits by the people in charge, then the blame for underfunding lies on them and them alone. Our administration and athletic department needs to do their job. They can't use the city of Denton, its student body, or its alumni base as an excuse. Get out there and hustle. Do your job!

Just further proof that just throwing taxpayer money at poverty doesn't work. Now, they want private money as well. Surprisingly, it never occurs to any of them to just get a job and work their way up and out of poverty the way many of us and our parents have done. It's shockingly easy to do, although it does take some sacrifice. You've got to cut back on things like beer, marijuana, and satellite television. I can't remember the name of the song, but I heard it as a child, and the words were: "Life ain't easy, but it ain't that bad." These people should really use the time they spend complaining and use it to actually direct people to jobs.

Forgot about the behind the center deal. Good call. There is just so much of football that has been missing over the past two years, the things we've needed to be doing have piled up. Although, it is implicit that if you use a fullback, the quarterback is going to pretty much have to be directly under center. At this point, let's just be happy with the improvements made in the coaching staff for the defense and special teams and with the addition of a tight end. It took Dodge two years and several severe beatings to drill those necessities into his brain. Let's not get too crazy and expect Dodge to unearth the fullback/quarterback-under-center idea just yet. If he does, you, me, and FFR can be vindicated yet again for knowing what Todd Dodge should have known all along...him being an actual football coach and all, with the wristband on the forearm to prove it just in case you were in doubt.

Yes, and he's at least as good a hire as I'd have been. We'll be watching those guys pass us by in a few years, so you'll have yet another reason to hate me for being right. Then, as always, your derision will be misguided, spent against those of us who understand what's going on instead of whom the true target should be - the clowns that run our athletic department and the administrators who sit by and watch it all drift.

"Dodge said the addition of a tight end to his lineup became an attractive option because of the impact it had on the Mean Green’s running game. It also gave UNT another offensive set that affected the way defenses played in coverage and opened up the possibility of providing an extra blocker in pass protection." No! Really? A tight end can help in the run game and in the pass game? I'm stunned. I thought all of this time Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and the other 115 colleges in FBS had it backwards. I hope the other teams in the Sun Belt don't discover this tight end phenomenon. Todd Dodge should close the remaining practices now so that they won't be spying on us and stealing this unique idea. Now, if we can just solve the riddle of the fullback that those Longhorns, Sooners and the like seem to be so insistent on using. Those teams that are always finishing in the Top 5 and going to BCS bowls are so archaic in their thinking. Let's see, to wit, we've now got: -A defense coached 100% by college coaches, -Special teams coached by a college coach, -The use of tight ends Dadgum, fellas, we're almost back to being a real college football team! Throw in a fullback and we're there! And, it only took, what, 27 months for it all to sink into Todd Dodge's skull? Yes, there is some vindication for those of us non-coaches who have insisted on these things all along. Gee, maybe we do know what we're talking about without having to stand on the sideline with a flipchart in our pants or a wristband with the plays written on it strapped to our forearm.

It's nothing like the Troy situation precisely because we haven't oversigned. If we had, losing Bennett to a JUCO wouldn't hurt our numbers. But, since we don't, any loss we have is truly a hit to depth. Again (and again and again and again), there's nothing wrong with oversigning. There's nothing illegal about it. It helps you keep a full compliment of 85 scholarship players should some not qualify.

To say that Larry Coker can't recruit is wholly laughable. He's recruited Texas for years as an assistant at Tulsa, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Miami. He's recruited the whole country for decades in addition to that. The players he's coached into the NFL and the dozen winning bowl teams he's been a part of putting together will sell itself even if he doesn't show the national title ring to the kids. It's a coup for UTSA. But, as hard-headed as some of you are, you'll simply have to watch UTSA surpass us to believe it. It's plain as day. Sadly, it's as plain as day. Well, at least we've got a good jazz program that UTSA will never match.

Okay. We'll disagree, but okay. There are plenty of sophomores, true sophomores and redshirt freshmen out there who were contributing to their squads all across the country last year. I just don't see giving our coaching staff excuses. If Dodge had wanted to, he'd have been recruiting earlier in 2007. Southlake was more important to him. I understand that. And, it would be excusable if he had hired college coaches to fill out the staff, so that they could have been recruiting in the meantime. As it was, he brought so many high school coaches on, that the whole effort had to wait for the Southlake playoff run. It is what it is. But, I'm a North Texas grad. And, to my way of thinking, you do what best for UNT if you are hired by UNT. Todd Dodge didn't do that right off the bat and it has hurt him depth wise. That can't be denied. But, there's no one else to blame. He's the head guy and he was the guy who was bringing in so many other guys who were having to wait until the high school season ended.

There's nothing to hide. If a player has some talent, but there are no offers on the table, that's the evidence. And, we've got many of those in this class. As many schools as recruit this area and this state, no stone is left unturned. If you've got a guy with some speed and is making plays, but no one is interested, then the coaching staffs have done their homework on the kid as far as what is happening off the field. Because of the beating we were taking on prep recruits, we had no choice but to give these kids on the edge an offer. And, hey...doesn't that sound familiar? Isn't that what we all used to complain that Darrell Dickey did too often? And, here we are three years later and Southlake Jesus is doing the same thing? When the Todd Dodge Experiment is mercifully ended, we need to demand better from our adminstration, board, and athletic department for the next hire.

