untjim1995

Until the UNT 17 told RV the were buying out DMac, this point above was dead-on for decades. We basically went from quarter-assing it until we started to half-ass it by building a new stadium and increase funding for the program. After the DMac firing and subsequent releasing of RV, I think we are about 3/4s of the way towards running a real FBS AD--which means we are still lacking 25% of being where other G5s are in this region. Littrell is a solid x's and o's coach. Great offensive mind. But what we have never known is if a guy who has been coaching only at P5s could really make a dent with TX HS coaches and parents here at UNT, a place where a local HS coach recently told a client of mine, "UNT is still UNT--the kids want to go somewhere that is known for more than just losing and nobody really caring." That is a gut-punch to alums like me, but I get it. Like it or not, kids know about SMU and Rice, from their history to their degree value in the state. Kids know about UH and La Tech being solid programs at the G5 level. They know UTSA plays big name opponents in San Antonio EVERY YEAR and are sold on building something there in the Alamo City, a place that hasn't been beaten down by their local team losing and being considered a joke. So, basically, that leaves us, Texas State, and UTEP to go after the rest. I know that everyone hates that we are rated so low, but nobody cares about a new stadium if you aren't any good when playing in it. People will play in Monroe, Louisiana or Ruston, Louisiana only because they believe that they will be a part of a winner--of which, both schools have completely surpassed us in the last decade or so. Nobody cares if you are close to home if it means you are playing in front of 5000 real people on a cold Saturday in November against Directional Airport University between two bad teams. Our ONLY path forward is simply to hope and pray Littrell can do the Johnny Jones Plan in football--win with lower rated players and transfer players, string a couple of winning season together, then see if the TX HS coaches and parents will start considering UNT more seriously for their recruits. Otherwise, we ain't getting any better than what we just saw, a 5 win season that by UNT standards is great, since it represents only the 8th time in 22 FBS seasons where we won 5 or more games, but it just illustrates the absolute suckitude we have managed to build up since then, which has shown an exact total of 4 winning seasons during that timframe, since 1995. UTSA doesn't deal with that kind of anvil around the neck that we carry every day. Again, we have to depend completely on Littrell and Company, like we eventually saw for just a season or two with Darrell Dickey, to produce results, because if they cannot, it continues to perpetuate the reality that this place is damn near impossible to recruit to unless you have a name coach that TX HS coaches have hear of and somewhat trust, as we saw with Todd Dodge. Frank Wilson was the lead recruiter for LSU--he is known at every high school in Texas...when UTSA hired him, of course they gave him the time of day. We didn't do that--we did the exact opposite, actually, in hiring a guy in Littrell with no ties to Texas HS coaches, but a great offensive mind. Nobody should even remotely be surprised that Wilson and staff are recruiting kids at a high level to a place with a solid G5 following, that lures attractive opponents to town for games, and has no losing and apathy to get out from underneath. Littrell isn't so fortunate, but I'm gonna assume he knew this when he took the job, unlike DMac, who looked at us as a USF starter kit because of our location, only to see that his positivity about North Texas wasn't getting bought by anyone at Texas HS locker rooms when being compared to most of our peers. Littrell knows the apathy, the history, the losing, the lack of respect, etc...and he knows that he has to change this over time, even if it means that he is starting from behind again when going out on the recruiting trail. SOme of you guys are just flat out expecting him to make this major reputational transformation with the college football world for our alma mater. It doesn't work that way--and it never has.

I don't think he WANTS that drop to happen. I think he's saying that when it does, it's not the same as when we VOLUNTARILY stayed down at a lower classification when we didn't have to for 12 freaking years, causing us to play podunk schools that very few people cared about in Texas, while the SWC and Big Eight were at the top of the NCAA totem pole during our coma. Just to be clear, I don't want to drop, either. I want us to be as great as we can and play in a conference with teams that can bring fans and media attention to our program. But without wins over teams that people care about across the country, no conference above us wants us. Yes, a lot of that is due to our ineptitude, but a lot is due to being considered the low guy on the DFW ladder. That I-aa fiasco cemented that fact for many other conferences above ours, so without winning against teams that people care about, we are just stuck below SMU and TCU. So, without your colossal "the small guys beat the big guys in a court ruling", the Big XII's demise in 2025 (if not before), will cause a massive realignment that I believe will cause the Power Teams to pull away for good. When that happens, the SBCUSA schools will have to realign geographically, like the MAC has done. So unless, we get into the MWC and the AAC, which will just wait until the Big xii falls apart, allowing them to add in TCU, Baylor, ISU, and KSU if they want, we are left out. And I just don't see how that ends well for us or any other CUSA school. Doesn't mean i want it, but it seems like the very likely scenario that I see happening. The hard part to know is what it will do to our fan support--if it will just drop suddenly because we aren't FBS anymore or if we will still get the same support because we are playing schools people recognize and teams that are close enough to bring fans to Denton.

