The Fake Lonnie Finch

NT's All-Time I-A/FBS Leaders in Tackles: 1. Craig Robertson: 381 2. Brad Kassel: 365 3. Burks Washington: 351 With 32 tackles on the season so far, Orr sits at 276 tackles for his career. He need about 12 per game to catch Robertson in the regular season; 10.5 with regular season + bowl game; 9.6 if we go regular season + C-USA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME + bowl game.

That's true! Beat Rice, and we're looking at two extra games for Thompson and Chancellor. Excellent point!

He needs to has some sort of medical issue that keeps him from playing in more than 30% of the teams' total games. The latter part, we can nail. Now...if we can just find an injury

Brelan Chancellor is already the NT career leader in: Kickoff Returns: 106 (and counting) Kickoff Return Yards: 2,499 (and counting) Kickoffs Returned For TD: 2 (...and counting!) Against Ball State, he passes Johnny Quinn to take the #3 spot in Career All-Purpose Yards at NT. He now trails only: 1. Lance Dunbar: 5,375 2. Patrick Cobbs: 5,222 3. Brelan Chancellor: 4,114 He needs a stout 123.2 per game to get past Cobbs; an unreal 140.2 to get past Dunbar.

Among NT QBs at the Division I-A/FBS level, Thompson is now: Passing Attempts 1. Steve Ramsey: 1,015 2. Giovanni Vizza: 876 3. Scott Hall: 784 4. Derek Thompson: 765 (needs 27.8 attempts per game to pass Ramsey...it could happen; 12.4 to supplant Vizza at #2...it'll happen) Passes Completed 1. Giovanni Vizza: 532 2. Steve Ramsey: 491 3. Derek Thompson: 457 (needs to complete 8.4 per game to pass Vizza...barring injury, it'll happen) Passing Efficiency 1. Scott Hall: 132.26 2. Derek Thompson: 126.1 Touchdown Passes 1. Steve Ramsey: 69 2. Scott Hall: 50 3. (T) Giovanni Vizza: 32 3. (T) Jason Mills: 32 5. Derek Thompson: 31 (needs 4.3 per game to surpass Ramsey; 2.2 to supplant Hall at #2) Passing Yards 1. Steve Ramsey: 7,076 2. Scott Hall: 5.975 3. Derek Thompson: 5,369 (needs 189.7 per game to pass Ramsey...it could happen) Completion Percentage 1. Riley Dodge: 64.7% 2. Jordan Case: 61.6% 3. Giovanni Vizza: 60.7% 4. Derek Thompson: 59.7% (can probably catch Case and Vizza) Career 200 Yard Passing Games 1. Steve Ramsey: 20 2. Giovanni Vizza: 15 3. Derek Thompson: 14 (will probably pass Vizza; has an outside shot at getting past Ramsey) Career 300 Yard Passing Games 1. Steve Ramsey: 6 2. Derek Thompson: 5 (this one is doable) Career Total Offense (Passing + Rushing) 1. Steve Ramsey: 6,568 2. Scott Hall: 6,440 3. Giovanni Vizza: 5,631 4. Derek Thompson: 5,601 (will pass Vizza versusu Georgia; needs 107.5 per game to pass Ramsey) Dajon Williams will have his work cut out for him over the next four seasons (yes...please redshirt him now, Coach McCarney!)

Tulsa will be out of the bowl picture before October ends. You are fearing the ghost of Tulsa's past. The present Tulsa is to be no more feared than the present Louisiana Tech. Both are awful this season.

