untjim1995

If your aunt had balls, she'd be your uncle... UTEP clearly was a bad team--to even be in a game with us last year proves that. But a lot of that was do to it being the last game of the season and playing on the weekend of Turkey Day, the game that absolutely matters the least to anyone associated with bad teams. This year, those two awful teams, UTEP and UTSA, are road games. I cannot remember the last time we won a game on the road in the state of Texas--probably Tech in Lubbock in 1999. I'm just praying we can beat one of the UT-satellite campuses. If we do that, along with a win over Butt Cookman, we can all say we have seen MAJOR progress from last year's disaster. We have five winnable games next year--SMU, Butt Cookman, @Army, @UTSA, and @UTEP. I think we get the Butt Cookman game and win one of the road games, probably UTSA.

Here's a crazy thought...oh, I don't know...maybe ignore the fans yelling at you and DO YOUR JOB by getting to locker room as soon as possible. There is nothing good from yelling back at a fan, much less confronting him in a f2f match.

I do think DallasGreen's point about us charging half of what the state allows for a university to charge for an athletics fee, which is what UTSA and Texas State charge, and probably near what UTEP charges, is fair. But I also look at it from the standpoint of the students and their parents who chose UNT because of the university's own use of advertising of charging less or because it was the creative heartbeat of the state and I view it as the reality that what we charge is actually right. We don't need to charging only $3-$7 per semester hours for athletics, but we don't need to go up to $20 either. What I look at is this. If we cannot make our program a place that can attract alumni dollars and fans attention, no amount we charge the students will fix this. Its the biggest reason that I think that if we cannot turn this thing around in football within the next 4-5 years, that student fee will get redone in some fashion, whether eliminated or reduced by complaining students and parents, as well as the anti-athletics crowd in the faculty, administration, and within Denton. You cannot charge people for something they don't want for very long...eventually, they will catch on. Either the fee will get rolled back somewhat or some other university will step in to take advantage of it. I have to imagine that UTA and UTD can easily use this fee against us when looking at attracting the "value" student--and that "value" student is who UNT has traditionally depended on and went hard after.

Oh I remember...while sitting with the TCU fans who graciously brought my wife and I to the game in their seats on the TCU side. I laughed--as did the other TCU fans around us. I'll never forget how hard our defense played that day. We literally kept LaDanian Tomlinson completely in check--he may have gotten a 100 yards, but barely. We were losing by 10 points, 13-3, in going into the 4th quarter. We scored our FG in the 2nd quarter on a fake punt that got us into TCU territory--the only time we got there. We literally never threw the ball, so the crowd finally started the famous chant. It was as big of a giveup as the Dickster ever showed us--we literally handed the ball off every down just to run out the clock. I believe we finally lost that game like 23-3, but it was so there for the taking. And, IIRC, this was the same season that you and few hearty fans watched us beat NMSU at Fouts in the last game of the year. And when I saw a few hearty fans, I'm thinking there were almost 250 of you in the stands for a Division 1-A football game.

If Butt Cookman beats us, it is the absolute worst thing that can happen...because it means we probably go 0-12 or 1-11 again and that we are still bottoming out as a program. If we cannot match last season's win total, we aren't improving at all. We may have won a game last year, but anyone with a brain recognizes that this was the flukiest win we could get--playing a bad team at home with their 4th and 5th string QBs and scoring a late 4th qtr TD to win. Butt Cookman will be the only game we are favored in this year. Its the only way possible in a game this season for Seth Littrell to let us down with this collection of players he has inherited. If we go 1-11, which is very possible, he will get excused for it just because everyone but the green-colored glasses-wearing crowd know that we have one of the worst teams in the country. Personally, if Littrell wins 2 games this year with this bunch, I'll know we are on the right path. But if we lose to Butt Cookman at home and go winless or win one fluky game again, all it will tell me is that we still have no idea if Littrell can turn this thing around. 2016 continues to be all about wins in the recruiting battles. Much bigger and more important challenges than any game we play this year. We simply cannot get better if we are still recruiting classes that are rated in the bottom quartile of the G5s.