What a load of BS!...Littrell should get an A+. He took the worst team in America and turned them into a team that went to a bowl game and took their bowl opponent to OT before losing. Again, the year before, our team suffered a loss that was so humiliating that it registered as the worst loss in modern college football history and we had the worst offense in the country. In one year, the new coach got us 5 wins, with a bowl game that easily could've gone our way, as well. All of that doesn't equal B- in most people's minds.

This is awesome--great post!!

OSU would be an awesome and very probable opponent we could get. They've played at FAU, at Troy, at ULL, at UTSA, and at Central Michigan in the past. UNT would be a much better OOC game for them than any of those other teams. But they wouldn't be replacing the body bag opponent. That revenue loss isn't ever happening. They would replace Army or SMU someday, or, as I suggested yesterday, to replace the FCS game. Imagine this: SMU, @ body bag, @Army, Okie Lite @SMU, @bodybag, Army, @OSU The extra revenue from hosting OSU for a home game would easily aid the AD, instead of paying for the FCS spare that costs us money. We, like most G5s, aren't giving up the easy revenue from the body bag game.

How many UH, Army, and IU grads do you know or that live here in DFW? Now compare that number to Tech alumni and the number that live here in the Metroplex...

The hardest thing to get out of is the need for the bodybag game by these G5s, especially us. They just make so much money for the school that every institution who can get them will continue to depend on them for the payout. The hard reality here is that with a P5 road game has to come the reality of either a FCS home game to balance it out or accept a 5 game home schedule. Again, if that is your choice, then the best case scenario, to me, is to take advantage of having a long series with SMU (assuming they won't buy it out) and play a bigger name OOC opponent on the road in the years we play in Dallas, which gives us only 5 home games, 6 true road games, and a game in Dallas where we are half the stadium. The payoff comes the next year, when you get SMU and the OOC big name at Apogee, while playing at Army and P5 bodybag. I still feel that the FCS game, for us in our current situation, is just not helpful. It takes away funds that we apparently desperately need because of the bodybag games, it makes us play a team that nobody gives one flip about in the general fanbase and media, and you are playing a team that either is just incredibly bad (Nicholls State) or you play a team that can beat you and create a horrible black eye (or in the case of Portland State, a complete bludgeoning and colossal embarrassment). I don't see the upside for our program with teams like this, and I ESPECIALLY don't see the value it gives to the UNT fan, who has to give up $$$ and time for us to play someone that doesn't help the school at all. Just my opinion, obviously, but I will never attend a UNT game against a FCS school--and I'd feel the same if I was a fan of any FBS school that plays them. For 99% of the time, its just a scrimmage for the FBS team. We are just not at a place where we can afford to play teams that don't move the needle with fans or media, not to mention the cost for bringing them in.

Great job, WB...this is the best opponent we have ever scheduled to play in Denton in perhaps the last 50 years, if not more.

Bumford is like a horror villain...every time I think he's gonna be dead and gone, you turn around and he's still there, providing more carnage in his path. He will die, but I'm gonna jinx him and say he's not getting fired anytime soon. Maybe this will finally cause the forces of nature to catch up to him.

I think 6-6 is a very real probability here, give or take a game or two. I'll go ahead and say we win our home games and lose the road games. ODU, Army, and UTSA will be our toughest home opponents, while Iowa, La Tech, and SMU will be our toughest road games. Continued improvemtn for our program in 2017 and we make the big leap to CUSA West contender in 2018.

A few things: 1. People here really liked him and he really liked it here. 2. He's affordable 3. He is tied in very well with TX and LA high school coaches who like him and respect him. 4. Coming off failure at his alma mater, he will be hungry to rebuild his reputation, similar to what Tubby Smith did when he got fired at Minnesota and immediately went to Texas Tech and turned things around to the point that Memphis hired him away. I think JJ, under Wren's leadership (assuming he knows what he's doing), could be walking into a great situation. Im not advocating for him to get the job, but he will be interested and I believe we will be interested in him.

I have a real strong feeling that this may very well happen. I think it's a very strong possibility.

I'm exactly like you are 90--I prefer college hoops to college football, and I really enjoy college football. But college hoops is my passion--I love it more than any other sport. I gre up a huge Kansas fan, due to family being up there and loving to play hoops. I used to love going to the Super Pit for games, particularly when JJ had us finally going in the right direction. But I went o lots of games when I was in school, too, with Jimmy Gales, Tim Jankovich, and Vic Trilli as coaches, seeing some really good play (under Jank) and some really awful play (under Trilli). But I won't watch Benford teams--the play is terrible, the crowd of empty seats is embarrassing, and the acceptance of the losing to just save dollars or to let a few big donors have a toy--they all combine to me going away. Just like it has for thousands of others. But college hoops is the rare animal that can see huge turnarounds really quickly. It takes one good player and a solid coaching staff to get back to being a winner. It can be done very quickly--at least at other places it has been done quickly. If Baker can get the right guy here and he can use the talent that is here to gel, this thing could be competitive again next year--maybe not top of CUSA solid, but .500 or better in CUSA play is possible.

