Smitty

Those reports must make for some interesting reading, Rick.

Good Riddens? I suspect you meant "riddance," as in: "good riddance (to somebody or something) used to show that you are glad to be free of somebody or something" - Encarta World English Dictionary

The lead is down to 22,649 at 4:00 pm Thursday. They've cut the margin by almost 5,400 votes since last night. We're gonna need a bigger boat.

There seems to be a lot of interest in UNT out there, and that feels good. Yeah, I get good vibes, too.

Sixty-six votes in five minutes is possible. With a good connection, one person can vote six times in a minute. So its possible for two people to register 66 votes in five minutes, and fairly easy for three people to pile up that many votes. I just spent ten minutes voting and I could see that some others were voting as well. In that span, Caris received 121 votes and Shawn got 128 votes. So we were close to their pace. Unfortunately, that was ten minutes of solid voting and I can't do that all day. Tennessee seems to have maintained this pace since last night. They must have geared up their troops, and must have an average of at least two to four people going almost all the time.

Tennesse is mounting an impressive rally. Last night Caris's lead was 28,000 votes. This morning its down to 23,500, and still decreasing. At this rate, they'll wipe out the lead in a couple of days. It's not over! CLICK HERE TO VOTE

Amen.

"Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed? The difference is that all men go eventually, but I go six o'clock tomorrow morning. I was supposed to go at five o'clock, but I have a smart lawyer. Got leniency."

MIAMI -- Former University of Miami and NFL quarterback Bernie Kosar would like to return to the Hurricanes -- as their next coach. Miami television station WFOR reported Tuesday night that Kosar would like the job, and The Miami Herald quoted Kosar in its Wednesday editions saying "I'm interested." "UM people knew that I had been offered the president of the Cleveland Browns job," Kosar told the newspaper. "They knew I wanted to get back into football and asked if I'd be interested in the UM job. At first it was just flattering, but then I thought, 'Yeah, I'd really like to look into it."' Kosar, who told the newspaper that he's had preliminary talks with university officials about replacing Larry Coker as coach of the Hurricanes, did not immediately return e-mails or phone messages from The AP on Wednesday. Kosar has no coaching experience, but he often serves as a mentor to quarterbacks at Miami, where he serves as a university trustee. He retired from the NFL after a 12-year career with the Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins. Coker was fired last month after Miami finished a 6-6 regular season, dropping his six-year record at the school to 59-15. He will coach the Hurricanes in their bowl game Dec. 31 against Nevada. Several candidates are in the mix to replace Coker, including Miami defensive coordinator Randy Shannon and Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, both of whom have had discussions with Hurricanes athletic director Paul Dee about the vacancy. Other potential candidates reportedly include Texas Christian coach Gary Patterson and West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez, who has also been mentioned as a possible replacement for Mike Shula at Alabama. Rutgers coach Greg Schiano -- a former Miami assistant -- said earlier this week that he was not interested in the Miami job. Kosar was a fan favorite as the Hurricanes quarterback from 1983 to 1984, leading Miami to a national championship as a freshman, beating Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. The Browns got him in a supplemental draft after he graduated early with a dual degree in finance and economics. Kosar threw 124 touchdown passes in his NFL career, with 87 interceptions. It was a turbulent season in Miami -- with the biggest blow being the death of Bryan Pata, who was shot and killed outside his off-campus apartment complex on Nov. 7. Even before that, a top wide receiver was suspended for much of the season after getting involved in an altercation with two women, a player was shot in an alleged robbery attempt where another teammate returned fire at the purported assailants, and the Hurricanes were involved in an on-field brawl with Florida International which resulted in the suspension of 31 players, 13 from Miami.

I just do not believe anyone was cheating. But if the Vols were cheating, then we were cheating, too.

The Vols did NOT cheat. They were exploiting a flaw in Athlon's website that allowed multiple votes to be entered at once. It wasn't cheating or hacking, it was an error in Athlon's site code. Athlon discovered the error, repaired their site code, examined the voting record, then corrected the vote totals by throwing out votes entered through the flaw. We did it too. Did you see all the posts on gomeangreen.com about PM the secret? That was us exchanging information about the flaw in the system. BOTH schools lost a lot of votes. To use a basketball analogy, if the refs don't call traveling, players are going to take that extra step. That's natural. But it's not cheating.

I guarantee that this weekend is not the state championship game. The only way Dodge is available on Sunday is if Southlake loses on Saturday. The 5A playoffs are six rounds. This weekend are the regional finals. Next weekend are the state semifinals. The following weekend is the state championship. The 5A Division I State final will be on December 23.

Agree completely. Good bye, and, sincerely, good luck.

He will find a job somewhere, if he wants it. I wouldn't be surprised if he takes some time off to get healthy, but he'll get another coaching job. I hope he does. For all the things that happened and how sour things were at the end, I thank him for giving me the chance to go to New Orleans and watch UNT win a bowl game. And considering that UNT hadn't been to a bowl in my lifetime (they last went the year before I was born), I do hope he finds another job and is happy.

