untjim1995

Is it more fun to get curb stomped by Portland State or to play Butt Cookman with zero new fans or media interest?

This will be a learning experience for Wren. Just don't make a mistake like this again or you are just RV'ing the schedule.

If you have to schedule the same team twice in one season because you can't find enough people to play seems to me like it's a pretty good sign that playing FCS would be a better fit for them.

This is the type of situation that Johnny Jones took advantage of when he was our basketball coach...get P5 transfers and win with them. No reason that we shouldn't be on this bigtime--and I bet we are...

This is a pretty good indicator that you shouldn't be a FBS program...

This is a great idea and it will tell us all we need to know on how many new graduates care about sports here--because the sheer number of free season tickets they should see being used by these new graduates SHOULD be huge. No acceptable reason that we shouldn't see 3000-6000 new fans at Apogee for every home game this season, just from somebody going to a game with a new graduate. I'm assuming this will also be given to summer school grads, as well. If we don't see a nice attendance bump from this, it will be severely disappointing...and sadly, very telling.

So far, the auto bid has gone to Western Michigan (MAC), Houston (AAC), Boise State (MWC), Northern Illinois (MAC), and Central Florida (AAC). It would really help our league a lot if we could get a team in that slot. Because right now, the college football media and fans look at the SBCUSA as just basically being the same level of teams.

What very few want to admit on here is that recruiting here is much tougher than it is anywhere else in the state, save for El Paso. The TX HS Coaches and parents of these recruits have zero respect for us. They think its the safety net choice, while also knowing that the program is only known for two bad things--losing and apathy. UTSA, Texas State, Rice, and every other CUSA West team don't have that combo to deal with.

Those AAC schools are a PG league--they have budgets that are much higher than the lower G5, but much lower than the P5.

MTSU spends the same as we do on sports despite being a third smaller enrollment. Why is that? Because sports are their window to the university. It's the same at every other school we compete with. Not here, though--and it never will be, because it is not what our university wants to change.

That would be huge and I would tell you that Wren Baker is a freaking genius if it plays this way, with MIzzou and Okie Lite playing at Apogee

Thanks for the clarification...never knew that.

I just recognize that MTSU is a better program than us in the two sports that matter over the last decade--by quite a lot, actually. Now here comes the part that matters the most. MTSU gets you exposure in Nashville, where only P5 Vanderbilt exists. North Texas gets you exposure in DFW, but the rest of the college football world looks at DFW and values SMU and TCU higher than us. MTSU doesn't have an SMU to block them from joining a league above them--we always have, we always will...it sucks royally, but its the honest truth that we are blocked in the same way La Tech blocks ULM and UTEP blocks NMSU.

I tend to agree on all of this, but just to give you some thought on Okie Lite--they've played road games in the past at CMU, FAU, ULL, Troy, and UTSA. There is no reason they shouldn't have been approached about a long series here. They don't play here annually, unlike Tech, Baylor, OU, UT, A&M, and Arkansas do with games at Jerry World and the Cotton Bowl. OSU could play in FW and Denton every other year and be in front of all of the DFW alumni and recruits they need for their program and it would be a great fit. But, with RV in charge, Tulsa was considered a huge get for scheduling in OOC, and that was soon replaced with the likes of Portland State and Butt Cookman to play here. OSU was probably looked at like they were freaking Alabama by RV...

I would imagine that the KU coaching staff has sold him on being like another Texas QB who turned things around up there, when Austin's Todd Reesing led KU to a Orange bowl victory over Va Tech and finished in the top ten. About once a decade, Kansas has one really good team... As with all recruits, we never know what matters most to them--it could be the coaches and their strategies, it could be the name/history of the program, it could be academics, it could be chasing a girlfriend, or it could be to stay close to or to go far away from home.

Totally agree here. BG is right in saying that the comments we have heard so far are words that RV would have said. If Army is deemed too difficult an OOC opponent, we need to just drop down to FCS. Sorry, but Army is usually a bottom quartile FBS team, if not worse. Liberty is FBS in name only...they may be a SBC team, but nobody who follows college football here in Texas will look at them as being higher than SFA or SHSU. And both of those teams would provide MUCH more in fan attendance and even local media attention than us playing a school from Virginia that has very controversial ties to fundamentalist views that aren't exactly aligned with 99% of academia. No matter how you put it, trading Army for Liberty is a horrible decision unless it brings us a HOME GAME with a recognized and regional P5 opponent. If this brings us Wake Forest, Boston College, Washington State, or Oregon State here, the deal is terrible--Army would bring more fans than any of these teams would. If its a Big XII or SEC school, then its probably a better deal for us, unless its an Iowa State or Vandy home game, because, again, Army brings in more fans to a game than either of them would bring here. But if its anyone else in those leagues, its a better deal for us in the end and I will praise Wren Baker for a playing chess while everyone thinks he's losing at checkers. But for those of you who blindly place their trust in this place, you are either ignorant of our history, you just believe in Mean Green unicorns and don't want to believe we would make a bad deal, or you just love being a masochist.

