untjim1995

Scott Cross has taken UTA to Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas in consecutive years and won the game. Benford's teams lose to Alabama-Huntsville. UTA by 25 this weekend...maybe more

UT-Dallas has alumni who go straight to work in science and tech jobs. They make a lot more than teachers and music/arts majors that we have rolled out for decades. Plus, UTD has no sports teams to take money to build up. Here, finally, we have people in place to begin the journey upward except at chancellor. Great vision from the president, BOR, athletic director, and football coach. We have been about 25 years behind in just about everything regarding raising capital for areas that can produce more revenue in the years to come. And it's very possible that it is too late to make the difference we want it to make when it comes to athletics--but if we can make progress toward the goal of increasing capital across the board, the guys we have in place now look to be the ones who just might be able to pull it off.

I do think that schools in other places have boosters that put football on a pedestal and allow unethical people to control their scene. Obviously, the higher up you go in the Power Conferences, the more dramatic that point can look. Here, I'm not sure we would ever have that. We are a school that doesn't usually support athletics that well and our interests tend to be on other areas, such as music and arts, among other things. But it does make it almost impossible to beat other G5 programs that do cheat or at least look the other way. That's a huge advantage that we won't ever be able to enjoy here. Of course, as soon as those G5 schools get caught cheating, even a little, the NCAA hammers come down super hard, which means that we will never find ourselves in that boat, either...

That that game even got close was mostly due to the fact that Greg McElroy was playing with broken ribs and they just ran the ball to run down the clock. But when push came to shove and Texas got a chance to go down the field and win the game, the Bama defense slammed the door shut immediately. I think that game might have been different had Colt played the whole game, but I still think Alabama's size and defensive speed was something Texas had never faced in the Big XII and it would have still led to a Bama championship.

Great stuff, Cerebus...I do think Wren will be able to raise the standards here, if only because he won't depend solely on 17 BMDs. To see us raise our MGC numbers by 864 people over 12 years illustrates RV's ineffectiveness as an AD better than any other stat we can roll out there to explain why he had to go.

What amazes me about Alabama and why I enjoy watching their team is that they can play any kind of offense they need to in order to win a game. Get behind at Ole Miss by multiple TDs? Open up the offense and let the mobile QB go wild and score points fast enough to come back. Want to try and get physical with them and run the clock out on offense like LSU did? Ok--we will just wear you down until you submit to our will. What Bama has goin on in Tuscaloosa in these most competitive of times in college football is among the most incredible dynasties ever built. Thru the 80's, there were about 20 schools that got big time TV coverage, of which Alabama was a part of. Today, that group is probably around 50--in other words, recruits can go to lots of places to get exposure and many 4 and 5star recruits are looking at where they can stand out the most. Yet, at Alabama, with a task-master in Nick Saban that the sport hasn't seen since the days of Bear Bryant, they are getting almost every recruit they want to come there and find ways to just blend in and keep the juggernaut rolling, knowing full well that other equally-talented kids will be coming after you every year. If you can get past the fact that Goliath is a badass and probably will be until Saban retires/dies, you can sit back and realize that Alabama plays a type of college football that is actually like football that you have watched for decades before the spread made the sport look like basketball on grass...I love watching their games and knowing that they will whip somebody's ass completely while scoring less than 40 points. Watching Navy beat SMU 75-21 is embarrassing for the sport (although I do love SMU completely getting demolished by a service academy...)

Yeah, I bet all 25 of them are really disappointed...

