untjim1995

We aren't dropping to FCS and going down to 65 scholarships. If anything, the FCS schools that are in the top 20 will move up to having 82 scholarships. This isn't 1982 and we aren't sitting in the middle of the best conference in the country within our own state where cheating ran rampant and the media only cared about them. If we get 15k-20k for a game against G5s today, we will in the years ahead, too...particularly if you regionalize the conferences. We will get good crowds playing teams like Rice, La Tech, UTEP, UTSA, Texas State, etc... Look, I want UNT playing in the MWC or higher, but I also want to win the lottery. Neither appears to have much chance of occurring. Houston, who is waaayyyyyy higher than us on the college football totem pole, can't get into the power leagues. Neither can UConn, Memphis, Cincinnati, Boise State, etc...the doors are closed and locked up. And the only time it will open again will be to kick out teams when the Big XII falls apart and TCU, Baylor, Iowa State, and possibly K-State, Okie Lite, and Texas Tech are no longer power teams. When that happens, the MWC/AAC/Big XII teams will combine to be the two leagues that can still compete for BCS games and scheduling OOC games against those power schools. Its what the Power Leagues want, administratively, as well as from the big media partners, too.

This will never happen. First of all, the G5s aren't going to upset the apple cart, as they continue getting paid for the beatings they get scheduled to take every year, just to pay for their non-revenue sports. Second, the legislatures and judges that fill the benches and government houses of the country are full of grads and donors from the P5s. They are just gonna USFL the G5 on any lawsuits. Lastly, they will allow two conferences to have teams from their leagues compete to play them, both in OOC an din bowl games. Everyone else will be deemed minor leagues. If we are going to be in a minor league, give the kids a chance to compete for a national title, which is the greatness of the lower divisions having a playoff system. I've long felt this way about the non-power leagues. By the way, if you make this deal and it keeps the NCAA Tournament and College World Series as is, this should be done in a heartbeat.

I am also one that was with you. This is going to happen anyway, so it would be nice to get a decent contract from someone that would love to have a 16 team playoff for the month of December.

If you've been a UNT fan in the last 40 years, you've seen Fry and Moore get bought away, then have seen or heard whispers about coaches like Simon, Dickey, Dodge, and McCarney having any sustained success here against people that the college football world cares about leading to new jobs up the totem pole, like Johnny Jones did. And then the success never happened. Until or unless recruiting can pick up here, Littrell will be no different. If he can do it, and the wins follow like it should, then he will have his choices of jobs at the P5 level. If not, and we have no idea if it can be done here with him or anyone else, quite frankly, then he will be a coordinator or position coach somewhere else. It always amazes me on here just how much people think we should be able to get great talent here because of our location and Texas HS football being a hotbed, yada, yada, yada...until it's done here, we are still going to be looking up at the other schools we want to be associated with athletically.

I wonder if a team in the AAC or the MWC could get him if he builds this place into a winner? Tulsa, SMU, etc...they have $$$

TCU paid Patterson a lot of money, even before they were in the Big XII. Like Millions...

I sure hope so--but in 2014, after we had just won 9 games and were the HoD Bowl Champs, we managed to accomplish something that seems impossible--to see our season ticket buyers DROP from the previous year. And that was a season when all-time UNT enemy, SMU, was on the schedule, meaning we should have seen a spike after a 9-4 season with a such a marquee name to the UNT fandom. Instead, the RV-led AD managed to accomplish the impossible--laziness will do that, I guess. If Wren Baker can do ANY kind of marketing, we should see an upswing in season ticket buyers in 2017.

What I believe will occur within the mtxy decade is the Big XII dissolving, the power 4 leagues closing ranks, with the AAC and MWC adding in the Big XII left-behinds, where those two leagues will be allowed to still play the P4s in ooc and a bowl game, but no chance at the playoffs. The rest of the current G5s, the MAC, the SBC, and CUSA, will regionalize and add some top FCS programs to be a lower level of play in college football. At this point. I just realize that we probably started too late at showing interest in having a football program act as a window to the university. But we do have a lot more fans who care about our teams than we have ever had and I think we will always have 15-20k as average paid attendance in the years ahead. Even if we are at a lower tier in the years ahead. The only way we ever have a chance to change this is having admittance in the MWC before the Big XII fails and they add TCU to their league again and get DFW exposure. The AAC with SMU will never let us in, just like CUSA wouldn't until SMU was gone, and just like the SWC wouldn't with SMU and TCU in their league. But being in the MWC before TCU could get back in the league would allow us to play the power schools still for years to come. Of course, the MWC knows all of this and can see some nice Texas schools to add when the Big XII falls apart, not to mention other possibilities they have looked at here in Texas, like UTEP and Rice, or our friends in the great tourist venue known as San Antonio. That's why I think our current setup in CUSA West is probably going to be about the best we will ever have. And, as I have said many times before, it is light years better than what we would have had if SMU hadn't moved to the AAC and we were stuck in the SBC.

CUSA West is our best conference setup in 50 years. And if the MWC came calling and invites us to join, we would be so incredibly stupid to turn it down. But the MWC knows it could wait out the Big XII falling apart and getting TCU, Baylor, and maybe Tech to come over from this state.

Nah--that idiot is gone...which is why the current idiot coach is still here this season. But don't fret--he will be gone soon and a new coach will get hired here soon enough by an AD that isn't the worst in America.

