untjim1995

I've always maintained that 2% of the UNT Family gives a rip about our sports teams...I may have been too generous in saying that.

Miami is doing what P5 giants do when they can--buy out the return game at the G5 when it's possible. Arky State is the last place they wanted to play an OOC game--they just used the hurricane to avoid this. I guarantee if this was Arkansas that they were scheduled to play in Fayetteville, this game would get played as scheduled.

Miami is doing this because they can. Circumstances are on their side and I'm sure they will gladly write Arky State a check for this. Meanwhile, they will gladly host Arky State at their place in the years ahead and they will gladly take the cash. It is the reality of G5s needing P5 cash...

While I understand where you are coming from on this, I think the bigger issue is that many more alumni literally never cared a second about watching us play because they were told not to care by our culture, tried to care but were given every reason that you mentioned above to no longer care, or just gave up waiting for something to happen that never does.

SMU 48 UNT 31 I just don't see us stopping their passing game. We are gonna need turnovers to stay in it.

I completely agree...the FCS games don't help us out at all.

I think that you've just got a huge amount of disinterest and actual loathing of football within the university's circle of influence that feeds attendance. I'm not talking about the BOR or President, but I am talking about the faculty, alumni, student body, and local citizenry. They just don't want to provide any help here because it's either not cool to them, it's considered beneath them, or they literally hate that the sport exists here. It's the reality of being a school known for fine arts and low cost tuition with lots of losing. It affects attendance, media coverage, recruiting, etc...I just don't think you'll get to see the collaboration you mentioned anytime soon. It's just not real important to those folks over in the areas we are well known for.

I think this week tells us a lot about who we will be. SMU would be a top quartile CUSA team. If we can hang with them, I think it bodes well for our chances at a bowl bid and competing for a high spot in the CUSA West. If we get clobbered (loss by more than 2 TDs), I think we know that our ceiling is probably about 6 wins, which is good enough for a bowl game and shows improvement from 2016, but it's a long way from where we want to be. SMU is probably the third or fourth toughest team on the schedule. The top two, Iowa and LT, are well ahead of both of us, but this one tells us, along with Army, if we are just getting by because CUSA isn't really that strong overall, or if we are actually making solid progress toward being a relevant G5 program in the near future. Beating Lamar badly is fun, but it doesn't really tell us anything more than when we get drubbed in our bodybag game--these opponents aren't meant to give you any idea of how you'll actually do against other G5 teams (see Nicholls State circa 2014 for further evidence).

I fear the UAB game being a very poor showing. Late September games that are still hot and playing a team nobody cares about and won't bring more than 50 fans with them usually doesn't bode well here.

Stuff that Baylor allowed...

If they win another game, it'd be too much success that they don't deserve. Program needs to be disbanded for a couple of years...SMUs sins were petty compared to what Baylor allowed and overlooked just to win at football and to make $$$ for their school. Disgusting...

A&M in Sept > A&M in Nov

I wonder if he will ever come back to openly supporting UNT again or if the Darrell Dickey situation just burned that bridge forever...

Postponing it alleviates much of this--these Lamar kids can help their families and get ready for school starting. This game has no benefit for either of us, to be honest. We play a home game against a FCS team that has much less talent than we do and they aren't even into the game because of the many distractions they are dealing with. Even killing them like we did Nicholls State wouldn't help us a lick to get ready for SMU's size and speed.

Craig is like the other 98% of UNT alumni who like sports. They have never been given a reason to care more about us than they do about their t-shirt team they grew up following. If we ever give him a reason to care about us, he will.

One set of teams listed is made up of multi-millionaires and are adults...the other is made up of college kids that are mostly from the area most affected by the flooding. Football is important...but not even close to the most important thing that they need to be concentrating on right now.

I think his seat won't get warm until the 2020 season at the earliest, just because of his recent extension of an added year on that contract. Maybe the precedent has been set that we won't accept colossal losing anymore and buyouts aren't ever an issue again...I think the McCarney firing after that Portland State fiasco was completely warranted and sent the right signal to everyone. I just don't want anymore Tony Benford situations to occur again here, where he gets to coach a contract year because the other buyouts were just too much to bear...

Yep--you are exactly right...but my MG heart has been burned more than my pea-brained MG mind can believe...

I tend to agree here with all of this...but it is North Texas and placing too much hope on football mediocrity has burned me too many times over the last 26 years of following the program. To back up my point on this, since 1991, when I first started at UNT, I've seen us have a winning season exactly 5 times...thru the SLC, Independent, Big West, SBC, and now CUSA. That's I-aa and I-A, FCS and FBS, Fouts, Texas Stadium, and Apogee, ADs of Steve Sloan, Craig Helwig, RV, and now Wren Baker, and HFCs Dennis Parker, Matt Simon, Darrell Dickey, Todd Dodge, Dan McCarney, Mike Canales, and Seth Littrell. That's 26 years of ball that has seen 21 losing seasons. 2 seasons of 9 wins, 1 season with 8 wins, 2 seasons with 7 wins, 4 seasons with 5 wins, 4 seasons with 4 wins, 6 seasons with 3 wins, 5 seasons with 2 wins, and 2 seasons with 1 win. A collective record of 106 wins and 199 losses and 2 ties, a winning percentage of .345. .500 would be a drastic upgrade at this point...

6 wins is a reasonable expectation if all things are equal (no major injuries at key positions or major suspensions/arrests). I'd be a bit disappointed at 5 wins, but it won't annoy me. Anything under 5 wins is just bad...

This is exactly why FBS isn't a good representation of the current college football situation--the Power Schools need to just separate at play each other in an NFL-like setup. Then, you let these other teams get a chance at winning a national championship against teams that are at a more equal level. Its one thing to play a school with a budget that is $10-$15 million more than ours--its an entirely different situation for us to play someone with a budget that is double, triple, or quadruple our budget.

I think this is what they probably should have done from the start with these FCS opponents. It isn't worth the regular price of admittance for a subpar opponent. Its actually no different than what the bodybag opponent does to us when we play at their giant stadiums.

I wasn't around for it, but that has to be the worst moment...it cost us generations of fans, those who were fans before and the fans that we lost by not giving them any reason to want to care for another 20 years...

San Jose State the same issues we have, being a G5 in a market dominated by P5s and being a long-time have not. They are the only school in America that can relate to our situation, having played FBS ball for decades as well. I'd bet that we would show up big for an opener against a ranked USF, though...at least 25k.

The 2008 and 2015 seasons are remarkably similar in their suckitude...both teams won 1-game by miracle circumstances. 2008 at WKU, we beat them on a last second INT at the goal line to keep them from winning. IN 2015, it took UTSA being down to its 5th string QB in the 2nd half for us to score a late TD and win the game. Both suffered losses of catastrophic magnitude--Rice (the SWC doormat) could have scored 100 points on us EASILY if they had wanted to that day. Portland State gave us the worst loss in modern college football history. But in 2008, we still had two more season of DodgeBall because we felt that a buyout of an extra $300k was gonna be too high to pay. By 2015, we decided that $2.1 million was a buyout that was both allowable and necessary. I just pray we never go back to the old days of not buying out contracts until its deemed financially advantageous first.