untjim1995

You are high as a banner if you think the MWC wants anything to do with us right now. When the Big XII implodes, Baylor, TCU, Tech, and UH will be immediately invited to the MWC. Beyond that, UTEP and Rice are already mentioned as interested in the MWC. I figure we are in competition for 7th in Texas for the MWC to consider with UTSA, who has a destination city, bowl game, and big media market to tap into without local competition. That ship sailed long ago, when TCU left and the MWC decided Utah State and San Jose State were better replacements than anyone in Texas that was available at that time. Now, the MWC is just rubbing their hands at getting Big XII schools to join their league in the near future. They would be colossally stupid not to wait out the Big XII's implosion to add schools from Texas much higher up the totem pole in FBS than we have ever been. And that's not including teams like KSU, ISU, and even possibly OSU that will be available, as well. Only way we jump the other Texas schools in CUSA to get into the MWC would require about 4-5 straight CUSA division and conference championships in football, as well as winning CUSA hoops titles and wins in postseason tournaments. Unfortunately, we have about a 2-3 year rebuild ahead of us in football at a bare minimum, and hoops has to endure another Benford year before a new coach can try and rebuild, meaning you are looking 2-3 years from now. By the time you could have finally built up a winner to get their attention, the Big XII should be imploding.

If it features a lot of handoffs and two yard bubble screens, his last head coach in college will give him a case of Grey Goose to soothe over the losing that will occur in Sherman.

You shouldn't...he never has let us down, nor has he had to endure our family short changing him or having to watch other dogs in the neighborhood enjoy a better existence than he gets. He has it great because he is supported fully for being a great dog. He also doesn't have to worry about a cat getting all the attention and support around our home because the cat lovers hate dogs and have basically tried everything possible to allow dogs to even have a chance to thrive. And he hasn't ever had to watch me use a different username to troll a message board, either...so he has that also going for him.

Baker took the job because it paid well and got him the hell out of Mizzou, the worst big university in the country right now--seriously, the last administration member to leave needs to remember to turn out the lights in Columbia. Littrell took the job because it was a huge step up in pay, gave him the chance to build up his resume very fast, and see if he can cut it as a head coach at this level. If he fails, he will have a job like he had at UNC pretty much anywhere he wants, both from his success at UNC and the fact that nobody in the college football ranks is going to hold it against him if he can't turn this around from the mountain of dogshit we are under right now. We made two very good hires, on paper, but the reality is that if either of these see football succeed here in the next three seasons like it did at Southern Miss last year, neither of them will be working here afterwards.

At this point, I think we have to realize that things will probably get worse here, conference wise, for us very soon. Rice, our connection point to the old SWC and the Gulf Coast of Texas for alumni and recruiting, is about to go to the AAC to replace UH and join with their private buddies in SMU, Tulsa, and Tulane. If we lose UTEP, as well, to replace any MWC team that jumps to the Big XII, the SBC we left to finally move up to the best conference affiliation we have bad in 50 years will be gone. And if you lose MUTS to replace Memphis and Marshall somehow gets taken to replace Cincy, you are looking at CUSA replacing 4 schools, probably with SBC teams that aren't anywhere close to here. We made our bed. It's what we have to lie in and just accept. It doesn't mean we cant follow our alma mater anymore, but it does mean we have to understand that there is a very real probability that we won't be moving upward while others around us in CUSA will be. Winning could change that, but it's basically got to happen like 2013 in football and 2011 in basketball. And neither of those have realistic chances of occurring anytime soon, probably 2018 at the earliest, and even then, most conferences would want to see if we could keep it sustainable for at least 5 years. Well, by that time, it's probably when the Big XII leftovers, the MWC, and the AAC all merge into two big conferences that are allowed to continue being FBS schools, just not power leagues. The rest of the G5 will be demoted to the new I-aa of our day and merged with the bigger FCS programs to be a new level of play, one that is permanently lower than the leagues in FBS.

Well, this time the power conferences have been given control over this from the NCAA schools. The NCAA knows that these schools will break away if they push back, so this time probably will be different...just a matter of when it happens over the next decade. The Big XII is the ticking time bomb. If it can exist, as is, with UT, OU, and KU as its bellwether schools, then it can diffuse this to some degree. But assuming it explodes, the leftovers will be stuck in non-power leagues. And I believe that the non-power leagues that will still get to play the power schools in OOC and in bowls will be a collection of two leagues of 28-32 teams. And I believe that unless the MWC invites us before the big XII dissolves, which would be very short-sighted, we aren't gonna be in that grouping. And what nobody can answer is how our fanbase will react to being at a lower level again inside college football--will we still get around 15-20k a game as we do today or will we go back to less than 10k a game for attendance? That's the scariest possible scenario that we would have to deal with again...

