untjim1995

The Alamodome point may be the biggest advantage they had in getting the program going and getting San Antonio's citizenry onboard. They have had a lot of things go right, but mostly because they had an administration that wanted this to happen and alumni/citizens that were ready to support it. And, yes, I'm jealous as hell of them. I don't care how much longer we have played or that we have a college town and they don't or that they have KFC helping them get butts in seats. Everything that we have done wrong, they have done right...

The Power conferences woukdnt even let the MWC join the party back when they had Utah, TCU, and BYU and were easily performing better than the old Big East. There's no way they are taking the AAC into those ranks...

UTSA just has so many advantages that nobody else in the conference has--only FBS school in a big city that has shown support to them. They get really solid coverage from the SA media. They have quality OOC teams that want to play them in home-and-home series because their city is viewed as both a tourist spot and as a hotbed for recruiting. And the biggest of all is that they don't have a history of apathy and lots of losing to get rid of. I said it back in 2010 when they were getting ready to start their program up--they have the most potential we have seen from a startup since USF. Whether they can fully take advantage of it remains to be seen, but so far, they have done almost everything right in becoming a solid G5 program. It won't surprise me at all to see them getting a spot in the AAC or MWC down the road.

I've still got worries that Tech will never play here in 2027--that they will either be in the top level of Power League Football that doesn't play us anymore (since this will be after the Big XII dies off in 2025) or they will just buy out the game. I think what this series--and the ones that Baker has scheduled for us besides Tech--is that these OOC games against teams like USA and Liberty will be the type of teams that we are going to be on the same level with after that Big XII implosion by 2025. I think that the Big 12 Haves will find spots in the other power conferences (UT, OU, OSU, Tech, KU, KSU, and WVU) and the others (TCU, Baylor, and ISU) will be left behind in a conference setup with the AAC and MWC schools. Those AAC/MWC schools will keep the bowl spot against the power conferences and will be allowed to play them in OOC games, but the MAC, SBC, and CUSA are going to be "dropped" down to a level that the bigger FCS schools will also play at, like Sam Houston, SFA, NDSU, Montana, Eastern Washington, etc... I think the future schedules sort of show this. Our last bodybag game on the schedule is at MIzzou in 2021, with the first game of the Tech series being in Lubbock in 2024. I mean, that tells me something, when we can schedule games with USA for 2024 and 2025, but have no bodybag game scheduled yet beyond 2021. Now, I'm sure that Wren can get those bodybag games scheduled for 2022 and 2023, but I also bet that the Big XII's looming demise has something to do with this, when we always had those games scheduled out for years ahead. Tech could easily be a bodybag game in 2024 with a buyout of the game in Denton. Now, a spot in the AAC/MWC could change all of this, but SMU ain't letting us in the AAC even if we didn't share a TV market, and the fans here have made it abundantly clear that they don't want to go out West to the MWC, which may not have any interest in us anyway, seeing how UTEP, Rice, and UTSA are the CUSA teams we would be contending with for a spot out west. If the MWC got TCU and Baylor, for example, they would have this area covered anyways, so its kind of a moot point on the MWC thing--we don't want them and we know that they have a lot of Texas choices that probably would take their offer before we even got one.

Yes, Glen Mason was their coach and he built them up from the ashes. He left them a year later to go to Minnesota, but he was just average up there, as he took over for Jim Wacker, the former TCU Coach. KU made a bad hire, then Mark Mangino built them back up into a top ten team and two years later he was gone, leading to Turner Gill and Charlie Weis basically Benford'ing their program. Who knows, maybe David Beaty will get them back up in a few seasons ahead--that seems to be their football program's MO.

People probably look at the name Kansas and think that should have been a cakewalk while Oregon State would have been a tough game for us. The reality is that Oregon State was just awful--on par with what Kansas is today in football, while that Kansas team ended up finishing 9th in the final poll, at a time when the old Big Eight had Nebraska finish #1, Colorado 5th, and Kansas State finish 7th, as well. Believe it or not, KU was the best team we played that year, if you go by the AP poll. Alabama finished #21. Mizzou, Oregon State, Oklahoma, LSU, and Louisville didn't even finish ranked that year.

As long as aren't playing another FCS team those seasons, I'm fine with it. Its a winnable FBS game. I'd have MUCH preferred a series with Texas State, which makes the most sense of all the SBC teams we could schedule, but this isn't terrible...unless we are playing Tarleton State and Midwestern State or someone like that.

Kiffin will waste that talent just like he did at USC and Tennessee. Dude is just a bad guy and a pretty mediocre coach when he doesn't have Pete Carroll or Nick Saban running things.

