Arkstfan

Want to know why there are so few rivalries in the Belt? Look at the number of games played. UNT has played ULM 22 times and ASU 15 times. UNT hasn't met any other team 10 or more times. The seven consecutive meetings with ASU is the longest streak UNT has with any Belt school. Here's the UNT portion of the rivalry breakdown I did on Beltboard. http://www.beltboard.com/?p=124 ASU vs. UNT. UNT leads 7-8, seven consecutive meetings. Notable. Teams were conference mates in Southland and Big West. ASU is 3-4 in Denton, while UNT is 3-4 in Jonesboro, difference in the series is a UNT win in Little Rock. Winner of the game has been Sun Belt champion or co-champion the last five years and three times the winner ended up being Southland champion, that’s 8 league titles between the two in 15 meetings. FAU vs. UNT. FAU leads 2-0, two consecutive games. Notable. Only Sun Belt school UNT has never defeated. FIU vs. UNT. UNT leads 1-0, one consecutive meeting. Notable. FIU suffered 8 turnovers in only meeting. ULL vs. UNT. UNT leads 3-7, six consecutive meetings. Cajuns are 2-4 in Denton, and 1-3 in Lafayette. ULM vs. UNT. Series tied 11-11, five consecutive meetings. Notable. ULM and UNT met twice in 1987, in regular season and in the I-AA playoffs. ULM won both games on the way to a I-AA National Championship. ULM’s win over UNT in 2001 was the 6th straight win by ULM in the series and the last time UNT would lose a league game until October 4, 2005. MTSU vs. UNT. UNT leads series 5-0, five consecutive meetings. Notable. UNT is 3-0 in Murfreesboro. Three of the five games have been determined by 7 points or less. UNT vs. Troy. Troy leads series 2-1, one consecutive meeting. Notable. Troy won first meeting clinching a losing season for bowl bound North Texas. Troy win in 2005 snapped UNT’s conference win streak dating back to the 2001 season.

You mean get ugly like Nebraska? Oh that's right their fans are mainly noted for how classy they treat opponents. Want to be hated? Do like West Virginia and try to drop flaming garbage cans on opposing players.

Arkansas State considered doing a Tennessee tag because we have a lot of alumni in west Tennessee but it wasn't going to make us any money so the school dropped out of the effort.

Badgerwolf is correct.

Bingo. Every other Belt team that was in I-AA did.

We already have a former champion in ULM and a former finalist in ASU. That not pizzazz nuff for ya? Know what UNT has in common with FIU?

But dumping beer, ice, and cokes on opposing players isn't, nor is flinging screwdrivers (the metal kind not the orange juice and vodka kind) at opposing coaches. That was the situation in the WAC and Fresno was putting more cops in the area but it apparently wasn't helping so they adopted that rule.

Actually Memphis, Birmingham, and Atlanta all made offers to host the New Orleans Bowl in addition to Shreveport and Lafayette. The New Orleans Bowl committee selected Lafayette because a significant number of the GNOSF members are there and in Baton Rogue and they wanted to remain active in the game. Now back to 2000 when there were oh so many at-large berths. The open slots that year were in Las Vegas (Arkansas bought that slot reportedly losing several hundred thousand on the deal), the second Hawaii game, and Silicon Valley. In 2001 the Humanitarian and Silicon were both open and the Sun Belt attempted to swap Colorado State to the Silicon (to face Fresno) take La.Tech from the Humanitarian allowing Boise State (8-4 and uninvited) to go to a bowl game that year and send MTSU (7-4 uninvited) to the Humanitarian to face Boise. Instead the Silicon and Humanitarian sold their slots off for hundreds of thousands of dollars to Michigan State (6-5 regular season) and Clemson (6-5 regular season). Not sure what they sold them for but the Ole Miss AD who was trying to go to Boise said they dropped out of the bidding at $500,000. Ole Miss was 7-4 after losing the longest OT in I-A history. Are you under the impression those spots are filled on the basis of some sort of merit other than the size of check that may be written that will clear?

Worked well. You forgot the Fiesta and I forgot the Poinsettia.

There is a competition for at-large bowl berths??? When is that held? There are virtually no at-large bowl berths and the few that emerge tend to happen because a league didn't have enough teams qualify.

Rose Bowl. Founded to promote western football and bring tourists to their little festival. Cotton Bowl founded by the SWC so their members would have some place to play. Fiesta Bowl founded to give the WAC champion some place to play. Holiday Bowl founded to give the WAC champion some place to play. Independence Bowl founded to give Southland champion some place to play. Las Vegas Bowl. Founded to give MAC and Big West champions a place to play (they jointly paid for it!) MPC Computers Bowl. Founded to give Big West champion a place to play. Motor City founded to give MAC champion a place to play. Hawaii created to give Hawaii a place to play. Looks like the New Orleans Bowl is in fine company.