Why is a high school coach embarrassing? High school coaches have been successful and they've failed, just like every other coach. A&M got "experience" and they haven't had nearly the success they expected. Colorado got experience in Barnett, and got a cesspool in return. Bottom line: if UNT believes that Todd Dodge is the man for the job, and if Dodge wants the job, then you wait for him. Better to wait for the right person than rush out and hire the wrong person. Just like marriage. And Schiano just turned down Miami. Does that kill the Hurricanes? No, Miami will simply move on to the next prospective coach. Coaches are going to say no publically because they need to assure recruits that the coach that recruited them will be the coach leads them next year.

Patrick did not play today, according to ESPN.com. Of course, that's understandable since Miami had such a powerful ground game: Sammy Morris, 12 carries for 47 yards Travis Minor, 6 carries for 22 yards

I'll give you a good one: several years ago, the head football coach at Lewisville High lived in Denton, where his daughter was a cheerleader at Denton High. So she was cheering against her father's team when DHS and LHS met. It might not be easy for Dodge to leave Southlake before his son's senior year, but it's not like he'd have to move his family or he'd have to move to the otherside of the country. With his son in school here, it actually helps that he'd be able to start his college head-coaching career without having to uproot his family.

I doubt it. Assistants will not be hired until the new head coach is hired, and the new head coach will have major input on who the assistants will be. It's not unusual for a new head coach to bring in a completely new staff. It is likely that several of the current assistants will not keep their jobs. They're in a care-taking mode right now. They shut down recruiting because whoever the next coach is, he will have his own ideas on who to recruit and how to recruit. He might not want a kid that one of the current assistants recruits, so why saddle an incoming coach with promises he will not want to keep?

This stuff is a little confusing. Forgive me if some of this is obvious, but I'll try to put the system into full context. And hopefully I'll get this right. Start with the major classifications for college athletics: Division I, II, III, and NAIA. Division I is universities that range widely in size from giants like University of Texas or Ohio State to smaller universities like Youngstown State and Missouri State. Division II schools are smaller programs such as North Dakota or Northwest Missouri State. Division III schools are even smaller, like Wesley, St. John Fisher, and Mary Hardin-Baylor. And NAIA schools are really small, like Sioux Falls and Saint Xavier. In football, Division I schools are sub-divided into Division I-A and Division I-AA. Division I-A schools have certain requirements for minimum stadium size, minimum average attendance, and minimum number of sports participated. All schools in I-A are technically eligible for the BCS (Bowl Championship Series), which involves the Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar bowls. The "BCS conferences" are those mega-conferences - like the Big 12, Big 10, SEC - that are guaranteed that their champion will play in one of the four BCS bowl games. Any Division I-A school can play in a post-season bowl game. Division I-AA schools do not go to bowl games. Instead, they play a true playoff system (what a concept). In basketball, however, there is no I-A and I-AA. All Division I schools are eligible for the NCAA post-season tournament (once again, what a concept). So if you watch basketball, annoucers may talk about Division I, while in football they may reference I-A. Make sense?

This week was the regional semifinal. Next week (December 8-9) is the Regional Final. After that comes the state semifinals, December 15-16, and the state final on Saturday, December 23. So if they keep winning, Southlake has three more games to go. In other words, there's a very good chance that Todd Dodge will not be available to even have serious discussions about the job until after Christmas.

All sorts of people out there have all sorts of reasons for mentioning names in connection with one job or another. Other teams are also looking for coaches, so if they can create a little tension or doubt in a prospective coach's mind concerning a competing university, or make a prospect think a school is going to go in a different direction, they're going to do it. Example: Coach Fred is looking at schools A & B. School B spreads a rumor that School A is going to hire Coach Bob. Fred, worried that one of his options might be drying up, becomes more receptive to the advances of School B. This is especially true during recruiting. You better believe that every single member of the Sun Belt conference, as well as SMU and TCU, would love recruits to think that UNT is going to make a bad coach hire, seeding doubt in recruits about going to UNT. Don't play the competition's game. Avoid knee-jerk reactions, be cool, be patient, and let RV do his job. For the millionth time, no one on this planet has more at stake in this hire than does RV, and no one wants to get this right more than he does. This persistent idea that he has some personal motive for hiring the wrong coach is ridiculous.

This year, I attended all home games, including the black-jersey finale. Not for DD or RV, but for the kids, the program, the school, and the enjoyment of the game (okay, not a whole lot of that last one this year, but one hopes). Next year, I will be at every home game and the SMU road game. For the kids, the program, the school, and the enjoyment of the game. For crying out loud, people around here support the Texas freakin' Rangers baseball team more unconditionally than UNT! ("Oh, please, keep him, 'cause he's a good guy. He's a stiff who hits .230 and hasn't had a meaningful RBI since 1997, but he's a good guy.") And the hot dogs at UNT games are better than the dogs at the Rangers games!!

Absolutely. After all, if we don't believe, then what are we doing on this board? If you don't believe UNT can build and win...well, that's the guy that just left.

Yes. I will renew my season tickets and Mean Green club membership next year, no matter who is hired. I give RV credit for being able to hire the best coach he can get and to hire someone he believes can succeed. That doesn't mean I can't constructively criticize when I feel a coach or AD is underachieving. But I'm not going to criticize a coach before he's even run his first practice. I do believe that our support will help the new coach succeed, and I will give that support from the beginning.