Deep, Damon credits going on an ACTS retreat, which is a Catholic Mens weekend retreat, but is open to men of all faiths to attend, for changing the direction of his life. I've been on one and have been a part of teams for several others at different parishes over the years. I don't care if you're Catholic or not, I would highly recommend that any man attend one of these weekends. As Damon saw, it is a very special way to feel a part of a community without being judged. I know for a fact that the Catholic Church in Frisco, St. Francis, has one that is occurring in a few weeks and will be held at Camp Copass in Denton. The Catholic Church in Denton has them, too. Cost is usually around $175-$200 for the weekend, but they provide scholarships to make sure anyone who wants to attend can go. Not football related, obviously, but I just thought I'd explain how Damon West has turned his life around, using his own words.

Dooley will be coaching at a power conference school (SEC, Big XII, B1G, ACC, PAC, or Big East) or at a school in a league above ours that has resources--see AAC, MWC, A10 or MVC. It wouldn't surprise me to see him be the successor to Gregg Marshall at Wichita State if/when he leaves.

I think one win is the most we can hope for. The team has quit on him already--and its hard to blame them for that. Many of us said earlier this season that once it becomes clear that Benford won't be retained--and that basically became obvious in the first week of conference play--the players' efforts will pull back. Its just the nature of the beast, that when a team knows their coach is a lame duck or DOA, the effort usually drops. Its what we are seeing now.

I think you fire Benford now because you want to send the message to the players who will be here after this season that we recognize that this has been a colossal failure and that only because we fired the football coach, the womens hoops coach, and the AD in the year before, causing us to have to buy out several years of contracts, has Benford even been given the chance to coach this team, meaning we are righting the ship here as soon as we could possibly afford to do it (if it is for any other reason other than money, we might as well as just close up the AD). That time is now. We watched attendance go from averaging around 3500 a game to about 1000 in five years. That loss of revenue was easy to see occurring, but the leaders of the school that had forever run the program on known costs are no longer in charge. Smatresk and Baker have shown more interest in athletic spending and overall attention. To me, the easiest thing to do here is just cut bait. But even if they wait--and we go 0-18 or 1-17 in conference play--the lesson here needs to be that Benford will be the last in a line of revenue coaches that were gifted with extra seasons because of our cheap ways, only to see us "rewarded" with even worse results than any of the other seasons previous. This cannot happen ever again in football or mens hoops--otherwise, you are just telling everyone that we are just the same ol' North Texas (State), that all we care about our teams to do is bring in cash to cover expenses of the entire department, nothing more. And that level of direction will insure that we will continue drawing somewhere between 10-20% in real attendance at the Super Pit and nothing above the 15k we usually average overall in attendance over at Apogee. But its my belief that Smatresk, Baker, his staff, and Littrell all have bigger goals than anything that has been in place in Denton ever before.

Look, ULM didn't drop down to I-aa in the 80s and stay there for 12 years--they were already there, basically. Its why the Southland was such a disaster for us. People in Texas looked at the schools we aligned with and just decided that wasn't worth their attention. SFA, SHSU, McNeese State, Northwestern Louisiana State, Nicholls State, Southwest Texas State...they were all nobodies to the SWC media in this state. You can say that was 25-35 years ago, and you'd be correct. But that mindset that set in with TX HS coaches and parents as looking down at us hasn't really changed, mostly because we have sucked as a FBS school since 1995. My point is that ULM, with almost no resources, still gets decent talent in the region because of two huge things: the state of Louisiana has a ton of talent, even if it is split between 4 G5s--not including LSU in this. And they have a reputation, just like ULL and La Tech have, of being able to produce a team that can compete and even beat P5s. Although our resources and facilities should crush those Louisiana schools, we are basically last or close to it amongst Texas G5 colleges for recruiting in most seasons--and that is saying something with the fact that texas has 7 G5s. We almost never compete with the bodybag opponent, so our Texas media just laughs it off when we get crushed by the names they only care about in college football. To me, that's why ULM and others in this region beat us in recruiting rankings a lot of the time. Until we do something on a bigger scale, in terms of winning, I don't see how any UNT head coach and his staff will change this, either. It has been the case since 1995, for sure.

