Arkstfan

Not nearly as impressive as the Cajun win last week but I wouldn't swap wins for nothing. We led this series until Memphis went on 10 game win streak and we owed them BIG TIME for the 2004 game, just needed first down to ice it and Noce got blindsided on a blitz fumbled and they took it the distance.

Maybe to the national media. Locally it was well known that Nutt did not want to hire Gus, and once the Springdale players started backing off their committments he was willing to hire him as QB coach but the AD forced him to hire him as offensive coordinator. Nothing cooler than looking like a genius when what you fought against turns out to be golden.

And neither Miami in I-A football is located in Miami.

FIU is one of the most penalized teams in the country (had four or five 15 yarders against ASU), they are close to the bottom in turnovers. They missed a PAT in a one point loss at MTSU. They missed a PAT in a one point loss at South Florida and could have won that game any way but fumbled to set up USF's winning score with just over 2 minutes left. Against Maryland they had a 13 yard punt and nearly survived that but got called for a personal foul on a play when they sacked Maryland's QB on 3rd and 11, two plays later Maryland scored a TD. Then threw a pick in the end zone on their final play while trailing by 4. FIU has issues that cannot be attributed to the AD.

Fresno wanted binding standards a few years ago. Bottom line is that anyone wanting to be in the WAC better be prepared to spend money because apparently the top programs are tired of people hanging on. One poster is wrong about the chances the WAC would add a I-AA program. Nevada's AD said about a year ago that UC Davis was the kind of program they would be looking for if they expanded again.

FIU had the talent to be more succesful this year in football and basketball has been simply dreadful. The football schedule killed any chance football had to do well this year. With football AND basketball struggling the finger gets pointed at the AD.

There are three sorts of games for us in the Sun Belt. MUST WIN, NEED TO WIN, GRAVY Any I-AA game is a must win. No one cares UNLESS you lose. Any I-A game against someone outside the six BCS leagues in a need to win, really need a .500 record in those game or better to show we are at their level. Games against the BCS schools are gravy. Nice to have but not essential. Right now the Sun Belt is 4-0 in must win games. That's good because as long as the number on the right is a zero we are doing what we need to do. We are 0-18 in gravy games. We've had some close calls but just haven't pulled it off. In the need to win games the Belt is 4-5. Not where we want to be but getting there. We have one must win game left and two need to win games left.

Storming the field after seven OT's is warranted if for nothing other than the relief that it is over. Nothing. NOTHING about that makes UNT a laughingstock. And while I've mocked UNT's offense nearly weekly in my around the league writings this year for Beltboard, I promise you that there were some 18-22 year-old students in the stands who will be tailgating outside your 15 or so year old stadium in 20 years passing the friendship bottle and laughing and joking about how they were there the night UNT played 7 OT's. Their memories may not yet have converted into a stellar game but I promise you they will remember it fondly.

Sorry but I loved it because it made me look brilliant. We heard it was going into OT while getting ready for the ASU-ULM post-game press conference and I said that it would probably go multiple OT's without ever triggering the 2 point conversion rule.

None of those schools are Division 2.

hehehe he said boobs

I-AA teams can win at I-AA. It isn't a common occurence but it certainly happens. I've not seen UNT play this year, but I've been looking hard at the box scores and drive charts and outside of SMU, you guys look dreadful. Per the SMU fans, it sounds like SMU didn't really go to their true spread offense until the week after your game, I suspect their coach is second guessing that decision right now. The best way to lose to a I-AA is to play them in the season opener or during a losing skid. Eeally I wouldn't be quite so confident regarding Division II. Remember that they are not under the same initial eligibility requirements as I-A and I-AA schools. There is some serious talent at that level, catch a well coached squad that has a decent concentration of that talent and it could be trouble.

Two of New Hampshire's wins came over non-scholarship teams. Yeah they beat NWestern but their only wins are over middling MAC teams and they also lost to Nevada. The Northwestern win was a season-opener and weird stuff happens. Youngstown's wins are over three I-AA's that are combined 5-8 and over a Division II. Montana's wins are over a Division II and two I-AA's that are combined 4-5. Yeah they are solid I-AA teams but it is hyperbole to say UNT wouldn't have a chance to beat any of them.

Sagarin looks at two things. I-AA gets skewed upward because of winning percentage and comparing scores. Right now the Great West is the highest rated I-AA league. North Dakota State is 4-0. They beat I-A Ball State. Ball is 1-4 with losses to two Big 10 schools by a combined 11. Only win was at home against Eastern Michigan (the only I-A ULL has beaten). They routed a Div II They beat two I-AA teams that are combined 1-9 by a combined 21. Cal Poly is 4-1 They routed a Div II They beat three I-AA teams that are combined 6-8 They lost by 10 to I-A San Jose State Southern Utah is 3-2 They beat two Division II They beat 1-3 Texas State They lost to two I-AA's that are combined 6-4 Cal Davis is 2-2 They lost to TCU They lost to 4-1 Youngstown State IMPORTANT. They ROUTED Montana State who had beaten Colorado but has a Division II loss among their three losses. They beat a 1-4 I-AA. South Dakota State is 2-3 They lost to a Division II They lost to two I-AA that are 5-3 (but one had a 1 point loss at Iowa State) They beat two I-AA's that are a combined 2-6. The Great West is rated several notches ahead of the Sun Belt and Sagarin says that three of those teams are good enough to be favored on a neutral site against any Sun Belt team. I don't buy that. Sagarin says that the 2004 Harvard team was 8 points better than 2004 Troy and 13 points better than UNT. For that matter they were rated 2 points better than an 8-4 UTEP team, equal to a 6-6 UCLA, almost seven points better than the Southern Miss team that beat you in the New Orleans Bowl. In fact Sagarin says that team could have stayed within 3 touchdowns of undefeated Auburn that year. Sagarin is interesting, but it does a poor job of comparing I-A to I-AA.