Countdown to bowl eligibility at this point! 9/14: BALL STATE, 2-0, wins versus FCS Illinois State and Army. 50-50 WIN 9/21 @ Georgia, 1-1, lost to Clemson, beat S. Carolina- both Top 10 teams at the time. Had BYE last week. This will still take a miracle game to win. 9/28: BYE 10/5: @ Tulane, 2-1, beat FCS Jackson State, lost to Sun Belt start-from-scratch South Alabama, beat La. Tech despite gaining less than 3 yards per carry on 44 attempts, allowing 5 sacks, and losing the trunover battle 3-1. Still very winnable. 10/12: MIDDLE TENNESSEE, 2-1, beat FCS Western Carolina, lost to North Carolina, squeaked by Memphis. Will be tough simply because of history. There are no secrets to what they do. 10/19: @ Louisiana Tech, 1-2, lost to NC State, beat FCS Lamar...and struggled with them; didn't put game out of reach until 1:51 left in the game. This against a SOUTHLAND start-from-scratch, lost to a bad Tulane squad...highly winnable. 10/26: @ Southern Miss, 0-3, lost to FCS Texas State, crushed by Nebraska. lost to Arkansas. Total points scored in three games so far = 31. This is highly winnable. 10/31: RICE, 1-1, lost to Texas A&M, but put up a fight, struggled at home versus Kansas, a Big 12 school, but a really bad one. Still the C-USA West frontrunner, but can be defensed. This one, even at home will be tough to win coming on a short week that follows back-to-back road games. It will be really impressive if we can get this one. 11/9: UTEP, 1-1, lost in overtime to an equally bad New Mexico squad, beat a horrible New Mexico State squad New coach, QB, and all. Extra rest days following the week day Halloween game. This is a winnable game. Upgrade this to highly winnable. Didn't put awful NMSU away until fourth quarter. 11/16: BYE. 11/23: UTSA, 1-2, beat New Mexico, thrashed by Oklahoma State. lost to Arizona. Love Larry Coker. He's got the best of the start-from-scratch programs. Still, we will have played only one game in 23 days when kicks off due to the week day Halloween game and the Bye following UTEP. We should be healed up and ready to go. Roadrunners will also be coming in from a BYE week. This is winnable. 11/30: @ Tulsa, 1-2, lost to Bowling Green, make a fourth quarter comeback win versus horrible Colorado State at home, thrashed by an OU squad that will playing without its best defender and starting halfback...and starting a new QB. It didn't matter. OU could have played their 2nd team and still thrashed this TU squad. TU is in shambles on defense. Hard to believe, but this is going to be a highly winnable game at the rate the Hurricane are going so far. Okay, fellas...we've 2-1. Nine to go, and all but Georgia are winnable. And, most of those look very winnable. C-USA West is very weak. But, who cares? We haven't been to a bowl game in so long, I could care less that the competition in poor. Other schools get scheduling breaks; it's about time we had a season where we catch schools in bad years. Also, on a similar note, kudos to the AD for scheduling winnable out of conference games. Idaho, Ohio, and Ball State...that's a good enough slate for a school like ours. I'd even go so far as to say that some day we drop the "money" game (Georgia, OU, Texas and the like) and make people come here. We've got work to do before that will happen. But, I'd set it as a goal once we begin to win with consistency.

Tulsa isn't difficult to figure. They graduated eight starters fromlast season's team. Before the season, they lost one of their three returning starters to grades. In game one, they lost another to injury. So, Tulsa is playing with 10 new starters on defense. They also lost their top receiver in game two. Their field goal kicker is new and is as iffy as our pair. In short, if you can stop Trey Watts, you can stop Tulsa this year. It all adds up to, they suck this year. OU will bury them tomorrow; so, they will be a little more beat up. They then play Iowa State on Thursday the 26th, a team which has a tough defense and will be seeking revenge for the bowl loss last season to the Golden Hurricane. Then, they open their C-USA slate October 5 with Rice, the best in the West. After that game, they will be sitting a 1-4, with their only win coming against an awful Colorado State squad on a last second field goal. As I said before, when it rains it pours. It hasn't rained on Tulsa much over the past decade. It's rained on us plenty. Hopefully, this is our year to stay healthy and get the breaks on the field. It's happened for Tulsa plenty. Sad they will have a bad year, but... ...looking forward to getting into our C-USA games. They look easier than they did just a months ago. No one seems to have a potent offense.

