untjim1995

You are very much correct on the self-inflicted part. But I also believe that if we had gotten into the SWC or Big 8 back then, our view of football and basketball would be MUCH different. First of all, it would’ve cemented us as a legitimate program. Two, it would have gotten us DFW media coverage we never got. And three, the most important, is that the the drop down to 1-AA, when we didn’t have to stay there for so long and at the same time as the hey day of those two conferences nationally, we wouldn’t have nuked decades of support from alumni and students. Instead, alums from the 40s thru the 90s basically walked away and gave the current p4 schools a ton of t-shirt fans with UNT degrees. And that is why everything is self-inflicted. We gave up without completely giving up like UTA did.

Exactly

Their coach can never beat anyone better than his team.

This thread is peak gmg.com. A thread about the FCS playoffs and the teams that play truer amateur football than our level of play, yet CougarQueen rolls on the one board he doesn’t get banned on to scoreboard us, as if we are anywhere close to competing with their teams in sports people care about, so one of our posters, in perfect UNT fashion, talks crap back by bringing up Grammy Awards from the music school…on a board to discuss football. Then, we get famous posters complaining about the troll Of trolls, which means nothing at all to the owner or mods on this forum, so we see more people continue to walk away from this mess. Perfection

And we come running like a Saturday Night Special every damn time…that’s what I’m saying.

They came to us when Phil Bennett was their coach and he needed wins to keep his job. So he scheduled two games in 06 and 07. He split with us, winning his only game as their coach in 07 against a Todd Dodge coached team. They scheduled us just after the Death Penalty for a 2 for 1 in 1989, where we gave them one of their two wins, in Denton in 1990 in front of the biggest Fouts crowd (pre expansion) ever that we won by a TD, and then lost in Dallas by 2 TDs in 1992. When we moved up to FBS in 1995, they were no where to be found, just as they stayed away as we got decent in the SBC early 00’s run. The only time we play them is when they want to play.

SMU always does two things you count on: When they’re good, $$$ flow thru players hands. When they aren’t good, they schedule us like we are their booty call. And we always come running to them, giving them money by going to their stadium, and always giving them a W.

ESPN sponsors most of these bowls for TV content—not the bigger, traditional bowls, but the spare ones that are mostly in mid to late December.

Talk about jealousy…being an OBVIOUS SMU fan and always posting here because there aren’t any decent pony sites to converse on.

You’re the poster child—as a fan, as a school—that is wrong with the current college football world. Congrats, trust fund kid. Your world seems so easy and fun to those of us who have worked our entire lives and support an Alma Mater that has no ability to compete in the current landscape. Yall can simply buy away our players and coaches. Thats garbage. Enjoy your team and your season. Seriously, never thought CFB would create a system ever again that your type of program could ascend in. You did it.

As I've said, I quit going to games in 2023. Just cannot stand what CFB has become for schools like ours. The portal did it for me. I don't like NIL, but I get it. Unfortunately, its easy to manipulate and SMU and other private schools can look like they belong with the power programs when they really wouldn't in any other time. But the portal is what makes it so easy to have this become a major problem. Transferring anywhere, like you are changing your job from working at Wendy's to going to work at Chili's the next day is an ender for me. If its gonna be this way, then treat the players as employees, let them pay taxes on their earnings, and be able to stay at the university for as long as they want--hell, Mason Fine, for example, could still be here if he wanted to be, under this umbrella. What I would love to see is simply for the power 24-48 to just move on and be the CFB Super Power, NFL-lite league. Then, let then next tier of 80-120 schools play a college football that looks like regular amateur college football. Include stipends, make players and the school sign a scholarship contract that is at least 2 years long, and if you leave for any school in this new level, you sit out a year, like before, but you cannot leave until your two years is up. Also, coaches and coordinators and staff get a salary limit that is across the board the same, like a salary cap. Make conferences regional and get back to CFB for this level to be what we are used to it being. We don't need to fool ourselves into believing we can compete financially with any current power league team.

I think Appy State will regret this move. When teams fire someone for not winning enough at places like Appy State, it usually backfires. USM fired Jeff Bower after he finally had a losing season, then went 0-12 under the replacement. La Tech has fallen off after firing Skip Holtz. FIU did the same thing when they fired Mario Cristobal way back when.

Rivalries are bigger opponents. They are hard to win. They make you feel mad. Its just that our rival is apathy and has gone about 75-0 against us in football.

