untjim1995

The big question that UNT's administration probably has no idea about is if the program will get the support it gets now if the lower G5s are officially relegated to being a non-FBS team by the college football powers. Most of their media already want the schism to occur, as do their fanbases, who get strung along for season ticket packages featuring OOC games against non-power teams in both the G5 and FCS. I would love to see us higher up in the G5s, but reality just doesn't really mesh with that. The MWC has no Texas teams, but it has a lot of options that are ahead of us on that list if they were going to expand over here, whether it was with Tech, Baylor, and TCU or UTEP, Rice, and UTSA. The AAC has their local team in SMU already and that ends the discussion right there, as well as also having UH. If they ever added another Texas market, it would certainly be one of the Big XII Texas leftovers or UTSA. Of course, if UTSA ever left, Texas State would fill in ASAP for them, which would be just as well for the rest of CUSA right now. The Big XII is your next realignment domino--either thru expansion or thru destruction (or both)--that will fall within the next decade, causing more upheaval. When the Big XII gets complete with its plans, which will be no later than 2025, that should be when the Power Leagues make their official move forward. I think that as long as we are playing conference teams in the state and region, even if its lower, we will be ok.

Imagine this cover with Dan McCarney looking over Andrew McNulty last year...with the exact same look as Dodge and that QB. It would be titled "How do you throw a ball more than two yards beyond the LOS?" or "This is how we did it at Iowa"...

I know that when BC comes here this September, things are gonna get real in Denton...oh wait...

The problem is that absolutely no one in Texas cares one lick about F_U, Charlotte, or ODU. And vice versa. Plus, it costs too much to travel to play them. You get nothing when they come here. At least playing UTEP, UTSA, La Tech, and other regional competition brings people here when we play them. ULL and Arky State brought people back in the SBC days, as well. Texas State would, as well.

They will if it gives them the extra billion dollars from their tv contract that supposedly exists if they add 4 teams...

Marshall really does belong in the MAC. They are regionally closer to those schools and have a history with them. They don't need to be in a conference with teams in Texas or Louisiana. Same with ODU, Charlotte, WKU, FAU, and FIU.

I'm gonna wear a sweater vest and grow a mustache...

Yes, KSU was our last game ever at Fouts

Absolute truth here... Butt hurt is the term that he throws around a lot, but it really shows low class and immaturity, which in and of itself, isn't unusual on a fanboard. But it doesn't keep most of us from being embarrassed at his posting. One thing about UNT is that being in Texas and surrounded by SWC schools that always looked down on us and wouldn't ever accept us as a potential conference mate for decades has just created the unfounded belief that we should be above being in a conference with Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette, or Texas State because we are bigger and serve a larger metro area, that instead we "deserve" to be AAC members because of these supposed advantages. But one thing that ASU, LT, ULL, USM, and others enjoy is that they are all schools in towns that love athletics first and foremost. That gets money into the coffers quickly. We have never had that mindset before and it will take a long time to try and convince our students, faculty, and alumni to look at athletics the way you all do. And that's where the size of the school and the market we are in really don't help us nearly as much as people wish to believe.

Yep, Terry Holland was right then, and it's ESPECIALLY right now for CUSA 3.0 and SBC 2.0.

They played us at Texas Stadium in 1995.

I think that winning 20+ games and getting into either the NCAAs or NIT would earn him a two-year extension, at most. Even then, the new AD probably won't keep him around, as he isn't his guy... If RV was still here, it would have been much less of a bar, since he got an automatic extension, as well, if Benford got extended. But thankfully, those days are over.

No offense, BV, but that offer list doesn't look anything like what I'd expect for "top" QB prospect. Wyoming is the only FBS program on the list so far...

I'd love to only look at only 8k empty seats at Apogee, instead of 18k empty ones. Hell, it is fairly easy to look at 8k empty seats at the Super Pit most of the time... I think ODU is doing it all right for now. They have used basketball to set this all up, which was genius. Its something we could have done a long time ago, just to differentiate ourselves from the SWC teams in Texas. If we ahd done it right in the 80s and 90s, we would have been a lot further down the road, budget-wise and conference-wise than we are today.

Oregon State, Vanderbilt, Houston, Baylor (twice), TCU, and UNLV.

Helwig was a bad AD, but he did one thing better than RV--getting name teams to the area to play us in football. He just ignored everything else and whored us out in football and basketball to pay for everything. He probably had no other option with the resources that the university wasn't giving to athletics at the time. He needed to go when he left, but at least he didn't stay 5+ years beyond his usefulness like RV did.

Too late, Lifer...

What I see going forward is that the SBC, CUSA, and your top FCS programs in the region will form three conferences. WIth the MAC, as well, that foursome will have OOC and bowl agreements going forward. A lot of change will occur in the future as the AAC, Big XII leftovers, and the MWC will be the new leagues that have some type of "access" to the power leagues, in terms of playing them in OOC, playing them in bowl games, and getting a spot in the BCS Bowl Games (not the playoff). I think that the Big XII leftovers (all but UT, OU, Tech, OSU, KU, and WVU) will probably go to the MWC and AAC--I see TCU and Baylor going west, KSU and ISU going East. That would put each of the MWC and AAC at 14 teams, both with Texas ties. That's when I see us being in this conference setup--UNT, UTEP, UTSA, Rice, Texas State, NMSU, ULL, SFA, SHSU, ULM, La Tech, and Arkansas State.

