Green to the Bone

Correct. The Daily's frustration is understandable and their heart's in the right place. But you can't berate people into buying your product. You can only win them over. Our new director of enthusiasm operations will know that.

You're so, so right. I hope we sell enough tix so that longtime supporters have to complain. I hope a zillion people who never thought once about going to a UNT game are going to burn up the phone lines. I hope our new director of enthusiasm operations will take RV's lead and offer to trade anybody a new Mean Green hat for that old Bevo thing. This is the greatest UNT promotions opportunity since the first NO Bowl.

This should be read as a suggestion to the AD and a solicitation of public support. Anybody else agree/disagree?

The job title is just for grins: a play on the titles such as "director of football operations" that many pro and college teams have adopted in somewhat silly imitation of corporate America, which can be silly enough on its own. But the concept is serious: a full-time position for a professional responsible for conceiving and organizing game-day activities, victory celebrations, away travel for fans, etc. This week is a great example of the need for such. Someone to send out an Eaglemail and a mass e-mail to everyone on the Athletic Department and NTExes and prospective donors lists immediately (like within a few minutes, to emphasize how exciting it is) upon word of a conference championship and an upcoming tourney and a victory celebration. Someone to get the administration's PR department (which is well known for being slow and not very competent in every area, not just athletics; and which, to be fair, pays its employees miserably) to send out an immediate press release on the victory celebration so that it comes from the university itself, not just the AD, to make it clear that this is a university-wide deal. Someone to get video of the game highlights, victory celebration and player interviews on the UNT main web page, featured prominently. Somebody to get student volunteers/interns/Talons/whoever to slap posters all over the dorms and grab people out of the lobby to be there when the bus arrives. (And if some administration procedure prevents access to Eaglemail mass mailings or requires nine levels of approval, which I suspect it does, then someone to beat the snot out of the admin until that's changed.) And someone to drum up lots and lots of enthusiasm for people to go to the Dance, the OU game, the SMU inevitable victory, the NO (or better?) Bowl, with detailed logistics advice, negotiated travel deals, etc., by web, e-mail, billboards, skywriting, mental telepathy -- by any means necessary. In the past, we've had to search too hard to find such logistics; even now, the alert on upcoming Dance tickets sales is a single paragraph at the bottom of the press release, and it contains no mention of what if anything we might do about organized travel. My AD e-mail on the victory, which arrived at 8:05 a.m. yesterday, has a game wrapup, but not a word about what happens next, keep an eye out for Sunday's picks, where we might play, what we'll do about tickets, travel, etc. What I've got in mind is not quite the "sports information office," which puts out game releases and stats. It's more like a promotions office. Somebody whose own enthusiasm is on overdrive. It seems that this position would pay for itself in ticket sales and public goodwill alone, even if it paid quite well, which I think it would need to do in order to attract a seasoned pro. Perhaps a donor would agree to fund the job for a specified number of years, with renewal if the results justified it. All in all, it would reflect progress toward the wise comment that someone posted yesterday: It's about time we started acting like the fourth (and soon third) biggest university in Texas. I apologize for going on and on, but I think it's really an important step for the program and the university as a whole By the way, I thought about "director of excitement operations," but that sounded dirty. What say ye?

I think if we have white helmets, we will lose all our games. I think if the center is left-handed and snaps the ball with the W on the Wilson logo pointing toward the goal line and the n in Wilson pointed toward the quarterback, we will throw an interception. I think if George and Hank leave participles dangling when calling a 3rd and 2, we will fumble. I think if the video on our team bus plays "Meet the Fokkers" instead of "Remember the Titans," the bus will have a flat.

Without repeating my post earlier in another thread, remember that the seeding is subjective. W-L and RPI count, but so do intangibles; the NCAA explictly states that RPI is only a partial measurement because it doesn't include the intangibles. Only the actual humans who assign the seeds can account for those. One of the examples the NCAA rules offer as an intangible that can affect a seed is how well a team did during the absence of a key player. We won two playoff games without KD, who without question is a key player, and won the second of those in a very convincing manner -- just the kind of guts the tourney pickers are looking for. Bottom line: I'm pretty sure our guys played their way out of the play-in game tonight.

