untjim1995

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.

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.