I think it's ok to recognize a few advantages that UTSA has on a lot of teams in CUSA, including us, when it comes to recruiting. First of all, they are in a tourist destination--whether we like the town or not, lots of people love to go there. And it's location attracts strong OOC opponents, including lots of P5s. Kids can be sold on playing at UTSA when they visit the Alamodome and see UTSA hanging with teams like Arizona, Arizona State, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State. That's a huge advantage that we don't get to offer--our big games are SMU and Army for OOC home opponents--it's not even close. Second, they do have strong support from the city of San Antonio and it's media. The SA Express News, as well as their TV stations cover them closely and don't consider them as laughingstocks or as not worth mentioning. DFW media is almost the complete opposite toward us. All I'm saying is that it's an easier job to recruit there than it is here. And every year, we go over the same argument about why we should be so much better in recruiting rankings and how is it that other G5s in the state and region are doing so much better. But it's basically been a couple of Dickey stealth years that got us the talent for our SBC run and the early Dodge years when his HS reputation was getting us some solid skill players for offense, otherwise it's been mediocre to dead-ass last in these recruiting rankings. Again, it hasn't mattered what coach, what conference, or what stadium we have played in, the recruiting doesn't really improve. The reality is that our best teams we have fielded since we moved back up to FBS were in 2002-2004 and in 2013, all of which benefited from the three or four better rated classes we recruited. That's why recruiting records matter. And if Seth Littrell and company cannot change this course, it's likely that we won't see much difference between him and his predecessors in the standings. I still think his best course to follow was the one Johnny Jones took with the basketball program, which was to build it up and get transfers from P5s that could play here, and then eventually convince TX HS coaches and parents that we were a solid program to have their sons attend and play. If Seth can do that, I think he'll break the curse here and actually get hired away soon by a swooning P5 school.

The biggest problem we always see with these bowl turnouts and NCAA tournament turnouts for our teams is that these crowds are full of people who couldn't locate Appgee or the Super Pit ok campus but show up when we are in one of these big games. With the very rare exception of playing a name program in Denton over the years, our attendance never includes these extra fans. Don't understand why, but it's the reality of our disconnect with our alumni, students, and local citizenry.

I'll make the prediction now that La Texh will give us a gift by killing us in Ruston, La, which will be Benford's last game to coach here. He will be terminated before the next game after Saturday. Let the healing begin... We got RV'd so hard by Benford...

To me, the best here with Seth Littrell is that he follows the Johnny Jones plan--get quality FBS transfers from power schools that can play at our level, coach up kids with little or no ratings, and become a winner that eventually gains attention around the area and state that entices HS kids with talent to look at us. JJ did that and he got some solid kids into the program by the time he left for LSU. Until we see something different, and it is now even harder because we have UTSA and Texas State to recruit against in football, unlike when DD was here and recruited some great talent for about two years, it will remain the reality that our reputation as a loser and being apathetic (or worse) when looking at athletics will continue to haunt us on the recruiting front.

Very good post. For too long, the reality was that we were a program at the Division 1 FBS level for one reason--to get more money from being a whored out victim to the Power Leagues. RV really didn't fix it much, but it was better than before he got here. The biggest problem we have had was that we wouldn't buyout bad contracts. Finally, though, in 2015, we bought out the terrible contract for Petersen and the terrible extension McCarney got, all because of RV. And then, in 2016, the university bought out RV as the AD, which is why we have to endure Bumford. But if Bumford confirming to the leaders and big donors here that he sucks as a coach and cannot turn this around, no matter how dumbed down we make a schedule for him, then it was TOTALLY worth it to get rid of RV. His laziness, lack of vision, and inability to find a winner in revenue sports will forever be his legacy here to all of us who weren't in the UNT 17. That those 17 donors bought everything that RV told them for so long still remains one of life's great mysteries. Eventually, though, reality prevailed--it was just waaayyy past when we could have salvaged the basketball program being a mid-major team that was becoming someone relevant on the national scene. We moved quickly enough on McCarney to keep us from completely dying off in football, but basketball was the unlucky victim to poor hires and leadership. The only silver lining now is that it doesn't have to take years to build a winner in hoops. A new coach, with the right mindset, could turn this thing into a .500 team very quickly and then go from there. Jankovich did it when he was here, as did Johnny Jones. It could happen here, too, but it will take Wren finding the right guy. Until he proves otherwise, we have to believe Baker will do just that.

I guess at some point, schools just need to ask themselves if these costs are worth it to win at football. I mean, sure, the top level 20 power teams can pay whatever they want, then the next 45 can pay a lot, even if its significantly less than the college football royalty at the top does. Then, you get into the various levels of G5s. It won't bother me a second when the Power Conference teams pull away. Its a completely stacked deck for those schools in the top 20 or so. Texas, Ohio State, Alabama, Notre Dame, Michigan, etc...those schools are nothing but pro-lite programs. North Texas, Ohio, South Alabama, Rice, and Western Michigan will NEVER be like them---and I'm ok with that.

Thanks, Oldguy!!