This is also a picture of what most of us wanted to do after the Portland State game last season...but without the water...

The new AD should be a step forward. But its possible to go backwards, even if remotely. If the next AD is Hank, and we extend Benford, and Littrell cannot fix anything in the next three years, there will be no doubt that we have gone backward. But again, that's remote...I truly believe Smatresk will hire from outside of the university and that Benford's last days as our coach will end within the next 9 months--and I truly think Littrell will improve things around here by 2018. To me, the best way we will know if the next AD is making a big step forward will be seen in actual attendance at football and basketball games. If that is seen, then the season ticket revenues and MGC memberships will follow. Just watch to see the butts-in-seats and that will tell you if we are moving forward or staying still. If it drops, then this is a situation that probably cannot get fixed. You cannot run a FBS program if your average attendance is 40% of capacity. And if men's basketball attendance cannot improve from being less than 20% of capacity, then its all a moot point. At that point, you will have probably gone close to 15 years with one winning season in football and zero winning season in mens hoops since JJ left, all while FBS realignment has been and will be going in full force. OTOH, if we can see Littrell turn this around in the next few years and we get a good hire in basketball that gets attention and can turn the talent that is here now into a winner, the attendance should be significantly higher than it is today. And that would be a great sign that we have in place the person who knows what he is doing in leading this department, getting the revenue sports in the right direction. Attendance will pick up and so will the other revenue streams with it.

I agree with you on this. And those 26 straight wins got us 4 NO Bowls and 3 of the 4 winning seasons we have enjoyed since moving back up to I-A in 1995. But I also just look at the 26 straight SBC wins and match it up with the fact that he beat two I-A teams outside of the SBC in those 4 years, Cincy and Baylor, as well as the fact that Troy was the only SBC team in that timeframe that made a bowl game--nobody else came close. He lost 21 games to other non-SBC teams from 2001-2004. We shouldn't have anything named after a coach or AD who had left here with a losing record, no matter who made that demand at the time. If Mattress Mac won't come back into the fold as a giving alum to the program, those fields should be up for re-bidding and everyone should be told why they are being up for being re-named. Hell, even if nobody bid on changing the name of them, the AD should just change the sign and call them the Mean Joe Greene Practice Fields or the Hayden Fry Practice Fields. We may be a colossal loser in football over the last 35 years, but that doesn't mean we have to show the world that we celebrate that losing by naming stuff after the coach who lost less than everyone else during his tenure here, even if its because the university didn't even try to fund the program. If I were recruiting against North Texas, you can bet your ass that I'd be selling the recruits on what a big loser in football they have been and that this is accepted--and I'd point out that the practice fields are even named after a coach who went 42-64 in 9 years, not to mention that you won't have an indoor facility to practice in. Whether its UTSA, Texas State, UTEP, or any other CUSA/SBC Western team, our legacy as a losing program that has been tied up by apathy from the UNT Family would be super easy to use in recruiting battles.

Good stuff, as always, Arkstfan...you guys are over 50% better at raising revenue in Jonesboro, Arkansas than we are in Denton, even with a substantially smaller student body and alumni base. Says a lot about your leadership and their approach to athletics--and it says even more about the realities of how we have handled athletics in the past here. UConn at $17.5 million is not surprising--they are a national name and will always have a place in the upper echelon of college sports when the future schism occurs. Facts are hard for today's entitled youth. They think we should all be P5 equals just because... It is beyond embarrassing to share a degree from the same school with anyone that thinks the bottom half of all P5s are equal with us, even though a simple bit of research shows that Rutgers brings in more than 6x what we bring in--and represents the worst revenue collector of the P5s. UConn has won several titles in both mens and womens basketball. And they are still $6.5 million behind the worst P5 program. But somehow, we have people who believe we, at UNT, with our $4 million in revenue, are on equal footing with both of them right now. Never mind that we probably would be doing good to only be behind 30 other G5 schools in terms of revenue and media coverage. Keep fighting the good fight, Arkstfan. You're a great asset to this board. And I'd even tell that to your face...

I think the reality is that what we have seen happen here for the last 5 seasons in basketball, the last decade in football, and the accepted leadership of the program by the administration and BOR is finally being attended to. The results are yet to be determined, but what I fear the most is that the brand of North Texas is so badly thought of athletically by our own fans and alumni, the media, and HS coaches and is not going to be fixed before the next realignment occurs. As this column strongly suggests, the reality is that CUSA is unsustainable with this kind of geography. Aside from maybe Marshall, La Tech, and USM, nobody really attracts attention when they play a football game. And has been mentioned before, schools like these three and WKU are never going anywhere else because they provide no media market. This is probably it for them. For the rest of CUSA, including us, the reality is that we may provide the markets, but we aren't good enough to really attract attention in those markets without beating some big names. And the AAC above us is just a more successful and recognized version of what we want CUSA to be again. Just like with CUSA 2.0 before us, we aren't getting in there with SMU already there, just from a market standpoint. And the MWC knows that realignment will bring them the Texas ties they want when the Big XII falls apart. That's when the potential arises that Tech, Baylor, TCU, Rice, UTEP, and UTSA will be available ahead of us for choosing.

So name just one...go ahead. We will wait...

This is a positive, no doubt about it...but there isn't any fan I know who wouldn't trade a high team GPA in the revenue sports for more wins and championships. But that said, it does sound like the non-revenue sports are really doing the job on and off the field. That is always a great sign for the entire program.