Rice will be first to leave, for sure. They replace UH to give the AAC a Houston presence, plus they have the backing of the three small private schools of SMU, Tulane, and Tulsa. If Cincy goes, I expect the AAC to poach a MAC school, either Ohio or NIU. If it's CUSA school, it will be Marshall. If Memphis leaves, MUTS is the sure replacement. If Colorado State leaves the MWC, UTEP will be the replacement. My guess is that the Big XII expands by four, adding BYU, Cincy, UH, and Memphis.

I don't think it could be a very long season...will be is more like it. We are under a mountain of pure manure left behind by Mac and company. Littrell and staff can literally go 0-12 and we won't have one idea on if he is right for the job or in way over his head. We have huge question marks at QB and all of the defense with very little size or talent. That's why the juco route has so much appeal to this staff. We gotta get bodies in here that aren't looking down at UNT the way the Texas HS recruits and coaches seemingly do. Just pray we don't lose too many starters this upcoming season that stunts the growth of the talent that is here.

All 25 of them...

Basketball can be built (or rebuilt) very fast. With the right coach and a few good players, you can make serious improvement. It shouldn't take a real coach anytime to rebuild here. This all boils down to this. Benford is here because RV is gone. It's that simple. RV's buyout came at the expense of Benford staying another season. And I'll take that trade everyday. RV could have made this place something. Instead, we fell apart at the absolute worst time possible--and the university's leadership let it happen until now. Whether it's too late it is a moot point is yet to be seen. But getting rid of RV, his AD employees, and any donor that viewed him more important than results had to happen. The attendance can't get much worse before you have to start looking at what level of play makes the most sense for your teams. That should be Baker's number one priority--getting butts in seats...

I'm just telling you that the Big XII failing anytime in the next 8 years will be lethal to our future at FBS

For UNT to move up, it would take this:, beyond just winning: 1.) MWC wanted back in Texas--as long as the AAC has SMU, the MWC is the only hope to move up. 2,) The Big XII survives, with Houston. The AAC replaces UH with Rice. That leaves UTEP, UTSA, and UNT as the Texas schools they want. 3. We win in BOTH football and men's basketball. The MWC is a damn good hoops league. That sport matters as much, if not more, for both the MWC and the AAC. Look at MUTS, a school with very good basketball, a solid G5 football team, and a good market to deliver in Nashville. If Memphis leaves, the AAC replaces them with MUTS in a heartbeat. That's what we must do to get the MWC's attention. The reality here is that it's about to get much worse here for us before it gets better, and not just in terms of winning. The AAC probably replaces at least one school, if not 3-4 teams. CUSA will fill most or all of them when they move up. That's Rice to replace UH. That's MUTS replacing Memphis. If Cincy leaves, a MAC team replaces them, probably. But, we lose two decent conference mates, replacing Rice with a non-Texas team. If the Big XII holds together, and we see the MWC adds UTEP and UTSA, we will be forever screwed as a FBS member. And that will be all because we started giving athletics support and funds too late. Miracle is a great way to describe what it will take for us to move upward anytime soon.

I think your awesome recap, MeanGreenMailbox is exactly why so many of us are of the mindset that we truly blew it as far as ever being a legitimate FBS program that could never get reclassified again. We had so many chances to get it right. But we went on the cheap in 1995 and stayed that way for too long. By the time we fixed some huge problems, from the stadium to the conference affiliation, our epic losing in the last decade, with realignment and cost going crazy, we lost any chance to move up to a non-power league that won't get reclassified down. To me, that is the damn shame to those players, coaches, and fans that stuck with North Texas (State) during the FCS fiasco and in there early I-A days. They got no support institutionally. And now, when they see UNT's leadership finally step up in regards to athletics, they see pure suck on the field and court that they never dealt with at a time that UNT offered FAR fewer resources and support. And the rub is that it all occurred when realignment upward could/should have happened here, much more than being moved up to SBC 2.0.

For purposes of media and fans, the post above has been fixed to reflect what garners attention from other conferences. Since 2006, we have two NCAA appearances for winning the SBC tournament. We have that one bowl winning season. Our football team has gone 34-84 in the last 10 seasons. It just suffered the worst loss imaginable last year at the hands of Portland State on Homecoming, while managing to miraculously win a game against another awful team that was down to its 5th string QB in the second half of a game here in Denton that we won by a late TD. That's what we have done lately. Benford's record speaks for itself on this, as well, yet he is about to get a 5th season to coach here, which will most likely reward us with a Trilli-esque season to finish out his tenure here. SMU didn't make that pitch to think they were gonna get any serious consideration from the Big XII--they did it for the sake of their fans to see that they are trying. That, alone, is probably worth millions to their university because of their rich alumni.

