Greendylan

Congrats to Bussey and all our other all-conference players! I hate that this news feels muted by the endless coaching rumors today. Also, Cole Hedlund has really completed one hell of a comeback story.

I'm assuming that Kansas State would like to delay the official announcement until tomorrow so as not to be buried beneath the Urban Meyer retirement news today.

Once Cason Martin starts following Neal Brown on Twitter, it will be official.

In the coming days, we're going to read articles about "Littrell moving up the food chain in college football" and how we're better off having a coach poached after success vs. fired after failures. We will also read about how rarely coaches have succeeded at North Texas and been hired away for "greener pastures" and how Littrell's success at NT has elevated the perception of the program. There's truth in all of the above. However, we do have to ask ourselves about the immediate future of the program. If our recruiting class gets raided, then there is the very real possibility that Littrell will leave here without a single highly regarded recruiting class, no ranking, no wins over ranked teams, and no bowl wins. Now, I'm not blaming him for leaving. It's an amazing opportunity and likely will pay well over $3 million per year. I'm also not trying to diminish our success the past 3 years, which has been quite fun, and consecutive 9-win seasons is nothing to sneeze at. My point, though, is there is a very real scenario in which we are left rebuilding with the proverbial "bare cupboard" under a new coach--even after our recent success. That becomes especially likely if Littrell goes full mercenary and takes our top recruits and certain grad-transfer-eligible star players with him. And, why wouldn't he? KSU isn't going to pay him $3+ million to play nice. So, in the end, it's possible that it will be to the credit of Wren Baker's legacy rather Littrell's if we are to avoid the #olddenton wilderness and rebound within a few years.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows this is a done deal--and probably has been for far longer than some might imagine. Our only hope is that we also have an unofficial "done deal" with a coach who can help protect us from our old coach taking a few parting gifts on the way out the door. If Littrell has a huge head start on persuading our recruits/current stars to head to Kansas State, while we have no one to counter that message, then we could be absolutely devastated and rebuilding for the next two years. An interim coach cannot do that job because the players know that person likely won't be retained by the next staff anyway.

Right. For a guy who has repeatedly emphasized the mission of winning a bowl game--and just received an invite to play a ranked team in one--he seems unusually disinterested. I was holding out a tiny bit of hope that he would at least insist to his KSU suitors that he had to coach the bowl game before bolting and cap off his legacy at North Texas, but that was probably always non-negotiable.

The actual NFF Awards Dinner is tonight in New York. It makes sense that he would remain there. Still, if he is indeed keeping our players in the dark about his absence at such a critical time, that would speak volumes about where his priorities currently lie.

A private search firm helps protect a public institution from FOIA requests.

The New Mexico Bowl is certainly considered the lowest tier of bowl game that there is, but I don't really blame Wren Baker, as playing the #23 team (Coaches Poll) is a great opportunity and perhaps the best we could have gotten. It doesn't sound like CUSA got many great bowl options this season. My concern, though, is that we are quite likely to be destroyed by a former Sun Belt conference mate for the second year in a row. We may be missing quite a few coaches by then, and while I know USU also lost their head coach, I have a hunch that our losses will be far more damaging.

They will have had more time to adapt to their coaching change. We will be double-digit underdogs.

Ha

Getting the season over with and starting over next year . . . Kidding . . . kind of

Oh, I have no doubt he's making calls--and perhaps has been for some time now. But, making phone calls to candidates is not the same as having someone in place who can recruit and persuade our commits to stick around.

While not Littrell's fault, the drama at KSU (and its effects on timing) could produce a worst case scenario for North Texas. If Kansas State drags this out for much longer but does eventually end up with Littrell (a deal that has likely been in the works ever since he hired a new agent months ago), then the following are all well within the realm of possibility: 1. Littrell scrambles to assemble a recruiting class at KSU and freely picks from North Texas. 2. Littrell takes all the top NT coaches/recruiters with him, leaving us with a skeleton crew for a bowl game and thus likely to be annihilated by any decent team, which would really put a sour note on a rare 9-win season. 3. The aforementioned poached coaches make an impassioned appeal to any of our graduate-transfer-eligible seniors to play their final year at KSU. 4. Meanwhile, due again to timing, we miss out on the top tier of eligible new coaches. And, whoever does end up being hired doesn't have time to save our recruiting class before the early signing period. This is, once again, a worst case scenario and not a prediction. Still, it's really starting to frustrate me how the various egos at Kansas State, as they negotiate Snyder's proud exit, could really hamper our program and set us back for years to come--not that KSU has the slightest concern for how they're hurting North Texas, of course.

We could end up in a situation like SMU was last year in the Frisco Bowl--with a GA calling plays--and getting destroyed.

Considering that Kansas State only has 8 commits and is currently ranked 105 in recruiting, I suspect that Littrell, Harrell, and KSU are about to thoroughly pillage what would have been our best class in over a decade.

We easily look like the more talented team, yet here we are.

I believe McCasland said on the pregame show last night that the plan was for him to debut against St. Peter's on Saturday.

Agreed. I'm most impressed by the fact that we can still easily win even on those days when the outside shooting isn't quite otherworldly.

Is it just me or does Woodridge have an even quicker burst to the basket this season? Really impressive performance by this short-handed team!

Given our attrition, I'm quite relieved we were able to pull off a win of any kind against our first D1 opponent. If we are forced to use the same short-handed roster tonight, we will clearly (I think) be the underdogs.

If we had to play our entire season over again starting now, based on how good all of the teams are this week, how many games do we honestly think we would win?

I said it during the Rice game (before we rattled off a couple of late scores that gave the false impression that we dominated the game), and I'll say it again. We are not a good team right now. We were a good team in September, but now that opposing coaches have figured out a blueprint to beat us, our coaches have seemingly no answer. Our offense gets one good quarter per game and then looks like one of the worst in the nation for the other three.

If we do actually finish the regular season with 10 wins, I will be very happy, and that will alleviate most of the sting of finishing third in the division.