I'll start by saying this--having grown up here in the SWC's heyday, if you lived in Texas and rooted for anyone in the SWC that was based in our great state, Arkansas was just as much of an enemy as Oklahoma. They got lots of Texas HS kids to go there, their fans would drive their Winnebago's to the town of the game and, in many cases, take over the stadium of the private schools they were playing. Plus, they wore plastic Hog Hats on their heads...very annoying. But, man, they had some great teams--after Broyles retired, they had Lou Holtz coach there and they were regulars in the Top Ten. The he left and Ken Hatfield came in and kept them ranked, while winning a few SWC Championships before heading out to the $EC. After that, they won a couple of SEC West Division titles, but that was when the west was really down and the East had Florida and Tennessee as the best teams in the league, so they usually got throttled. They basically lost their connections to a lot of Texas HS recruits because they weren't playing here very much anymore. And they got really good again under Bobby Petrino, but his motorcycle wreck with his girlfriend that he had working in the AD pretty much ruined them. Instead, Alabama has continued to rule that division, while have to deal with Auburn, LSU, A&M, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State every year. That run of divisional opponents is tough on anyone and Arky has shown that they cannot really get over the hump against that group, which is really no different than what A&M is finding out right now, too...

That's a good idea--I know that there has been some issues in the past with them, but hopefully that has gotten better/easier than it used to be, when Denton was the only place you could go to get decent UNT apparel.

I always figured this was the case at these big sports apparel chains. I've never seen a UNT shirt in the Academy here in Frisco, either.

Trust me, I wanted too, but it was the grand opening and that place was swamped. I'll ask the next time I go in and see what they say if there are no UNT shirts or hats...

It may be just outside of Denton County and inside Collin County, but the new Dick's Sporting Goods in Prosper opened up last week and we went in to look around. I am sad to say that there was no UNT gear in there, but I could buy the ever popular Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders t-shirt. But I am glad to say that SMU had nothing in there, either...just Baylor, TCU, UT, OU, Tech, A&M, and A&M Corpus Christi... This is the kind of stuff that has to get fixed if we want to take advantage of anything associated with this population boom in the Northern suburbs of DFW...

This post by Cerebus from 2015 probably did more to educate a lot of posters on the absolute joke that had been RV's job security than anything else. Yes, we sucked at football for a long time and our hoops program got nuked by the Tony Benford hire. And, yes, at almost every other university in America playing FBS level football or big time basketball, this alone would have gotten you fired. But it didn't here. So, you figured that he was keeping his job for other reasons, hopefully because the growth in season ticket holders and MGC membership had grown at a decent pace. Instead, we got less than 2% of the estimated grads during that time to care enough to fund the program, not to mention the infinitesimally small number that represented of local DFW alumni. So how did RV keep that job? Because he kept stuff like this close to the vest and made sure we stayed within budget to meet the only standard the BOR asked of him. Then, by getting the few big money donors to fund stuff over the budget, knowing full well that these donors were in great with the BOR. This is why so many just want to see Wren Baker provide more information and accountability with these numbers, unlike the 15 years RV had at the job. We will know within the next couple of years if anything has really changed on this front or if the new boss is the same as the old bos, so to speak. And WB deserves the opportunity to fully turn this thing around and to be given time to do it--but the public needs to hear the process and the actual numbers, even if its bad. Most people can understand this, considering the fact that about 2% of the UNT alumni give any interest to this program. Even getting this number up to 3% is a great step forward in progress...

Hey, we gotta get kids here any way we can. When the Texas HS coaches and parents aren't sending their players here that have other FBS offers, you gotta find ones who will come here. That is the hole the program finds itself in, almost continuously. Other than Dickey's one great stealth class and Dodge's first couple of classes here that got in some solid offensive skill players, we pretty much just get what is left over. Nobody can seem to fix this with football. Maybe Littrell eventually does, following the Johnny Jones methodology of building this thing up to being a winner with whatever he can get from TX High schools and then taking in ANY transfer he can.

This is my thought, as well. Their offense will score a lot if they don't turn it over. Our OL will determine if we stay in this one or if we get pounded, in my opinion.