They aren't mutually exclusive ideas. We should always be able to beat SFA, SHSU, ACU, McNeese, Portland State, etc...if not, then major changes have to occur, like they did after PSU's barrel-bending of our entire team last fall. If you cannot get a FBS program to have scholarship players with talent to beat other FBS teams, not including FCS spares, you have to really ask yourself if this is truly the right level to compete at for your university. When I have posted that Mac left us in a mile deep hole of dog$hit, I mean it. Littrell has to use a FCS level squad, both in talent and scholarships, to compete this fall. That is why the Butt Cookman game will be revealing--it is literally the only game on the schedule that we will play somebody we should beat and have similar scholarship levels with. If we lose it, it will be the only way that Seth Littrell would look bad. Losing to anyone else this fall will not tell us one thing about Littrell's coaching and system. Its gonna take years for that to show up.

In Texas, there are two FCS schools worth scheduling--SFA and SHSU, two teams that have lots of Texan connections and have fans that will buy tickets. Portland state beat us by 59 points, on our Homecoming, in the worst loss in modern FBS football history. But, to put salt in the wound, they probably didn't have 50 people here for the game, nor did anyone new choose to come over to Apogee for the game, but it sure cost us thousands of fans who decided that this was not something to watch anymore. That game cost us $400k and we didn't get any help that a SFA or SHSU would have given us at the gate.

This year, we aren't. But in 2012 and 2015, we did. After building Apogee.

SMU shortening the series would be awesome if it means we can replace them with better teams...

We are already in SBC 2.0. But we aren't moving upward from it anytime soon. Besides, regionalization for the non-power leagues will be good for travel and cost containment. We missed our MWC chances and are blocked by SMU for any AAC invite. Unless CUSA turns back into what it was before it became the AAC, basically, which is doubtful, we are going to have to find contentment in playing the F_Us and other spares as conference mates until things change. As long as we have UTEP, UTSA, Rice, and LaTech as division mates, our conference setup is still miles better than it was anytime before now.

I still think the Big XII will lose Texas, OU, KU, WVU, Tech, and OSU to other power leagues when this is all said and done. I still think the Texoma 4 go west, KU goes north, and WVU goes to the ACC. That leaves the conference with Baylor, TCU, KSU, ISU, UH, BYU, and whoever else is up for consideration. You'll probably see Cincy, UCF, USF, Memphis, Colorado State, and NIU go into the new, non-power Big XII. The AAC would replace UH with Rice, Cincy with Ohio, Memphis with MUTS, and USF and UCF with Marshall and Southern Miss. The MWC would replace Colorado State with UTEP. CUSA West would be us, UTSA, Texas State, La Tech, ULL. CUSA East would be WKU, ODU, Charlotte, FIU, FAU, and Arkansas State.

That was Trilli's last year here. He was well on his way to giving us 4 wins in his last year after not being fired after his third colossally bad year. Everyone knew he was a terrible coach...much like we know Benford is a terrible coach.

Imagine how he'd feel about Benford...

My prediction is UNT will one of these five games. We may only win 3 games this season but one of these five teams we will surprise and/or one of these top teams will unexpectedly fall off this year. [/quote] I'm predicting 4 wins this season. I think we have a tough schedule ... we lack depth ... and I'm still not sold on our quarterbacks. We have these teams that we can compete with. SMU, BCU, Army, UTEP, and UTSA. Two are at home and three are on the road. I'm not sure I see more than two wins in this group, but I'd be doing backflips if we did. That would tell me that Littrell is the real deal. If we go 0-12, it will not prove anything to me about Littrell as a coach because our numbers are so low for talent and depth. But if he takes a team that miraculously went 1-11 last year and turns this collection into 3 or more wins, we will not have Seth as our coach for much longer. He will have attracted the attention of major schools all over the country.

The quick answer to your question is yes they are...but the hope is that it finally changes. BTW, winning the SBC four times in a row didn't change much in terms of support or attention, nor did Mac's 2013 team lead to anything the next season, as we actually LOST season ticket holders. What we don't know is if winning will really change anything substantially in terms of attendance, donations, or media coverage. It hasn't before, but we have done so much losing and playing nobodies to the local fans and media, it's easy to see how we have gotten where we are...without spending $20k.

I have always believed that our way upward would be to go out west to the MWC, but that ship sailed. If the MWC wants to get into Texas, they can add UTEP, Rice, or UTSA and get everything that we can offer and more. That's three cities with a bowl game to get a tie-in with. In reality, the MWC is just waiting to get the Big XII leftovers when it falls apart. That is TCU, Baylor, Tech, and probably Houston to consider adding. Those are much higher than anyone else in the AAC or CUSA. If we could have ever received an invite to the MWC, it was when TCU left. But we were in the Dodge Doldrums and then our basketball program fell apart very quickly. Today, we just don't have anyone jumping up and down to have us in their conference above where we sit today.