What is the scenario to me that could easily happen goes like this: when the Big XII loses its big names in years leading up to the GOR expiring in 2025: The Texoma Four go to the Pac. KU goes to the B1G. WVU goes to the ACC. KSU, ISU, BU, and TCU then raids teams to the east in ECU, Cincy, Memphis, UH, UCF, USF, MUTS, and NIU to join them in a non-power league still called the Big XII. The AAC then replaces the 6 teams they lose with Rice, UTEP, UTSA, USM, La Tech, and an F_U that gets them back to 12. And the MWC loses nobody, but doesn't expand west because they don't want anyone left. And then the remnants of the SBCUSA just combine. We play in a division that is UNT with NMSU, Texas State, ULM, ULL, Ark State, USA, and Troy. The other division is the leftover F_U, Ga State, Ga Southern, Appy State, Charlotte, ODU, Marshall, and WKU.

I like Wren Baker and Seth Littrell. Both have been breaths of fresh air from the folks they replaced. But I worry that this place and its institutional culture of apathy is gonna set in on both of them. Remember when RV took over here? He was the one who was finally going to fix our ails, starting this MGC and opening up tailgating for the university, planning to build this funding giant from our alumni, etc...and about 5 years later, he was talking about the difficulties that are inherent with working here. Same with Dan McCarney--couldn't find a better coach to sell our program with his uber positivity at every stop. And then, 4 years later, its complete beatdown of having to try and recruit here and build a winner. If WB replaces Army with Liberty and we don't get a power conference team here in 2019, this thing will have been a colossal error on his part. And if its an error with scheduling, he will be following the same path that RV paved before him with the ridiculous FCS scheduling he has anchored to for the foreseeable future. But he has the chance to show us all that he has this program going in the right direction. Because nobody with a half a brain would think that replacing Army with Liberty for a straight swap of games makes a bit of sense. And if its because SL wants to soften the schedule because Army is viewed as being too tough of an OOC opponent when combined with SMU and the bodybag game, we will know that he is really no different as our coach here than his predecessor, just a bit more quiet and relaxed than Mac...

This whole realignment between the SBCUSA schools has to happen. The MAC has a huge regional advantage for rivalries and coverage from media because it's tighter. The old SWC was the same way. It fell apart because the bigger schools wanted national coverage which the Texas-centric markets couldn't provide. But a SWC 2.0 would do really well today for a regionalized league for schools like ours. It would help us so much from a cost standpoint to travel no further than El Paso to the West, Jonesboro/ Hattiesburg to the East, and Houston/Lafayette to the South. UTEP, UTSA, Texas State, Rice, UNT, Arkansas state, La tech, ULL, and USM would seriously be the best conference setup we've had in 50+ years.

It's kind of the same idiocy that scheduling FCS teams besides the two who would bring fans to our games in SFA and SHSU. Instead, we schedule Rhode Island and Portland State...

Don't go crazy...nothing will ever be as dumb as that 1-AA fiasco. It killed generations of previous fans and potential fans during those years. We've never recovered from it... of course, scheduling Liberty for home and home is not really helping us, either...

Either way, the point still remains...scheduling is the worst thing we do--and its not even close.

OOC games in the last 10 years of decrepit, toilet bowl Fouts, while we were in the Sun Belt: (bolded teams are power teams when we played them, green teams were FCS and not provisional teams moving up) 2001--TCU 2002--Nicholls State and South Florida 2003--Baylor 2004--Florida Atlantic 2005--Tulsa 2006--SMU and La Tech 2007--Navy 2008--Tulsa 2009--Ohio and Army 2010--Rice and Kansas State OOC games held at Apogee or will be held at Apogee since its opening in 2011 2011--Houston and Indiana 2012--Texas Southern 2013-- Idaho and Ball State 2014--SMU and Nicholls State 2015--Portland State 2016--SMU and Bethune-Cookman 2017-Lamar and Army 2018--SMU and Incarnate Word 2019--Abilene Christian and Army 2020--SMU and Houston Baptist 2021--Rhode Island and Liberty 2022--SMU 2023--Memphis 2024--SMU 2027--Texas Tech I have to go out to 2027 to HOPE we play as many power league teams in Denton at Apogee as we did for the last 10 years of the worst stadium in America hosted. Meanwhile, in the same time frame, we will have played 9 FCS teams at Apogee between 2011 and 2021, when we played exactly one in Nicholls State, while playing at Fouts as a member of the Suck Belt. Scheduling is the worst thing we do here as a program--and that is really saying something when you factor in the other huge issues we deal with or don't deal with as a program.

Not to mention that the older population in Denton that actually read this paper aren't exactly known for being real supportive of UNT Sports...I know, I used to work there. Back in the 90s, when we moved up to I-A, it was a regular occurrence to have citizens write letters to the editors complaining about the amount of money being spent on something that few in town cared about. And, although not as common, we had the walk-ins that hated the editorials/coverage on UNT football becoming bigger than it had been, so they came and complained loudly in person. Those people are older or are dead, but that mindset for the citizenry is still there in Denton. The DRC--and by extension, BV--are just putting out there what the subscribers want to read. Actually, all papers are pretty much that way now.

Texas Tech can play a punching bag or three during OOC play because they get millions in Big XII revenues and host Ut, Ou, OSU, BU, TCU, and others every other year that their fans care about and will go to Lubbock and watch. We don't have anything like that with CUSA, so OOC play is vital to create fan interest. Liberty doesn't do that...