The only reason the pre-release speculation focuses so much on the RPI is that it's the only information the non-informed non-insiders have. NCAA rules are explicit in saying that the seedings are subjective, based on hours of conversation between the pickers, and that they include lots of quantitative and qualitative information. Some examples mentioned in the NCAA rules are the team's record in the last 10 games (we're 7-3), the team's performance during periods of difficulty, such as the absence of key players/coaches, the emotional impact of key games, and the inevitable travel fatigue during long road trips. The rules are also explicit in saying the RPI is only one tool for seeding, and not necessarily the best one, because it doesn't account for the subjective factors mentioned above. So RPI comparisons, while probably fairly accurate when looking at the whole NCAA, break down when the pickers are discussing specific teams. The pickers' job is to set up the best tournament possible, not to choose the winners and losers in advance. The play-in game is necessary because there are 34 at-large invitees and 31 automatic-bid conference winners. That's why the 64 and 65 seeds battle it out to start things off. But both of those teams can hang up the NCAA tournament 2007 banner and be proud as hell, as they should be. I'll be proud of these guys tonight whether they go on or not. If they win, I won't care about the seed. I'll be ecstatic with a play-in, a buy-in, a sneak-in, or a job selling concessions. All I care about is that our guys get to go. After Sunday evening, there will be 260 teams that won't know how that felt.

I know (I said so in the original post), but these aren't private conversations. Just a cautionary note about maintaining our image.

1. I agree: Emphasize UNT, not NT. Keep driving that home. Once UNT is in people's heads, they'll know the name of the university. 2. Not to be the buzzkill, and I know it's meant as a chuckle, but skip the Katrina references. It killed 1,000 people, pretty much destroyed dozens of cities, and is still an ongoing tragedy. Not good PR to use it as a sports promotion.

Some folks, you give 'em a cookie, all they'll do is complain that the chocolate chips are too small.

Please, please, for the love of all that's holy, stop repeating this non-fact. Yes, we count Jarvis Christian and Belhaven as wins. So does the NCAA. Go look it up. Their web site, not updated yet with tonight's game, lists UNT as 21-10 as of March 4. The vast majority of NCAA schools play from 1 to 4 non-D1 games per year. It is less common in the top-ranked schools -- 17 of the top 50 RPIs played at least one non-D1 this year; Butler (RPI 31), powerhouse of the Horizon conference, played two, and won both. The NCAA ranks 325 teams nationwide on 15 statistics. Before tonight's game, for the season, we are in the top 10 percent in two: rebound margin (6.4 more per game than the opponents, 18th nationwide) and scoring offense (78 per game, ranked 26th). We're in the top 20 percent in blocked shots per game (4.5 per game, ranked 49th). We're in the top 30 percent in scoring margin (65th), field-goal percentage (96th), field-goal percentage defense (83rd), 3-point percentage (86th). We are ranked 131st in 3-points per game, 165th in steals per game, 219th in assists, 236th in scoring defense, 255th in turnovers per game, 256th in free-throw percentage, and 269th in personal fouls per game. Every category puts us in the upper two-thirds, which is OK, not great. But some of those categories look darn good -- upper third nationwide. And here's the one I want to burn indelibly into your brain: We are 67th nationwide, out of 325 ranked teams, in won-loss percentage: 67.7 percent. That's 21-10. Again, our official NCAA record -- not what you incorrectly regard as some hometown cheerleader cheater's view -- is, as of tonight, 22-10. Our record is 22-10. Repeat that over and over. Because it's the NCAA-certified fact.

I'm sure that will be the case. This ought to get the students excited. By the way, I thought only the girls had EUIDs.

Tired? I think so. Three games in five days. A mediocre team folds when things don't go right. A good team guts it out. Ugly wins beat graceful losses. The relevant word here is team. This team has come together.

Right on! No matter what, let's make sure these guys have a good welcome when they come home. In the meantime, I'm ordering a new party dress for the Dance. So is my wife.

Does it never, ever stop? Please, God, make it stop.

And without KD's 14 points. Strong, strong showing. Not perfect, but strong, strong!

Hit 'em, Ben ...

I could hear the BB band sending O'Neal (sp?) to the bench when he fouled out ...

Free throws!!! Argghh!

Time for a stake in the heart!

... according to the schedule on the official UNT site. It's got us opening against FAU on Thursday, March 22. I think that's wrong.

Don't overanalyze a schedule in advance! ("OK, daylight savings end Nov. 5 and we play Navy five days later, so we'll be rested from the extra hour of sleep, and the Middies have to fly across a time zone and ride the bus from the airport to get here, so they'll have jet lag, and then we play Ark State up there the next Thursday night, so all the Ark State fans will be at home watching 'My Name is Earl,' because in Arkansas they think it's a news program ...") The point is, look at who we play. This is a potential (not predicted, mind you) 9-3 schedule. The three are OU, Ark and Troy.

We didn't get there until about 8 minutes left in the first, but as soon as we walked in, the first thing we heard was a roar from inside for another 3. That game was about as much fun as it's possible to have in the Pit, short of graduation day. Whale of a game, memorable season, and more to come over the next few days. Congratulations to all -- including the kid who hit from midcourt to win $500 from the bookstore. I hope somebody got his name and stats and confirmed his eligibility.

"Being down 17 is nothing after you have been to Iraq." There's your quote of the year.

What conference is "Vanderbilt genius" in?