Um...Hello, McFlys...Coker was the offensive coordinator for six seasons at Miami before they named him head coach. He didn't get handed a roster he had nothing to do with building. He had played a prominant role in building the roster and in the offense was in the seventh season of running his playbook. Again, here is why we get what we get at North Texas. Our fans look at a school with no football program hiring a coach with as many skins on the wall as Larry Coker, and pooh-pooh it. And, the same people drool all over the mediocrity of Todd Dodge. We get what we get because we don't expect more. UTSA expects to be taken seriously. They obviously don't expect to be FCS long. It is obvious that they fully expect to monkey around for a couple of years at FCS level like Schnellenberger did at FAU and Leavitt at South Florida before getting invited up. Pooh-pooh it all you want. Coker is a big time hire. We're already getting our butts beat black and blue in prep recruiting. Now, add Larry Coker in the living rooms of kids to the long list of other coaches we wait in line behind.

Does the name T.Y. Hilton ring a bell? Oh, sorry. That's at FIU. I can't compare what's happening at FIU to what's happening in Denton. Our coaches need an infinite amount of time to bring players along. Meanwhile, other second year coaching staffs are taking true freshmen like T.Y. Hilton and making monsters out of them. Yeah, freshmen can lead the conference in all-purpose yards. The problem is, you've got to have the coaches who know how to recruit and coach college talent. Even FIU has this part of the equation down.

My guess is, it'll be one of the JUCO guys. None of the prep guys have been able to do anything since they've been on campus...I mean, other than the kid from San Antonio who quit last season.

Later on in the piece it says some seniors double sign with JUCOs...I guess if the writing's on the wall, they go ahead and get a head start. I guess we now know why Bennett had no offers besides ours...or, rather, the people who didn't understand how far behind Dodge was now know. Anyone else with a smidgen of knowledge about recruiting already knew why. Again, Dodge was slaughtered on the prep level before November even rolled around and had to send Shelton Gandy to look under every rock in the Mississippi JUCOs to get even a whisper of talent signed. I already feel bad for the coach who is going to have to come in and clean up this mess. Dodge is like a raccoon that gets in your lakehouse during the week and screws things up for when you go back the next weekend.

Does the strength and conditioning guy have our players lift weights? If so, it sure doesn't show much. It's going to be another loooooooooong season in 2009.

Amazing. A school with no team yet scores a former national title winning coach. We really are stupid at North Texas. We've got people pooh-poohing a school that will jump past us in, probably, less than five years of existence. Guys like Schnellenberger, Leavitt, and Coker sign onto non-existent teams. We've been at it for 100+ years and have hired two high school coaches in 15 years (Parker in 91, Dodge in 06). No one sleeps at the wheel like our leaderships. If Texas State...nevermind...when Texas State...forget it.

Campbell, If you perform a search, you'll find that RV, the Board, and Bataille for the hire. I expect RV to be held accountable if it keeps tanking. I've said that several times. In this thread my response was to counter the original post which minimized Dodge's blame for the first two seasons. I don't think you can mimmalize it at all - he's the guy who's been calling the shots since December 2006. And, if Dodge would admit to his mistakes, then I would easily believe that he believes he made mistakes. As it is, he has never said anything other than he misjudged the speed and talent in the secondaries at this level. His reluctance to make changes are proof enough to me that he doesn't believe that the thing that have gone wrong are his fault. His offense was less effective in the second year than in the first, and yet he changed no staff on that side of the ball - despite having almost 100% of the starters and subs returning. To me, that's simply ignoring the obvious reality. In short, I believe that he still believes his press clipping from Southlake, RV still believes his press clippings from Southlake, the Board still ignores the program, and Bataille wouldn't know the difference one way or the other. As posted before, the full compliment of college-experienced defensive coaches and putting Gandy in charge of special teams will greatly improve our chances of winning more than two games - even if Dodge and the high school coaches on the other side of the ball are still screwing up.

Yes, he's asked Nebraska for his release and Pelini is giving to him. Strange because the Nebraska QB job is up for grabs and, I think, he's the only one with any kind of playing time among those returning. What Nebraska's fans' say about his dad is not very interesting to me. That he is 6-4, 225 and can sling it around...that's interesting to me. Especially considering what we currently have on the roster at QB. Have we ever had a QB with legitimate "pro" size? Plus, he's been in that spread offense Nebraska has been running with Shawn Watson. So, it's not like he'd be learning a totally different type of game plan. We've already picked up guys from OU and Minnesota. Although this guy would be a longshot, I'd welcome aboard a guy from Nebraska as well. And, if he didn't work out...what's the harm? Alot of guys don't work out. But, not many have his supposed upside.

No, we err greatly in looking at governments because no other country has the mix of civilians that we do. The rest of the world is largely homogenous in each of their populations. This makes everything easier from immigration law to health studies. Sweden? Are you kidding? Can you get a more homogenous population group than Sweden? No country has the melting pot that we have. No country takes on the amount of immigrants we have. We've got caucasians whose lineage is European, hispanic Americans from all over Central and South America, blacks whose roots are in Africa or the Carribean, Asians of all stripe and background, continental Indians, native American Indians, Arabs from all over the Near and Middle East, Africans, etc., etc., etc....and on top of all of that...The Amish! Each has their own culture. Each has their own beliefs about everything from God to how to make a living. Each has their own genetic predisposition to certain illnesses and diseases. This is not a one-size-fits-all population in the U.S.A. And, so we're supposed to look at countries that are damn near 100% homogenous as social and political examples? To suggest that kind of garbage is to be expected from morons like Bill Maher. Years ago, I ceased to be amazed at the simplistic drivel people like him tired to push onto their viewers as "thought provoking." Anyone with just a cursory grip on health differences among the American demographic groups would never suggest we follow any other country in the world. But, therein lies the problem...most commentators don't have a cursory grip on anything other than running off with the mouth.

Let's hope so. http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SP...p;Q_SEASON=2007