flyonthewall

Same spot.  I live.  That is all.

No on one and done. There are two basic types of donations here. You can help fund capital projects, ie football stadiums, baseball stadiums basically anything facility related. The second type is an annual contribution to student athlete scholarships, ie mean green club. After our capital contribution to the stadium, we have done both. I still get no better feeling than sitting in the stadium before a game, looking over the back of the visitors side, and seeing the tailgating going on by students up on the hill. (after cooking for six hours myself and feeding roughly 200 people per game) I also never feel worse than after a loss.

To answer the question above. North Texas does a lot wrong. We have a flawed system that appoints our ultimate leaders. We have some great regents that care a lot about this place, but some I question their dedication to make the hard decisions. Our development department is out there listing in the wind, waiting for some direction. Our football team won 4 games this year, that is not what expectations are.

But this is our place. Your place. It needs to be lifted up. We need more fans. We can't get more fans by only public bashing of everything that goes on here. Excuse me for being positive guy. I will continue to find positives in everything that we do. I will continue to try to get new people involved and to events. And.......the above will be about the most negative thing you will see me say on an internet board, even though there has been some screaming, yelling and dog cussing going on in suite 13 and at my home address.

Go Mean Green

I still do not understand your hard line stance that "if only UNT admnistration were half as committed as our student leaders". There are two sides that we can be frustrated with and critical of. One side is hiring of coaches. The second side is commitment to facilities upgrades. If you separate the two out and ignore coaching hires and only focus on facility improvement, then tell me how our administration is not committed to athletics. It has been said before on this board, but we cannot fund any athletics buildings with taxpayer dollars. This is why the super pit is a multi use educational facility that our athletic department actually has to pay rent to play in on game day. This is not of any lack of commitment, but because that is the way the laws were written. The fact is we have to do creative things to build anything.

In the last 8 years the lovelace family (who are the chairs of the baseball fundraising committee) have built us a beautiful women's softball park. How do I know this, their name is on the freaking sign in front of the softball park. The Strange family helped complete a state of the art academic center for athletes. Golf has an indoor practice range right behind the walls of the south basket in the Ernie Kuehne basketball practice facility. Womens softball has indoor batting cages. We have a great tennis facility. I could go on, but you know that it is all there.

I have a set of plans in my truck right now of a beautiful baseball facility with artist renderings that will blow you away. Everything that we have built have been very high quality first class division 1 facilities that we can all be proud of.

Now on to coaching hires. Todd Dodge is gone, he was a failure in monstrous proportion. The two that we have left in our major sports are McCarney and Benford. As for McCarney, we increased the salaries for football coaches two fold when he was hired. Is that a "lack of commitment?"

Benford was hired because it was thought that he was the best possible candidate available. It had nothing to do with how much money was available to hire someone.

Anyone, and I mean anyone, that has been in a position of authority and has hired people in this world has made mistakes and ended up firing people. That is the way that it is. If you do not "own your own business" and report up to others, then if you make the wrong decision enough times, then you get fired too. This is a fact of life. Athletics is a business that the majority of time people get fired, they don't walk out on their own two feet.

Being upset with coaching and wins and loss records are one thing, but saying that our administration (meaning the university, not the athletic department) is not committed is just not fair and is misleading.

I want a 20 plus win season next year and postseason play. Follow that up with more respect in two years, an NCAA bid at an 11 to 14 seed which gives us a chance to win. That is what I want. Any thing less than that is failure. And I expect the same thing on the women's side too. I will also go on record as saying we must win 7 next year in football. I will agree that all of this momentum in fundraising we have built up will vanish like a fog rolling out if there is no success on the field. I am tired of supporting a loser, even if it is our loser.

1. Give coaches and kids tools to be successfull (aka facilities). This takes money.
2. Hire the right people at every level. This takes money
3. Fund scholarships for student athletes. This takes money

Hope to have a beer with some of you "haters" in hot springs. That includes you emmitt.

David

Yes lets compare. Last year at this time we had 7 losses through the Troy game. Average RPI of teams that we lost to was 134, with the highest rpi being texas at 57. We lost to them 73-57. We had seven wins. Of these 7 wins 1 was against New Orleans, 1 against St. Gregory's, and one was against La Sierra. The average RPI of the four teams that we beat was 261. So we were 4-7 at this time last year against teams that count against the RPI. The highest RPI of teams that we beat to this point was Loyal Marymount at 109.

I know that everyone hyped this team, hell I hyped this team to everyone I knew, told everyone I knew about our lottery pick, about our two guards that were coming back.

You can hate on Benford all you want, this team just wasn't that good last year, and it is not that good this year either. I don't like watching this either. I don't like watching other teams making transition baskets while the "All American" is smirking at officials because he thought he was fouled. I don't like watching athletes that Johnny Jones recruited missing every freaken mid range jumper that they take. I don't like looking up at the end of the game and seeing that the other team made 11 three pointers and we made 0 or maybe one.

But I can't put this on the coach. I am sorry. He was not handed the keys to a ferrari. I will admit that Jordan has been coming around the past few games, but we are still not making the long range daggers that Tristin Thompson, Dominique, Josh White, Brandon, Calvin Watson or many other players from the past could make for us. It is sad to watch, but I am sad for different reasons than some of you guys.

The average rpi of teams that we have lost to this year is 107, With the highest being Creighton at 15, The average RPI of teams that we have beaten is 218. We were just not that good last year to this point, and we are not that good this year. I argue that we would be in this exact same place with Johnny Jones, and calling for his head. Fortunately for Johnny he is in Baton Rouge with LSU playing an EASIER non conference schedule and make 600,000 a year more than he made here. Loved Johnny, friends with Johnny, but is it possible the rug was pulled out from under this place on the way out the door?