Oldguystudent, they are appallingly close...and I mean sleepy-time draw plays or bubble screens on third and 10...

To me, our rivalry with SMU is a lot like UH having a rivalry with A&M. Both teams have played each other a lot, as well as being close to the other school geographically. BUt no SMU fan or A&M fan will ever tell you that we or UH are rivals of theirs. They will each list about 5-10 schools ahead of us. It is no big deal. We hate SMU fans, SMU fans hate playing us.

One of the absolute sorriest guys I've ever met. It still boggles my mind that he wasn't fired on the spot for getting into a huge argument with a fan while leaving the coaches' box before halftime. And that isn't even counting the fact that his days as an OC here were about as boring as an offense can get.

I look at the SMU and Army series as just fine if its the secondary home game on your OOC schedule. If UTSA is playing Texas State for a long time, it makes sense for them for the same reason it does for us with SMU. But UTSA is playing some P5s at home with this series...we are playing FCS spares, one of which just crushed us in the worst loss in modern college football history.

A true rivalry is two-sided. SMU has one already in TCU. Tulane, Tulsa, and UH are their others. We could become one, but history suggest we won't get that chance. If we were to beat them some more in the coming seasons, they will buy this thing out pronto if they are at a place where they are winning. Right now, SMU needs the attendance we provide. But, when they don't, they will drop us... Our truest chance at a rivalry like what you want is UTSA, La Tech, UTEP, or Texas State if we ever play them again.

UTSA also has a lot of built-in advantages that we don't. They are in a major city with no other university playing FBS football. They have media that gladly covers them in SA. They are a gigantic tourist destination that makes games there very attractive to OOC opponents. And they have a stadium that can hold bigger crowds when needed. And their biggest advantage they will always have on us is that they haven't ever told their alumni and students that we can't afford to stay as a Division 1 program so we will be dropping down a level of play and stay that way for 12 years. The absolute devastation that this bomb caused us is immeasurable. We lost decades of actual fans and potential fans for decades because of this--especially actual alumni that have never turned back toward our campus or program ever since they got their degree. UTSA and Texas State don't have that issue to overcome. We do--and it continues to be the steepest hurdle to jump over.

This is Grant Teaff's influence here. Grobe is really their Ed Gennero..

This remains my favorite UNT Football game of alltime. Yes, Baylor was terrible. They lost to A&M 77-14, IIRC, and A&M lost to OU 77-0 that year--and we actually played OU closer than any other Texas team that year. This team and our 2013 team were our best teams we have fielded since the Fry days. Baylor fans I know have always said that this was their low point on the gridiron--getting annihilated by North Texas in Denton at Fouts. I tend to agree with them. They were SWC royalty, used to playing North Texas (State) in Waco as a bought opponent.

I think the scheduling is the worst thing that RV leaves behind--it really cannot be fixed very easily or inexpensively. Home games against Butt Cookman, Lamar, Incarnate Word, and Abilene Christian are absolutely attendance killers. SMU and Army are fine OOC opponents, too, but they would have been great home games to compliment other better OOC names. You don't even have to be winning to get decent teams here--look at UTSA, as the prime example, for using your location as an advantage. But the next AD isn't going to have the flexibility here to fix this soon. The Memphis series down the road is a solid one, too, so I really hope we don't match that up with an FCS team, as well. And by that time, we don't know what the FBS levels are going to look like. Its a very tough situation to look at, for sure...

