untjim1995

Those schools are mega-football factories. Its always going to be en vogue to go to games at those places listed. Here's where you are right, though, while comparing us to other schools. La Tech, UTSA, UTEP, USM, Arky State, ULL, MUTS, WKU, Marshall, etc...sports, ESPECIALLY FOOTBALL, are the main windows to their university and it is THE priority of their university's marketing resources to advertise their school. Ours is music, fine arts, and cheap tuition--always has been, always will be. The only way we even can see our football program move up in that pecking order would be to see us win over several years, which included several CUSA Divisional and Conference titles, as well as spot in a BCS Bowl game. Otherwise, as we have continually seen for umpteen years now, the primary window will never be on athletics. The faction that is against it, overall, within the UNT Family and in Denton is just too vast. TBH, its almost miraculous that we average around 20k for announced attendance with what we roll out there most seasons these days. We all certainly know that we don't have that many butts in seats. Could winning cure this? Hopefully...but its gonna take 3 or more years of constant winning to even give us a chance. And even then, as we saw with the SBC Championship run from 2001-2004, that is not a given. The alumni turn out for big games or big name opponents (i.e. bowl games or decent competition). Otherwise, its usually about 12-17K in actual attendance every game against SBCUSA teams and FCS spares.

Southern Miss had the same slogan for years, too. You schedule teams that people want to see in OOC. SMU, UH, Indiana, and Army are fine examples of this. Liberty, Idaho, and FCS spares are not. If you actually believe that you shouldn't host somebody at your place out of fear you'll get killed, you might as well just go down to FCS and just be content to play FBS games as your money grab. If we cannot beat Texas Tech, Memphis, or Houston in the coming years at Apogee, so be it. The funds you make off of those games and the media coverage you get is gigantic compared to FCS spares and Idaho or Liberty. This thread is example one of just how low the expectations are around here. If you prefer to see us play a spare at home because its winnable, you've basically told everybody that you don't believe we can ever be anything close to what USM or La Tech have achieved in the last few decades. Sadly, you're probably right with attitudes like this. All I know is that I've seen Troy beat Mizzou and Okie Lite at home. I've seen UTSA compete well with Arizona and Arizona State at home. I've seen us compete well with Kansas State at home in the past. What I have yet to see in the last 15 years is us come close to beating a Power team on the road. And I don't see this happening in the coming years ahead, either.

Big deal--we got Lamar here...///RV

Totally agree. It's just a matter of when. I suspect that the NCAA will still be the governing body for them to protect against antitrust lawsuits for the Powet Conferences and the Upper G5s, which are the AAC and MWC. The rest of us are just going to be playing in a lower level. For all of you who believe the MWC isn't worth it, when it comes down to being included in the top level of football instead of a lower level, this will be what you chose.

UTSA has a local media that promotes them and cares about them. We don't. UTSA plays in the middle of a destination market that others want to come and play in for recruiting. We don't. UTSA hasn't ever dropped down a level in football, causing generations of alumni and potential fans to abandon ship. We have. UTSA doesn't have to worry about its standing with TX HS football coaches and parents of recruits. We do. Thats your differences...until shown otherwise, we are well behind them right now as a program. We are 1-3 against them, with the one win being a miracle. They had a plan right away to thrive at this level. It's worked well so far for them. We are still trying to figure out what to do.

Hearing people bitch about losing to uTSA reminds me of people here that refused to believe we were not going to get beat by Belt teams in the years after the SBC title run ended in 2004. We miraculously beat them once--because their 5th string QB had to play in the second half of our game here in 2015. Right now, they are just better than us. I give us a fighting chance of winning against them this season only because we are playing them in Denton. I still think we get 6 wins against this schedule. If we win 5, that's ok. But anything less than 4 probably means we are in for a long tenure of having SL here because of that contract extension.

Quite simply, the only school where RV would have been allowed to be the AD after the Dodge Debacle and the Bumford Bungling was sadly here. RV was genius in one simple way--he knew what he had to do to keep his job and he did it. The BOR said to stay in budget and don't make a stink about it publically. Then, when he knew he needed extra funds, he got the UNT 17 to fund the extra stuff while selling them on "access", as if it was the exact same thing that their Aggie and Longhorn buddies couldn't do for their higher donations. And those 17 helped further insulate RV's job security until the 2014-2016 calendar years saw us have to buy out two contracts, including Mac's $2.1 million buyout. Then, it just became clear that Benford was never going to turn anything around and Smatresk just could not keep him around with that poor of a record of hiring coaches and little substance on season tickets or attendance. Add in scheduling FCS spares to play at the brand new stadium that only passed because he was basically told to stay away from the stealth campaign that UNTFlyer got passed, he was just too rotten to keep around. But it was well after the pain was inflicted at a time that basically meant we were never gonna get to move up any further on the FBS Conference totem pole than many schools that would have never passed us by if we had even mediocre AD leadership. RV'd...very hard

To me, the offensive struggles from a year ago, has so much to do with having a team built for three yards and a cloud of dust and having them learn the spread. Harrell said last year in two-a-days that the guys were having trouble grasping the offense. It's a roster still full of round pegs and square holes, but I think this year will show more improvement, especially at QB and at WR. The OLine is what it is, but I think the passing game will be better.

Our true rival is Apathy and it's not really close...

Awesome!! Great news!!

Completely agree. He deserved the patience. Johnny Jones had the same issue at first, but he built up a winner and started getting really good TX HS talent. That's my hope for Seth Littrell.