Harry it has looked to me that you are having database issues. I had similar problems and ended up just backing up my whole board and moving it to another database on pair.

I went back and looked at the oldest Sagarin rating available at USA Today. As of right now UNT is rated 1 point worse than at the end of Dickey's first season. MTSU is rated 20 points higher. ASU 14 points higher. Troy is 8 points higher. ULL is 7 points higher. ULM is down 7 points. FIU and FAU were still several years away from announcing their intention to add football. UNT has had something to sell the past few years, the evidence indicates that either the sales didn't get closed or the sales pitch was made to the wrong people.

Right now ULM is the lowest rated Sun Belt team in Sagarin. Their power rating this year would have placed them exactly in the middle of the Sun Belt in 2001. The league isn't growing by leaps and bounds by any stretch but it is improving. Dickey, Howard Schnellenberger and Troy's coach are the only guys in this conference who were coaching their teams in 2001 and that was the first year of FAU football. FIU football wouldn't start until 2002.

Pissin' in the wind, bettin' on a losing friend Makin' the same mistakes, we swear we'll never make again Pissin' in the wind, but it's blowing on all our friends We're gonna sit and grin and tell our grandchildren

The talk in Memphis had been that West and Dunn have been at odds for some time and that Dunn was refusing to make changes West demanded.

1983 to 1986 6-6 4-8 3-8 4-8 4-7

That is why I am so tickled to have Steve Roberts and Dean Lee at ASU. You cannot go to a function where our AD speaks where his talk will not include a list of academic accomplishments. At his request when they had the pep rally to get the invite to the New Orleans Bowl it started with the presentation of the Sun Belt academic trophy to the football team. When Josh Williams didn't want to make some meetings on time and didn't want to do the punishment he was booted from the team and spent a year out of football paying his own way to school. He was a freshman all-american linebacker and could have transferred, could have gone I-AA and played immediately, instead he stuck it out. He is a better player for that. I got to meet the parents of our running back Reggie Arnold. The dad played four years at Purdue and he said that a huge factor in the recruiting process was that the coaches never lied and never blew smoke about what they thought he could do and how they projected him to develop. They didn't always LIKE the answers, but appreciated the truth. Rick Minter once said that the hardest part about rebuilding at Cincinnati was recruiting. He said he had no trouble at all finding stud players willing to come, what he discovered was that there was a reason Cincinnati was still in the hunt. They were guys who had been in trouble or who had a lousy work ethic and the bigger names had lost interest. He said that he started passing on them as well because they were more trouble than they were worth. He said the quickest way to destroy a team is to have a star who is so much better than the rest of the team that he can he can loaf and still be the best player and then choose to play him over the guy busting his tail every snap in practice who isn't as good, because that teaches the team they don't have to be the hardest working, just good enough to be better than the other guy.

Me too. Many of my sports can fly down and play UCF and USF with one round-trip flight and the rental of some vans vs flying on to the next destination. It would also mean my football team is playing in Florida every year instead of every other year.

The sad fact is that the folks in the MWC, CUSA, WAC, MAC, and Sun Belt are too busy fighting each other for position to cooperate. No one is willing to give up what they have for fear someone else might gain. The first step ought to be a bowl alliance. If you had the Liberty, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Motor City and either MPC or New Mexico Bowl in an agreement to fill their ranks out of a pool consisting of guaranteed bids to the champions of the five conferences plus the bowls picks of five of the seven highest rated non-champions it would go a long way toward improving things. There isn't a need for a schedule cartel. It can be done simply by presidents/chancellors directing their athletic directors to schedule no more than one game per season that isn't returned and no more than one I-AA game. In most leagues that leaves two games to fill (three for us until WKU joins). We will then have to play each other home/home or the BCS schools will have to go home/home.

MTSU still almost made it to a bowl and that could have been a whiz bang year for the Belt. Over in the WAC La Tech was 7-4 (7-1 WAC 1st place), Boise State was 8-4 (6-2 WAC) and Fresno State 11-2 (6-2 WAC) were tied for #2 with Boise having won head-to-head. The WAC THOUGHT they were going to send LA.Tech to the Silcon Valley because the Broncos were #2 thanks to the tie-breaker and leave Boise State at home for the Humanitarian. The Silicon Valley Classic jumped the gun and invited Fresno State before the deals got worked out and it was all made public so the WAC couldn't put Boise State there without it looking bad. So the work was underway to cut a deal. The proposal was that La.Tech would go to New Orleans to face UNT. Colorado State would be shifted out of the New Orleans Bowl and over to San Jose to face Fresno State. Boise State would then stay home for the Humanitarian Bowl and face MTSU. The problem was that 1) the Silicon Valley really wanted someone to buy their way into the game and get them badly needed cash, while they didn't want to cut the deal the WAC reminded them they could withhold Fresno State from participating so they finally got on board. 2) The second problem was that La Tech would have had to agree with the shift. Their position was they were league champs and ought to go to a bowl assigned to the WAC and they were not going to do anything to help the Sun Belt, especially if it meant playing a team with a losing record so they vetoed the shift. As a result the Silicon got to sell their game to Michigan State for an amount reportedly in excess of $500,000. The Humanitarian found Clemson was willing to buy $500,000 in tix and invited them to play La.Tech before a sparse crowd. MTSU got to stay home. Tech and UNT both took 25 point defeats for the biggest margin of defeat that bowl season.

HAHAHA I thought it was a real jinx like switching to the wrong shirt on game day.