1.) Seth Littrell is the real deal. He led a collection of players who don't fit into his scheme and with subpar QB play and still saw us win 2-4 more games than almost everyone thought. Yes, Bethune-Cookman,, Marshall, USM, Army, and Rice aren't exactly Murderer's Row, but he led a collection of kids who lost 11 games last year, including one by 59 points to a FCS team at home on Homecoming just a year earlier in the worst loss in modern college football history, to 5 wins and a chance at a 6th win. That is a MASSIVE improvement--one of the biggest of alltime, actually. We aren't UCF, where the talent in the state that doesn't go to UF, FSU, or Miami usually finds its way there and they have a brand that recruits flock to, which is what Scott Frost has enjoyed in his first year of taking over a winless team from last year. This was Littrell picking up a team from the ashes and saying that we will fight anyone, even if it is a stacked deck. 2.) The season ended in disappointing fashion, especially at UTEP, but that type of game was what almost everyone thought we would endure almost every week this season. Instead of focusing on that, focus on the fact that we beat USM at home, one year removed from winning CUSA West, and a week before they destroyed the current CUSA West Champ, La Tech. USM also beat Kentucky, who just beat Louisville. Yes, we got crushed by MUTS, WKU, LTU, and UTEP, as well as pretty bad losses against SMU and UTSA. But in Year One of the Rebuild, we just saw a lot of reasons to believe we are about to see a lot of greater success in the upcoming seasons ahead. We have a brighter future if Littrell can get recruits to listen to him and learn about #newdenton. 3.) Recruiting here is still a tough gig until proven otherwise. It shouldn't be--the facilities, the academics, the location, and the coaching staff are light years better than they were a decade ago--but it just is until we make in-roads with the TX HS coaches and the parents of recruits. That will take more years of solid improvement like we just showed this past year. It will take coaches who can sell this place and stay here for a few years to build things up. However,... 4.) If Littrell leads us to a winning season next year, when the CUSA schedule gets MUCH easier when we play 2 or 3 games next year against FAU, FIU, Charlotte, and UAB. Add in that we get the three Texas CUSA teams here, as well as Army and FCS spare, it's not inconceivable to see us get to 7 or more wins in 2017 and get a sizeable raise....somewhere else. As someone mentioned, Coach Bro's time in Lubbock is not going to be beyond 2017--Mahomes is almost certainly going pro this year and they have no defense at all. That means that Tech would be on the hook for about $6.5 million to buy out Kingsbury, but they could get a rising coaching star from the Leach coaching tree who has actually accomplished something as a head coach before they hire him for a nice price of close to $2 million per year, getting a guy in SL that would have built up those TX HS ties and would take over an entire roster made up of offensive talent recruited and built for the Leach spread offense. Its what happens to G5 programs--see Herman at UH, see SMU's Morris and his negotiations with Baylor--when they win and the bigger money programs come calling. When Littrell leaves here, I want it to be to go to a P5 program, not a MWC/AAC team that is just one rung above us on the CFB ladder. And I bet that is what Littrell thinks, too. He knows he has it good here if he can get the talent here. But you never know what a coach thinks if someone dangles millions in front of them, even from a G5 place like UH or SMU, where they have the money that we don't have. It would be awesome if Graham Harrell can take this offense and turn it into something great, as that would be the ideal candidate to be your next head coach if he can do that. But that remains to be seen and we know that his results this year weren't good at all. We just have to believe it is because he inherited receivers that were recruited here to block and not catch a lot of passes, as well as an OL that was low in talent and was built to run block. We will know in the year ahead if he can coach up this offense to produce more punch or if he is just rising SL's coattails. If its the latter, then you have the reality that SL might not get to 7+ wins next year and this is a moot point.

It will end soon enough--RV being gone is the price for his dumbass still being here. BTW, I can't even begin to imagine how much our recruiting will be setback by this stupidity, but that's the price the university chose to get rid of the worst AD in the country before his contract was up.

The price for RV being gone is Bumford still being here...this will end in 4 months.

Hockey-like substitutions cause injuries...

Drexel by double digits...real attendance not above three figures

This remains the best live sports event I have ever attended in Denton for a UNT game, in any sport. Josh White went off in that game, with the loudest roar I have ever heard in the Super Pit when he hit the three that basically clinched the game in OT. Made me realize how great the acoustics really are in the old Pit... And today, if you combined the entire crowd noise of every single game played in the Pit for this upcoming season, as well as those of the previous 4 years, it still couldn't compare to that one moment in OT against Tech. A real team, a real coach, against a real opponent, with real attendance...that's how far we have fallen. Thanks RV.

Not according to anyone in a Power Conference... Boise would beat either of them...

Tech has to be thanking their lucky stars that Benford was such a bad coach, that he couldn't win here with the most talented roster the school has had in decades, maybe ever...because if he had accomplished anything close to what was expected with Tony MItchell and company, Tech would have hired him away on the spot. And then he would have been their problem. This was the fallacy that RV made by hiring Benford. If he succeeded, Tech was going to get him quickly to come back home. If he sucked, we were stuck with him, although none of us imagined it would last the full length of his contract. All I keep telling myself is that Benford still coaching is the trade for no longer putting up with the worst AD in the country in RV. I can put up with that for a year, knowing that Wren Baker's background with hoops might just make him able to make a solid hire here. And make no mistake, a solid hire could have us winning NEXT YEAR--it is so much eaier to turn around a basketball program to compete for conference championships than with a football team.

The thing that separates the Fine QB performance from Greer or McNulty is that we know Littrell will open up the offense and Fine better be ready in the years ahead to make the throws down field. Under Metamucil McCarney, throws downfield beyond 3 yards were never going to be a big player for any QB. I'm willing to bet you that Fine will get a lot better as the years progress--if only because the coaching staff will get better and the talent around him will be better equipped for the offense Littrell wants to implement. Right now, our OL sucks big time and our receivers look like guys who were recruited to play in a 3 yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense. I believe, until shown otherwise, that Littrell and Company will improve all of this as we move forward.

I guess the question that comes to mind then is why is Wilson at UTSA able to do it, but we aren't? I agree, its way to early to make any judgment on SL and staff for sure on the recruiting front, but is UTSA just able to take advantage of its location, facility that get bigtime schools there for OOC games, and its lack of a losing history to sell to recruits? I am sure it helps that hey have shown recruits that they have played big time schools in San Antonio and gave them games--see Arizona State this year, Arizona and OSU from a few years ago. To me, those last two have to be the reasons they have seen their recruiting jump up so much. Our losing history is huge, to the point that apathy amongst media and most UNT students and alumni shows that disconnect in a big way. Then, add in home games for UTSA in OOC that have featured OSU, KSU, ASU, Zona, Colorado State, and UNM over the last few years, while we have played SMU, Portland State, Bethune Cookman, Nicholls State, Idaho, Ball State, and Texas Southern in the same exact timeframe. I do think that matters to kids that are looking at both situations and making their decisions.