Are we talking about the same SMU that our fans absolutely hate? The one that a UNT alum in Prosper that drove past me the other day with a UNT license plate that with "SCHM-00" on it? If you reversed this and said all of this about SMU looking at us the way you say we are doing to them, I'd wholeheartedly agree. If they lose to us, their coach gets fired. If they beat us, they just enjoy the fact that they got a lot of visiting fans to their little stadium to add to their putrid attendance or that their 100 diehard fans had a closer drive to watch their team play in Denton. The Dallas media won't roast us because they absolutely don't give two $hits about us. They expect us to lose to SMU right now--probably in a blowout. If SMU loses, they will get barbecued and Morris will immediately be on the hot seat for the rest of the year, knowing that a third losing season in a row for him means the unemployment line and probably never being a head coach ever again at this level. I'd love it if we did, but I think we are going to have a really tough time with their offense. I suspect that it will take an Army-like performance from the regular season by our defense to win, meaning we get multiple turnovers to win the game. If we turn it over a lot, I think we have a very real chance of getting pounded by them.

See, to many people, the definition of "idiot" would be less about someone posting an opinion on an internet message board and more about someone getting fleeced for millions of dollars by a dead-beat AD and his lousy hires for revenue sports, especially Tony Benford...

Look, I agree with you on the DMac point, for sure. He showed we would pay more than ever before for a coach, same like we have seen with SL and Grant McCasland. I just think the "bad decisions" and "failure to invest in athletics" was actually do to Apathy, not any other reason. The administration, faculty, alumni, student body, and local citizenry overwhelmingly don't like UNT Athletics getting anything. Maybe that has changed a bit in the last decade, but certainly not enough to say we are anywhere close to having this mindset even change. So we get actual Butts-in-seats at Apogee at around 15k versus the actual 10k we got at Fouts usually--that can be sold a s a huge increase, but the reality is that it is still ridiculously low. Silver is dead-on--the reason for it is the apathy of the program, which was culturally instilled decades and decades ago. Otherwise, we would have seen a sellout of Apogee, Fouts, or the Super Pit at some point in the last 25 years.

RV did two things here that were a huge improvement and last to this day--1.) he opened up tailgating here. I know, what a genius...actually thinking tailgating for a football game in the state of Texas might gain some popularity and staying power--that's how bad the leadership was before he got here. 2.) He did schedule games against SMU, the one team that the majority of fans wanted us to play regularly. Other than that, anybody with a grain of understanding of how to run an AD and hire coaches would have done a lot better here.

This is where I am too. We will beat Lamar and UAB or else we probably don't win more than a game on the entire schedule again. I think we win four games against these six opponents: UTEP, UTSA, @FAU, Army, @Rice, and ODU. I don't see us beating USM, La Tech, or SMU. Iowa just needs to make sure the funds get deposited in a very timely matter...

Yeah, because actually identifying the single biggest problem we have and the Apathy Monster it has created for about 50 + years and trying to make people aware of what has to change is really contributing to the problem...

At this point, it really doesn't matter anymore. RV is gone, these donors showed that they will no longer allow us to have to wait until there is one yea or less on a contract to buyout the coach who is losing, and the university's current President and AD seem to be moving in the right direction. One thing is certain--that time of suckitude killed off the momentum that basketball had, but a new coach and any kind of success will bring that back up--its much easier to rebuild in hoops than it is in football. SL has years to rebuild this thing up from the ashes--even if it takes many seasons to try. McCasland probably has 3 years max to do the same to show progress...

Maybe it was in jest, but those 17 suites made up 17 people who propped up RV for a long time. When he hired Todd Dodge, most here thought it was a high risk worth taking a shot on. It didn't pan out, but we had Johnny Jones' team to enjoy and that was going pretty strong. But it was his hiring and continued support of Tony Benford that was the final nail in the coffin for a lot of us. He destroyed the one program that looked promising going forward, similar to the trajectory that MUTS had been on before they broke thru the last couple of years in the NCAA Tournament. The hiring of Dan McCarney was a good hire at the time, but the extension he gave immediately after the HoD Bowl (which gave him an extension) was a huge mistake and it cost the UNT 17 and the university a ton--and eventually his job security evaporated. An AD at any school cannot let the two main revenue programs suck simultaneously or they will get fired almost immediately. Heck, at most places, if you cannot fix one of those sports within 2-3 years, the AD gets the hook. Here, it took us over 4 years to fire RV for the reality of watching the hoops program get nuked and watching the football program languish for a decade.

You're seeing just what we told you to get used to around here. After about 20 years of wanting us to win more than the university did at both football and hoops, I just realized that I've got to follow them because they are my alma mater and just deal with the laughs and comments from others around me. It's hard when UNT alumni I know openly root for UT, A&M, OU, Tech, etc...it's harder when those fans tell me that UNT would kill them if they played us in a band concert or art exhibit. But it is what it is. Most people who try to care just end up giving up and finding their Florida, Alabama, LSU, etc...and move forward. In some cases, the fan finally gives up after years of following the team and goes crazy--see UNT90. It becomes maddening at some point, but you either stick with it because it's yours or you just walk away.