It really is amazing how poorly we have done at cultivating QBs around here. Since Scott Hall, only Gio Vizza and Derek Thompson have shown any modicum of success as the QB here for more than one game. Danny Meager, Matt Phillips, Woody wilson, Riley Dodge, Nathan Tune, Andrew McNulty, Josh Greer, DaJon Williams, and Demarcus Smith were either unqualified to be FBS QBs or they got no help being developed. Some of them had a game or two that were good to great, but overall, they weren't meant to be QBs at this level. I'm not sure at all about Mason Fine, but I give him lots of credit for taking his lumps as a freshman and still coming back for a sophomore year. Not everyone is willing to do that these days...

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the game where we murdered Nicholls State, 77-3....people on here posted like we finally had the QB and offense we were looking forward to. It didn't matter that Denton HS would have given us a better game. Dajon Williams was the next best thing ever. Then we had to play actual FBS teams and we got McNulty'd for the next year...

It was Texas, under Charlie Strong. Cumbie knew Strong was probably a goner if he didn't win in year 3, so he said no thanks. So UT sent up the president and AD to Tulsa to money whip their OC to jump ship to Austin.

Montgomery to Texas Teck would make a lot of sense. Same style of offense and familiar with Big XII opponents. I don't think Tulsa hires SL, though, at least not after this upcoming season, unless we win 8 or more games. I think they'll hire from within or hire someone more accomplished, like another spread assistant, such as Sonny Cumbie...

So why do these schools keep out-recruiting us? This is why we fail at recruiting--we have got to be the easiest school to recruit against... i always remember when Dan McCarney was here in 2015 and the coach at a high school in Frisco talked to me about him. He said high school coaches loved him because he was positive and relatable. But he had two problems that were too difficult to sell recruits--his offense was a complete outdated mismatch for most kids in Texas and the UNT reputation was like carrying kryptonite around your neck. And that was a pretty successful coach in Frisco who has seen several kids go to FBS programs lately.

I would...that would be a great set of teams to beat for a recruit. All but Liberty are higher up the college football totem pole than us.

Getting corporate/company tailgates going would be a big gain...from employees and clients, this would get some casual fans to attend. Think about the school districts, hospitals, small and mid size businesses, and corporations located around Denton alone...but there is the eternal rub--it would have to get Denton's support, which has never been there. Businesses fear showing more attention to UNT than TWU. The anti-athletic vibe in Denton still runs strong. But the tailgate for companies is a great idea if you can get them interested.

As usual, we are half-assing it. But it's better than the quarter-assing that we did for so long before now.

Baylor, Art Briles, and ESPECIALLY Ken Starr will be the NCAA's piñata in the coming years ahead. If the Death Penalty ever comes back, its gonna come back here. Baylor ain't Penn State, they ain't UNC, and they ain't Louisville...they are the perfect school to basically kill off and use as a threat the same way they did SMU way back in the 80s and early 90s. I mean OU, Texas, Texas A&M, Tech, UH, OSU, and so many others were doing the same thing SMU was doing, but pissant SMU couldn't leave well enough alone, so they got crushed into forever being a castaway. It will be oh so fun watching Baylor endure the same methodical punishment--and I cannot think of anything better than seeing Baylor, the institution and program, get figuratively assaulted for allowing the literal assaults to go by the wayside just to win at football and basketball.

I'd just be glad to start beating out Belt teams and fellow CUSA teams more frequently... I don't know really how to do that, but I think it would be a darn good start to improve things here. I do think that accepting transfers here, like JJ did in hoops, will help, if it produces a winner around here. Because, realistically, that seems to me, like its SL's only shot at this point, besides just plain ol' coaching up of the players he has into his system.

Well, if we are talking about wins, we have exactly 36 of them in the last 10 years...versus 86 losses. 4 coaches with a combined winning % of .295. Thanks RV...

I think almost every G5 program faces what we face. We don't play teams that are going to get the generic fan to come out and spend 4-5 hours of his day to watch us play most of the CUSA teams--don't even get me started on the FCS game. The students are showing up more and more, which helps the early season crowds when we play the FCS school or some of the CUSA teams, as does Homecoming. There isn't an easy fix here unless it involves winning more. The student body of the last decade, as well as those graduates in that same time, seem to really enjoy UNT Football games more than anyone ever has in the previous decades. But it takes about 20 years for those folks to make serious money to give back to the program, so maybe things get better in the future for our fundraising and season ticket buyers. But the lost generations of fans from the I-aa debacle cannot be understated. We probably lost the majority of fans/potential fans from the 70s thru the 90s. And it is the sad reality that this situation was what RV took complete advantage of by cozying up to 17 people who wanted to run things and got protected for the last 10 years on the job. Can Wren Baker and staff fix this? I want to believe, but as others have stated, we haven't seen much yet, on a fundraising point, but its still really, really early. And he has a huge amount of apathy and even antagonistic views to defeat within the UNT Family. Defeating that, even just a little, would be gigantic for athletics here.

@MeanGreenTexan--looks like its still you and me on the Western Island... Too bad for us--the MWC won't get left behind completely, nor will the AAC, when the culling of the FBS occurs in the decade ahead. But we were probably never gonna get invited out there anyways, unless we started winning really big in both revenue sports. And even then, I doubt the administration here would deviate from what our fan base wants, which is no western time zone conference mates, other than UTEP. Again, the path for someone to make it bigger like TCU did out west does exist--I just don't know who will take advantage of it in the years ahead from Texas. If its UTSA, God help us. This was place will look like a nuclear fallout zone--hell, it may look that way anyhow, if UTSA keeps beating our ass and actually starts winning division and conference championships and we continue to flounder below .500, as we have done for the better part of the last 25 years.

This x10000000