They knew about Todd Dodge back in 2008. That's what got us that class. I once spoke to the head coach at Daingerfield HS back in the Dodge days. He said that most of the coaches he knew felt like Dodge was leaving the premier job in the state to go to a place that was, in their minds, a last resort. I asked him why he and they felt that way about UNT--his exact answer was that everyone knew that winning at football wasn't the priority, at least back then--that was 7-8 years ago. I asked him how he steered kids to make decisions on where to go and he always asked the kid what they wanted to do with their life (i.e. Major choice, where to settle down, etc...) and how important would it be to play for a winner. Because he felt that if playing time was all you were offering, that wasn't a good sign for signing up to be a part of a winner. Granted, this was also when we played at Fouts in the SBC, so very little was appealing to our situation as compared to today. Look, we play in a great stadium, in a better conference setup, in a college town, and have solid academics. You tell me why our recruiting sucks every year compared to others in the state with a similar position in CFB--because that conversation with the HS coach i mentioned above still sticks with me after all these years. Just like with fans, it's gonna take a special coach to build something up here that will attract the attention of recruits who normally wouldn't and haven't given us the time of day when comparing offers from other similar FBS schools. I think about the way Johnny Jones built up our hoops program. He focused on building up talent from HS, but he got high end talent in transfers to come back to the Metroplex, combining to get us into the NCAAs. Eventually, before we killed the program by hiring Benford, JJ got some really solid HS kids to come here. That's what I'm hoping Seth Littrell will follow here with out football team.

Their coaches and their parents know.

One big reason Snyder made JUCOs work for him was because Kansas has a lot of them and they could just stay close to their current school to keep playing major level football. Being one of two teams in that state, especially when the other one is completely focused on hoops, really made it easy for Snyder and KSU to take advantage of the situation. I don't know if we have that same ability, but it is definitely there to be tried.

Its always funny, to me, to think about the belief that the SBC teams were so bad, that you were never that far behind. But I think about being in that league from 2001-2012, and remember that we dominated the league for the first 4 years--I think Troy was the only other SBC team that was even a bowl team during that time. Then Troy won at least part of a title in the SBC from 2006-2010, when we were total dogshit. Now, of course, Arkansas State is the class of that league, having won 4 SBC titles since 2011. I always think this about conferences that people look down upon, believing that they should be more competitive than they usually are. Those leagues still get dominated by one or two teams, usually for a while. But fans of the lower teams always want to believe that they are closer to the top than they really are. Right now, in CUSA, La Tech, USM, WKU, and MUTS are all at the top. So far, against two of those teams, the gap between us and them is pretty wide, as seen on the scoreboard. It doesn't mean we are still in a deep hole, but it does show they the way out of the hole is to recruit better and develop better schemes for those recruits. I trust SL and staff to be able to do the latter fairly well--its the former that remains to be seen. Recruiting here is really the 64k question. Hopefully, Seth and company can get this going at a much better level than we have seen here in 15+ years.

This is where I think the future is really bright--just think of how much better his schemes will look when he has a roster full of players built for his system, not one that was a plodding, 1970s relic of an offense like McCarney ran. I think SL and staff still need to get some JUCOs here until the TX HS recruiting picks up more than it has so far. And I bet they will continue to do just that...

I've said this for a while and I do believe Seth Littrell is the one guy who could change this perception, but right now, the biggest problem we have with fans and with TX HS coaches and parents is the fact that losing has gone on for so long and been tolerated by the university, it takes a long time to change the views that have prevailed for so long. We got 21k for a Homecoming game, at Apogee, against a good name team in Louisiana Tech (not playing at Fouts against Louisiana-Monroe). While a solid number compared to our historical attendance, it just hits on far behind we are in terms of getting interest turned toward the program beyond the diehards. Now, the good news is that we have the opportunity to gain the interest and attention of alumni, students, and local citizenry--but its hard because too many of those people don't consider UNT, even if is their school or alma mater, as their primary team. Littrell has a very bright future as a coach, obviously. If he can't get recruits here that lift us above 100 on the recruiting lists, it speaks more to the institutional issues that have been allowed for so long. Believe it or not, people do know when you let a terrible AD stay in place for 15 years that winning isn't a priority. But if he can pull this off and start getting recruits that have solid FBS offers to still come here and turn them into a winner, the sky is the limit here for our program.

Fr.DeepGreen, I feel like the penance is fair and will even add in a Glory(to the Green) Be, just for good measure...

You are exactly right. Next year and the year after are both very bright if we can keep getting on these recruits that fit Littrell's system. I accept that. Very true and deserved... This bite of crow seems especially dry...