Amen. Plus, I'll never understand the obsession of drinking during a football game. During a baseball game, when there's lots of down time between the action, yeah, I see nursing a beer. Also, hockey because there's no time element during the possessions. With football and basketball, there's constantly a time clock going between the plays/possessions. And, football, you throw in the substitutions between each play. Just no time to sit and enjoy a beer during all of that. Drink before and after.

Our competition for the C-USA West is Rice. These two schools are terrible. Hard to believe people were clamoring for Scotty Young to come here. I'll bet La. Tech fans would take a QB who could complete 75% of his passes.

TCU doesn't belong in the Big 12. Especially if they can't beat a Texas Tech team as inept as this one. Both offenses looked like crap. Three interceptions thrown by Tech's freshman QB. He's great against SMU and Stephen F. Austin. Wow. Impressive. Maybe he should transfer to Sam Houston State so he can play his level of competition week in and week out.

Abbe goes 320+. This guy is the starting nose tackle for BYU, who just beat the snot out of Texas: http://byucougars.com/athlete/m-football/eathyn-manumaleuna He's 6-2, 305...smaller than Abbe. In OU's 3-3-5, they've been running out there this year, they have a starting linebacker who creeps down to the DE position who goes 6-0/219. I agree that size in middle is important, and we have that. Everywhere else, it's being disciplined in scheme. That's how those guys in Utah have made BYU successful, Utah successful...and, of late, even Utah State. They know they don't have enough bodies for a successful foru man front, so they don't even fight that battle anymore. Lord, even Alabama uses a three man front. I'm not saying it will make us the next BYU or Utah overnight. But, hell's bells, if OU, playing the competition they will face are comfortable creeping a 219 pound linebacker into a DE spot to create some havoc...? I've harped on Mac's biggest shortcoming being his inability to recruit big guys for that four man line. And, it's a legitimate beef. Every coach in college will tell you those guy are hard to find. Well, if the Nick Sabans and Bob Stoopses of the world are saying, "screw it...we'll try to get pressure with a three man line" that should be sending some sort of message. Here in Texas, isn't a 40-21 blowout of the "Flagship School's" football team by a smaller defense not message enough? Utah rising out of nowhere to jump out of the WAC/MWC mess into the Pac 12? Not even Boise State has managed that.

“If teams are going to double [Chancellor] up, we need other guys to step up and make plays,” McCarney said. “That’s what happened with Darnell. A year ago, I don’t know if we had guys who could step up and do what we needed them to.”

Yes, in theory. But, you do realize that this type of thing happens in the world of business and politics all the time as well, right? So, in a sense, they are being prepared for life after college.

Nobody at that level has a clean program. Why do people insist that they do? Most below that level don't have a clean program. The bigger to program, the more hangers on pathetically trying to have access to 18 and 19 year old kids...for what? So that they can brag to their business buddies about their alma mater's football exploits. They're all the same.

You are ruining the fantasy that it's all Derek's and Chico's and Dan's fault that we lose by six points on the road to a school that will probably be going to its fifth bowl in a row this season. It isn't a team game at UNT - it's only the QB and two coaches who are doing all of the heavy lifting. Everyone else gets a free ride.

...or, change the scheme to a three-man front so that his inability to attract beef for a four-man scheme won't be so noticeable.

You must be kidding. NONE of them do. Don't you recall the Ohio State president during the Tressell/autograph and tattoo scandal? Stupid. You're dreaming if you think the Genie is going to be stuffed back in the bottle. They aren't going to SMU anyone ever again. USC screamed out for it a few seasons back. The Miami guy gave thousands upon thousands more than SMUs boosters dreamed of giving kids back in the day. Do you see Miami getting the death penalty? Reality has to take hold someday. The president of UT isn't going to go down the the athletic department and tell them that it's for the moral good if they break their contract with LHN and steer the players toward degrees that will help the guys once their playing careers are through. It's a joke. Give the players a cut of what they are earning the school. Hook the NFL in as well because they benefit from the players that come out of college. Give up the charade. Give it up.