The closest we've had to a George Mason in football was the first national champion team from Miami. But today being ranked 5th going into the bowls eliminates you from contention. Under the BCS system George Mason would have played Southern Illinois a couple weeks ago and been done while we have to wait for the drama of UConn vs. Duke in the #1 vs. #2 title game. In football 17 "non-BCS" schools advanced to post-season. Of them only five got to meet a BCS school on a neutral field with neutral officials and the non-BCS went 2-3 given that chance. Well actually Boise got to play at home but they were one of the three losers. George Mason has faced three BCS schools on a neutral court with neutral officials and were seeded in based on a general perception of merit. In football those match-ups either happened by contract before the season began or because a bowl needed to fill an empty contract slot.

It may be a "fake" bowl game but I had the opportunity in January to visit with reps from the Orange Bowl. They send people out to check into other games and they said the New Orleans was easily the best of the 13 games created in the last decade.

Paid attendance can be used to make the requirements and utilizing paid figures everyone in the Belt met requirements this year.

Not denying that Troy has done well but I can't believe a bunch of Texans can't muster enough arrogance to wiz on the idea that Troy has "passed" you. Keep this up and instead of being the Mean Green ya'll can be the Annoyed Pink.

Troy passed UNT? Don't ya'll have several more name wins? A bowl win and more bowl appearances?

Missed that. I did watch Union (TN) beat Lubbock Christian in the NAIA Division I Women's championship and College of the Ozarks (MO) beat Livingston (IN) in the NAIA Division II men's championship. Both were on CSTV.

Ideally yes. That way when you enter I-A all of your players were recruited to play I-A ball. The seniors last year at FIU and FAU and the seniors this year were recruited to be I-AA players their entire career. Transition by rule only takes two years.

Major Alarm Bell. The students are talking about cutting the student fee if they don't go I-A. I must have missed the part where they talk about increasing the fee to pay the extra cost of I-A. The proposal as it stands is to merely starve the program they have if it doesn't go I-A. Without money it doesn't happen. Starting from the students doesn't suprise me. Some smart university presidents would do exactly that, getting the students to start the campaign in order to create a justification for the move.

Same way all the rest of us did.

Don Strock is the guy to watch out for. The book on Strock was that he was going to have to dumb down the playbook to ever make it as a college coach. He didn't dumb it down and it showed at times (8 turnovers in a three point loss against UNT, 5 turnovers in a 5 point loss to Troy, and another six earlier that led to a rout at ASU) but the Panthers started putting it together late in the season winning four of their last five including a first ever win over FAU.

Humm, only ULL and ULM out of the Belt and saw a few WAC schools missing as well.

Playing I-AA's isn't nearly as big a deal as its being made out to be. My personal philosophy is that if the AD is going to whore the program out two or three times a year to BCS programs and not get a return game that they are better off replacing at least one of those games with a I-AA and trying to get a few wins before they drive all the fans away. In the Belt with the 3/4 schedule you would hope that everyone could find some home/home and 3/2 and 2/1 arrangements to get home games and keep their teams at home at least 5 out of 12 games when playing three home conference games and play six when playing four home conference games. One I-AA counts every year toward the scheduling, attendance, and bowl requirements so it makes no sense to automatically rule out playing them. Realistically with the 12 game schedule and I-AA's counting. There will not be nearly as many vacant bowl spots if any (2004 with all but three eligible teams in bowls won't happen again unless SEVERAL bowls are added). A second bowl will only happen if we partner with someone to create one or we have a top 12 finisher to go BCS. Priority one has to be winning games and developing a fan base. I like the plan the Dr. Lee has at Arkansas State. The non-conference slate this year is Army at Jonesboro, Oklahoma State in Little Rock, at SMU (returns to ASU in 2007), at Memphis (returns to ASU in 2007), and at Auburn for a check. No I-AA game. Only one "money" game. The remainder are simple home/home deals with schools roughly equivalent to us. If we win six or seven on that schedule we won't be top 35 material but we won't suck either. The bonus being that in 2007 we've got SMU and Memphis coming in along with four Sun Belt games and we'll have three slots to fill.

Arkansas State was on the verge of scheduling I-AA Nichols State but we finally reached an agreement with Memphis so ASU goes w/o playing a I-AA.

Smaller crowds for Mardi Gras is no suprise. The nation and the world heard that it would take months to pump the city dry. The nation and the world heard that the whole place was under many feet of water which just wasn't true of the older portions of the city. The nation and the world saw thousands standing in the streets demanding someone help them or saw lots of video of looting of every store in sight (including police officers). The nation and the world heard the reports of medical helicopters being fired upon by snipers when they tried to evacuate the sick and dying. So now you have a lot of people convinced that New Orleans is a wasteland of stinking stagnant water and the ones that aren't convinced of that are convinced that there is no way they are safe there because the whole city has turned into a big version of Mad Max. New Orleans faces a lot of public relations hurdles to be the tourist destination it once was.