untjim1995

That has never happened here ever...just like it doesn't happen at almost every G5 program. This

So you think it will be packed here then? As opposed to accepting a stadium that rarely sees half its seats have butts in them... Your long term view of this place is the exact reason we have what we have. Meanwhile, let's see who plays OOC games in other SBCUSA teams...never mind, you don't mind watching us play Lamar and Liberty. Besides, SMU is coming here every other year!! And they are just the same level opponent as they were in 1982... Biggest lie ever told here was that Appgee would bring in more high quality OOC opponents. The exact opposite has occurred...

Wow, that 2021 OOC home schedule is just gonna bring dozens of fans here for those awesome opponents...I bet recruits are really gonna love coming here to see Rhode Island and Liberty. If things hold as they are now, we will host UTSA, UTEP, Rhode Island, Liberty, and two CUSA east teams. ☹️

Amen What separates us in the 2% of alumni that care about athletics is that we still hold our experience at UNT in high regard. We don't expect much from the athletic department because the university's leadership doesn't demand it. So this is why you get a brand new stadium and schedule Texas Southern, Nicholls State, Portland State, Butt-Cookman, Incarnate Word, Houston Baptist, and Rhode Island. It's getting a long series with Army, a program with a history and a following, and you give it up to play some quasi-FBS team that is nowhere near your campus. If you still expect things to really change here, your probably gonna be greatly disappointed. If you are still following because it's a chance to tailgate and hang out with some of your buddies, reliving your denton days, it's all probably good to you, no matter what. If you follow this place because it's your alma mater and you want to stay in touch with the university, like me, this is where my sweet spot exists. Because when it comes down to it, most of us on gmg.com want to win more than the university has wanted to for decades. Until it actually happens, I believe expecting a winner here is fools gold.

We all thought he would be great here, but I think he had a big ego from being an OU player and he actually wasn't all that fast, like we thought he would be. He got moved to LB, IIRC to use his size better, but he wasn't fast enough to beat out the RBs we had here.

Every G5 program needs this, save for a about a special half dozen or so... If we replaced Army to get Liberty, this is a colossal, RV-esque failure. If it brings in another AAC team, spare non-regional P5 team (i.e. Wake Forest or Vandy) or MWC team not in Texas, its still not a great deal because Army would bring in more people. If it brings in Texas State, its a solid push. If its Houston, its a good deal. If its a regional P5 from the SEC or Big XII (i.e. Mizzou, Okie State, Tech, KU, etc...) its a great deal. For all G5s its all about who will get people to come spend several hours and several dollars to come watch you play. Liberty or any other FCS spare doesn't do that. SMU and Army do.

BG, remember when I told you that one day you'll wake up after loving our teams and believing they want to win only to realize that they don't know how or even worse, don't care, about winning? Because right now, unless WB pulls something great out of his ass, this is a prime example of what I'm talking about...for 25 years, I truly believed we would build up some kind of winning program in this state, for all of the reasons we beat into the ground. Yet, here I am, 22 years removed from graduating in the same year we moved up to I-A. And I've seen Helwig, RV, and now Wren Baker act as ADs and make decisions that no other FBS school in Texas would make. And since 1995, we are 89-184, under 6 head coaches. To expect a deal better than the one we just signed with Liberty and changed with Army just exacerbates the reality that our alma mater cannot or will not ever figure out how to build a winning program that people care about. I've given up expecting anything different. I just watch our games now for the fun of knowing how our alma mater is doing, not because of any belief we will turn it around. 4 winning seasons out of 22 I-A/FBS seasons and 17 seasons with 7 or more losses will cause most people to realize what we are and what we are not.

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...