The big question is if the MWC wants us...they could've added us at anytime in the last five years and we haven't heard a peep from them. I figure they have four open slots, which would get them to 16 teams. If they wait, as they will, for the Big XII to implode, they can get potential Texas teams in TCU, Baylor, and Possibly even Tech. This doesn't even count the fact that UTEP was in a conference with those members for a looong time, too. And then there's UTSA...

They always have--but Ft. Worth doesn't split its allegiances between two schools and, most importantly, it doesn't loathe football or basketball...for too many in Denton, these sports are just plain awful and they believe it takes away from the arts and music of the town. If that was true, the DRC would change its coverage and make that view well-known. Instead, it appeals to its readers, mostly older or more liberal-minded people who still read a newspaper or go to their website. Those readers aren't real keen on UNT Athletics--see your average Denia resident...

That should get us over the magical 400 mark...

The DRC reflects its readers--however few that may be these days. But this is what I was talking about on the basketball thread about Denton not supporting our athletics. They never have and they probably never will.

Over/under on actual attendance is 500.

RV'd Wren Baker could really look golden as our AD if he can hire someone that can win games and schedule somebody that fans have heard of and might care about playing us in Denton.

So many of us tried to tell him that he s rooting for a school that will never be allowed admittance into the country club of power conferences again. The SWC was as good as it was ever going to be for them--which, in the latter years, was probably a lot like the AAC of today. I still believe the AAC and the MWC will be allowed to have some kind of access to playing the Power Conferences down the road, particularly when the Big XII finally dies off. That will allow the Power Leagues to say they are just tightening up the schools they believe should be allowed to compete with them, thus avoiding any lawsuits or negative media coverage. The Big XII's leftovers will be in those two conferences--TCU and Baylor to the MWC and KSU and ISU to the AAC. And that will give each conference 14 members. I believe that leaves 4 places for schools in CUSA, SBC, and the MAC to move up to the next level of play in the AAC or MWC. It would be awesome if we could get in either of them, but my bet is that TCU and SMU have us blocked still from this possibility, just as they always have. Seriously, you'd think some person in a conference somewhere above us on the college football ladder would see our alumni and enrollment numbers and realize we could dwarf those two in support if we ever got the chance to play teams that people want to come watch in conference play.

No offense, but there is zero chance this would ever happen. Denton doesn't like UNT Athletics anywhere near enough to pay for a venue...

At this point, it really doesn't matter. Bringing Benfraud back was apparently the price for having RV leave when he did. I cannot ever remember a situation at a big time school where a coach was allowed to be in place in his final year of a contract without retiring.

You're right--Texas college got 2006 bodies into the Super Pit...

My prediction of no more than 2k at any non-conference game, except UTA, appears to obviously still be in play...

I've often wondered why more leagues didn't do this with WSU or other basketball powers that don't play football...

Only because we had to buy out the worst AD in America did this terrible basketball coach get a 5th year to steal money from the university. Benford is a recruiter. He will join some staff at a power school and go back to being a great recruiter. His X's and O's are just horrendous.

UH never offered the Big XII anything it didn't already have--they already have that TV market. All it would do is make the recruiting road harder for everyone in the conference that recruits in Texas. UH is the prettiest pony in a barnyard of farm animals--watching the thoroughbreds run freely on the ranch while they are standing out amongst the animals that are fenced in. We tired to tell CougarQueen this. He comes here to talk schit, but the reality is that UH's place in the upper rung of college football will be dependent on one of two things: 1.) The Power Conferences (Big XII will be gone soon enough) decide to allow two conferences of bigger named G5s to continue to play them and earn a big bowl bid every year like they do now. The AAC and MWC, today, probably constitute the only conferences that MIGHT be given that chance in the next 10 years to stay at this level. 2.) The Power Conferences allow a BYU clause--good enough to be a Power Team, but no conference will take them, so they can still get a chance to get into the playoff race, just because they are independent. UH and a few leftovers decide to go that route, just to say they can still play at the top of the college football landscape, even if it really isn't that true. Otherwise--and this point is delicious to me--schools like UH and SMU, schools that believe they should be higher up the foodchain than they are or will ever be allowed to be, are in the same exact spot as the rest of us. Looking at the beautiful people thru a window that we cannot go inside. We have had to deal with this for decades because of the SWC mentality in this state. Rice has found that they are unwanted. UH and SMU still fight this mindset, even though nobody in the power conferences want them, and the other SWC privates in Baylor and TCU will find themselves very soon having to swim in the same pool that their G5 SWC buddies are already forced to float around in, which also included ourselves and UTEP, the two Texas schools that were treated like stepchildren forever by the SWC schools. The schadenfreude gives me a smile everytime I think about it. Screw Cougar High and Pony Boarding School...

But then they could think about the week before against Southern Miss here and assess that, too. The UTEP game was bad--but it was their Senior Day and we aren't that good--things like this happen in college football all the time when two losing teams play each other. Last year, we almost beat UTEP at home and we were the absolute worst team in FBS by a long ways last season. UTEP didn't care about that game last season, they just wanted the season to end. This year, we knew we were going to get a bowl berth no matter what, so I think the reality is that the kids were complacent while the UTEP kids wanted to finish their season at home on a high note. It happens all the time.