IIRC, Lamar also charges a higher fee for students than we do. We are under UTSA, UTEP, Texas State, and Lamar. It is what it is. The students are not going to keep paying the current fee with absolutely no return. If we cannot get this turned around Littrell--its going to be that soon, by the way--that fee, which is the absolute life blood of this program, will get overturned. When that happens, our days as a FBS program end, assuming it hasn't already occurred because of the Power Conferences pulling away by then. We have to win in football within the Littrell window. Everyone outside of the homers recognize that this next season isn't when to expect that to happen. But we have to see that last year was the absolute bottom for the program and that we are moving upward from here. We have to be a winner by year 3 here or the grumblings of keeping the funding for athletics in its current situation will not continue. That's your lasting legacy of keeping a lazy AD around 5 years beyond when he should have been fired. What nobody really knows is if winning here will cure the situation to the point of getting a season attendance average up to over 20k a game at Apogee. We want to believe it will happen, but we really don't know for sure. 2014, coming off the HoD Bowl win in front of 35k+ UNT fans, really disappointed so many of us, with its drop in season tickets and attendance that followed what should have been at least an increase in both. And we can blame it completely on the AD, which is fine, but it may just speak to the fact that our culture here just doesn't fit with big time football. Same with the SBC glory days that saw us average right around 15k at Fouts. Hell, Fry's teams of the 70's couldn't draw well here which is basically why he left to go to Iowa. Maybe it changes if we put together a couple of winning seasons now in CUSA and playing at Apogee, but we just don't know for sure.

Look, the NCAA is going to look at the Baylor situation and see that 15 years ago, they had to heavily sanction and damn near Death penalty their mens basketball program. Baylor cleaned house, yet here we are again, seeing a brand new collection of criminals looking the other way and openly hurting victims of rape by football players just to be a money maker. Even after cleaning house again, a small school with a conservative bent and a former leader that many government officials want to get revenge upon (Ken Starr) all equals a situation that won't end well for Baylor. Penn State is a public giant in a gigantic money-making conference--doesn't make what happened there right, but it explains the difference. Politics will play a huge part in this--and Baylor's political stances aren't popular right now in these times from a media and governmental direction. Baylor is about to get hit hard--just watch.

How can you possibly know this? It's never been tried before...

It beats the hell out of empty seats for a ROI...

I still think the NCAA is going to make an example out of little ol' Baylor...they are the perfect size school to hit hard.

Yeah, FFR...and I bet those people that showed up tonight for Mean Green Night at the Ballpark are all from the evil suburbs, too...

I figured names like Texas Southern, Idaho, Nicholls State, Portland State, and Bethune Cookman would help bring out the fans since I run a very clean program...//RV

That will be another thing that will happen when G5 relegation/realignment occurs--these bowl games for the new conference setups will also become more geographic. When the CUSA Western teams and SBC Western teams merge into their new conference, our bowl games will be regionalized, too. Bowl games in Shreveport, El Paso, DFW, Houston, San Antonio, and New Orleans will be ones we have deals with, unless a playoff system gets used instead.

And how will managing Domino's Pizza joints feel in the summer time?

In between those two, they had their start basketball player, LaceDarius Dunn fracture his baby momma's jaw in two places from a punch--and his discipline was to miss about 3 OOC games at the beginning of the year, which Baylor easily won. Baylor ain't Penn State---they are the perfect name for the NCAA to absolutely crush. A well-known name, but a very small P5 player. It won't be death penalty, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it being on the level of the initial Penn State sanctions. Penn State got that knocked down because they are Penn State and they are in the B1G. Baylor won't be so fortunate...

I feel bad for a lot of you because I think that CUSA membership was thought by so many to be a huge step forward for our AD. In reality, while still being a step up from the old SBC, the appeal of this league's teams is very low across the country. Sure, if teams like La Tech, USM, or Marshall are really good in football, they will get some mention and a few TV games, but the rest of the conference is just looked at as a bunch of start-ups that got moved up because of the TV markets they represent. Other than three mentioned above, as well as Rice, college football fans look at the rest of the league and see a lot of directional schools and city schools that nobody has ever really followed: North Texas, Texas-El Paso, Texas-San Antonio, Alabama-Birmingham, Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Charlotte, and Old Dominion. Networks aren't spending a lot on names like this, unless it is in alternative ways--and that is what we have now seen happen to CUSA, a league that so many on here thought would be a perfect solution to us back when we were in the SBC, but never realizing that schools like UH, SMU, Tulsa, Memphis, ECU, UCF, USF, and Tulane were never going to stay in the conference if they could move up. Now that we are in SBC 2.0, there just isn't much we can do to make this collection look much better to the major networks in this challenging times.