I think at any program not named Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, etc., you have to be realistic. If you get someone who gets your mid-major competitive, you stick with him. Some of these schools get to thinking too much of themselves. FIU had as good a thing going as they will ever have. Ditto Southern Miss with Jeff Bower, East Carolina with Steve Logan. Those guys were fired for stupid reason, but none of their replacements has substantially or consitently won the way they had. Look at Ohio, whom we just played. Imagine then, after the season, saying, "Solich hasn't won a conference title. He gets us to the title games and bowls, but we gotta go in another direction." That's what happened with Cristobal, Bower, and Logan. Screw the schools who do that. Those coaches work twice as hard for less money and with less support than the bigger conference school...and free riders like Vandy and Baylor, who can lose for years and still rake in enough cash to eventually get it right. So, for now, I'm sure Ron Turner is a nice guy, but I'm rooting for FIU failure until the dump the AD who dumped Cristobal.

Yes. I believed in 2010 things would work out well because Dodge gave up the playcalling and we had real college coaches on the defensive side of the ball. We were close to a breakthrough with a couple of one point losses at home: 32-31 to Rice, 28-27 to Louisianna, and a 24-19 loss to Arkansas State. Shortly thereafter, Dodge was fired and we finished the season 2-3 with a very competitive game with visiting Kansas State. I think we've got the same type of team here. Enough seniors to make a difference, good experience. I thoroughly opposed Dodge when he was hired, but thought he had sufficiently given up on his spread scheme that we could compete. And, if I'm not mistaken, we had more rushing yards that season than passing yards for the the first time under Dodge...and, bang, we damn near turned the corner. We were 3-9 that year with two losses by a point, the Arkansas State game by five points and Troy by six. That in a season where we lost our top two QBs to injury within the first 2 games really (Thompson went down very early in the 3rd game against Army). That 2010 squad was gritty. Sometimes, you need a little luck. After two game of this season, I think this squad has the same feel. I predicted that we'd go 4-8 this year, 5-7 if we were really lucky. But, after seeing most of our future opponents struggle mightily, I now believe only Rice stands in our way of the C-USA West. But, look...that is only if we can get our run game going as efficiently as the pass game has been going, we stop the run better, and get one of the kickers to hit field goals and extra points consistently. If we can't get the run game going with this offensive line, senior tight ends, and talented backs, then heads need to roll.;

Not so well: http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/09/10/fiu-struggling-to-remain-relevant/ Still, one of the stupidest firings you will ever see.

Thanks, bro. I posted those stats yesterday. Loss to Ohio was not because of the passing game. It was because... ...and, bear with me again, here: To succeed in football you must be able to: (1) Run (2) Stop the run (3) Play effective, mistake-free special teams. We did not do (1) or (2). On (3), we missed a field goal, gave up too many yards on punt, kick returns, had only one touchback on kickoffs, The focus for improvement should be on the run game and special teams. The passing game is humming along fine...except to those who think Derek Thompson does us a disservice by not completing 103% of his passes. In fact, you have to give kudos to the passing game because it ticked along fine even with Ohio taking Brelan Chancellor out of the game. What we didn't have in the run game is one of the three backs picking up the slack, or the offensive line not constently opening holes for any of the runners.