This is so sad…because it is so correct. We will get run in a bowl game by Texas State in Frisco in front of more of their fans from 4 hours south than our campus 40 minutes away.

This is almost exactly how I felt watching the Aggies decide that $78 million would be better spent on making sure Jimbo Fisher left town than to use those funds to actually help humanity.

Maybe DATCU will finally get its first sellout? Also, when they were pitching us on building a new stadium, one of my favorites was showing the ability to go and host actual bigger name opponents that wouldn’t come to Fouts, teams like Minnesota and Iowa…who we immediately signed a 2 for none deal with to play in Iowa. I guess someone thought Iowa was Indiana!!

I mean, we fight these claims all the time, even with our own tv market

The Big 12 is power-in-name-only. Don’t get fooled by being above them. Boise would run that league hard. None of the also rans (anyone besides the B1G, SEC, and ND) are gonna do much in this playoff system. The networks aren’t spending this kind of money to see Boise State play SMU in a title game.

Yall can lay the blame of this all at the feet of the Pirate. Leach having some success at Texas Tech, at a time when A&M fell apart and Baylor was non-competitive, while nobody else but Texas was a Big 12 school, led to him getting some kind of legendary status. And his influence on TX HS football went off the charts, because it was “more fun for the kids”…and it basically destroyed the development of linemen on both sides of the ball and made defense a part of the game that just needs a stop or two per half. Hell, Art Briles said that out loud. Just get a stop or two. So now, we get the luxury of seeing a short yardage situation have the QB in shotgun, with a running back behind him, all about 4-5 yards behind the line of scrimmage, trying to get a yard. And then the coaches look exasperated when we don’t pick up the first down/TD, as we get tackled behind the line of scrimmage.

Because that level has a scholarship limit of 63.

You know what millions of people would love to say? That my team is a national champion…hell, just a belief that they could be a national champion. And not the crumbs of getting one spot in the CFB playoff to be a sacrificial lamb to some SEC or B1G school. There are currently 66 programs that are G5, including Oregon State and Washington State. Add in the top FCS schools to get to 72. Have 8 conferences of 9. You have 8 conference games, then schedule a round robin where you play two schools from two other conferences that is based on your previous year’s standing in the conference. IOW, finish 3rd and you play the 3rd place team in one conference and the 7th place team from another conference for your 10 games. We gotta do something different or eventually, the support will completely dry up. And it’s not exactly a full bucket right now…

THIS!! The portal is the killer. If we only had to compete against other schools having bigger NIL, we'd still be ok because our players would have to honor their commitment here or lose a year when they would transfer away. Instead, the portal allows those NIL deals at P$s to buy off anyone looking for a payday and to play at their dream school. When we see our teams almost turn over by 75% or more, the few fans that do care look at their donations and think that they can be able to use their few thousand dollars they donate in better fashion. For me, I stopped going to games back after 2022. It just became very clear that this sport is one that I cannot support with my butt in a seat anymore. Its intrinsically unfair and completely tilted to hurt places like ours, which was already at a GIGANTIC disadvantage because of our self-inflicted stupidity of the past. Going down to FCS in 1983 and staying there for 12 freaking years while the SWC and Big 8 were at their heights was about as dumb a decision as a school could've made in this region. We nuked the program's fans and alumni support from decades before and decades ahead. But today, with the portal and NIL being what they are, the strong majority of G5 schools shouldn't be in FBS and acting like they're equals to anyone in a Power conference. Yes, you can name a few exceptions, from performance, to tradition, to budget...but this is where we need a level of play that is more like traditional college amateur football. Don't go down to FCS and lose a ton of scholarships, rather create a level of play that allows for you to have 85 or more scholarships, but they aren't playing for anything more than their scholarship and a stipend. Make college coaching staffs have a salary cap. Hell, play your games in the spring semester--do something to get coverage for the sport that America loves more than anything else. Play 10 games in a regional conference setup, then play an 8-team playoff. I would be a season ticket holder again in a heartbeat with a setup like this. Otherwise, Ill watch from afar, like I've done for two years now and haven't regretted one time.

The BOR and Administration are doing what they are paid to do--focus on increasing enrollment, focus on music and arts as the primary window to the university, and never make winning at revenue sports a priority. Its why we have 2% of the alumni who give to the program. And Denton doesn't even care about the team at all--very minuscule interest

The point stands that we aren’t buying out three years of Morris’ contract. He will got one more year, at least, to sell the leadership on why he should keep his job.

It won’t matter. We will lose to anyone that we have heard of or care about.