These articles are stupid. EVERY big program has this happening. Hell, I went to law school with a guy who played linebacker at UNLV in the mid/late 90s. They sucked horribly and still would come back to the locker room to find $100 bills stuffed in their shoes if they made plays...even in losses (hey...you do what you can when the team you are bending the rules for is going 1-10 year after year). I hate all of this pretending that players aren't getting stuff on the side. Sex? Oh, my word! Girls having sex with recruits! This is unheard of. Come on. Schools like UT, Oklahoma State, OU, Bama, Michigan...they are making millions off of these kids. And, especially at these bigger schools you have guys constantly overcompensating for their small pensises by befriending 18 and 19 year athletes and showering them with cash and prizes. Look at that sawed off little runt that was giving all the money to the Miami players all those years. Unless you sequester the football players 365 days a year and forbid your alumni from ever coming back to campus you are always going to have these stories. Donna Shalala and every other Miami administrator within butt sniff distance were photographed with that rodent. If they really were honest, they'd be sitting in jail with him. Bottom feeding, hypocritical scumbags. How do the dildongs at the NCAA expect these football players, many of whom come from poor backgrounds, to roll onto campus where every non-athlete is trying to get laid and getting money from mom and dad at home not to get what they can? I still say this, and I'll always say - drop the damn charade: treat FBS football like a minor league. Let the NFL teams draft the rights to kids out of high school and split the cost of their scholarship with the school the kid commits to. Look at these guys who get baseball money out of high school, fail in the minors, then come back to play college football. THEY WERE PAID PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES for crying out loud, yet the NCAA lets them play football! But, I mean, if an alumni so much as buys a poor kid who is helping the school make millions a sandwich and a glass of ice tea, there is thunder from above. It's bullsh*t. I could care less about Oklahoma State as a school, but who really cares? This isn't new or even newsworthy. If I'm a poor kid and a school is using my body for four/five years in a dangerous sport so that they can market the hell out of me and make money, damn right I'm taking every dollar the alumni flash at me...and I'm dicking every coed who ever so coyly offers it up. Sorry for the brashness. But, NCAA...and the NFL...need to get real about what little the vast majority of these football playing kids get for what they give. And, spare me "they're getting a degee." Baloney. The schools steer them into crap degree plans to keep them eligible. They aren't forcing these kids to learn anything valuable. Look at Vince Young. You think Mack Brown and UT's army of butt wipe academic advisors pushed Vince Young into studying something useful like finance, accounting, chemistry, engineering? Something to cover his ass in case his NFL career didn't pan out? For f*ck sake, they took every last nickel they could squeeze out of those #10 jerseys they sold and sent him off with no degree at all. He didn't know a damn thing more when he left Austin than when he first stepped foot on campus. And, people want to laugh at him because he lost millions of dollars? The kid didn't know anything. But, did that stop Texas and the NCAA from selling all the Vince Young stuff they could stock? Hell no. Go to the ghetto and hand a random kid a million dollars and see how long it lasts. Stupid. Think of the thousands and thousands of guys who have played NCAA football and are suffering through lifelong knee, back, neck, shoulder, etc. ailments and other physical problems. And, their school are still selling their "winning tradition" t-shirts, videos, and posters and whatnot without these guys ever seeing a red cent. SI is a sorry ass publication for doing what they are doing. Get real. You want to tell me NCAA and its member universities gives a flying f*ck about these kids? Baloney. It's a business. Cut the crap and give the kids a cut of it.

You've got to admit that we are getting really close, though. I mean, even without a great pass rush, the secondary isn't the sieve it was during the last coaching regime. Look at that opening play again, a couple more steps by Whitfield, then the jump, and I think he knocks it away, even giving up the 5 inches in height. Remember, this is a young guy in a position switch. He's done well. On the other hand, I am happy to see Mac hold guys accountable. I suspect we haven't seen the last of Whitfield. This kid led the team in interceptions last year and was 2nd Team All Conference...that while learning on the job. Eager to see what Buyer will do with his opportunity; but feel like Whitfield will be back out there starting before too long.

If you're team is hitting 75% of its passes without going to the TE, I'd say it's because receivers are getting open and the QB isn't having to throw to the TEs. This isn't a bad thing. The other purpose of the TE is to keep the QB from getting hit regularly when he drops back for a pass. Remember the Dodge Era when our QBs were pummelled in the TE-less offenses of 2007 and 2008? The TEs are doing fine here. Our QB stays upright the vast majority of the time. TE isn't a problem here anymore.