untjim1995

Well, if you really feel this way and aren't a troll, as I suspect, the easy answer here is to not to list on any resume that you went to UNT and got a degree, nor mention you went here. I'm sure that will help to make your life "less embarrassing"...Of course, if you thought Carlos Harris' last home game antics was not embarrassing, I'm gonna guess that your definition of embarrassment is very different from mine. My best guess is that you are trolling and that you are a millennial...

Littrell will help the talent here by recruiting players with the reality that playing time is abundant if you can make plays...He legitimately can say that the roster he took over suffered the worst loss in modern college football history and that he has run off several guys who either couldn't play or won't ever get their acts together. The only problem that Littrell faces is whether recruits will consider coming here with multiple FBS offers out of high school or if we are going to continue seeing these kids only come here if we are the only FBS team recruiting them or if other plans fall by the wayside and they sign here because its their last resort.

Realistically, Butt Cookman is our best chance at a win, Get that, and then steal another game or two and you have a season that is twice as good or higher than last year's debacle. My guess is that @UTSA and @ Army are the best chances. SMU,@UTEP, and @Rice aren't impossible, but they aren't probable, either. @MUTS, @WKU, Marshall, La Tech, and USM are almost certain losses. And @Florida is just to keep paying the bills. 2-10, with wins over Butt Cookman and an upset @ UTSA, is my prediction. But its very possible to go 1-11 or even 0-12, too. Last year, Kansas saw David Beaty take over there, as an offensive-minded coach from A&M, but with no experience as a head coach ever before. They lost at home to FCS South Dakota State in their opener, then followed that up with 11 more straight losses. For KU, they hope they've now bottomed out, as their whole view of last season became about wins off the field with recruits and within the locker room. That's what 2016 will be about here, IMO.

Anybody else see that UTSA had a player drafted this year, David Morgan?

Idaho and NMSU provide excellent examples of why its so incredibly stupid to not have conferences at the G5 level and below being more regionalized. Nobody at UNT will ever care one iota about Old Dominion or Charlotte. Nobody at Georgia Southern will ever care about playing Texas State. But I bet Georgia Southern fans might have an interest in Charlotte's program, because of the closeness of the schools in the SE. I know that people in DFW could be enticed to go watch UNT play Texas State, but they have proven over and over that hosting Western Kentucky will never move the needle here for additional fans to come to the game. I still believe that the many of the schools in the MAC, SBC, and CUSA are headed for the new I-aa within the next decade, to be paired with bigger programs in the Big Sky, Southland, and other larger FCS conferences. The MWC and AAC will look at adding value from these leagues, allowing for schools like UTEP and Rice to go west to the MWC, as well as Northern Illinois and Ohio to go to the AAC. When that occurs, going back to a SWC-type model will be the only way that these leagues will be able to turn a profit, just by keeping travel costs down and allowing fans to make trips to closer games. Conferences that look like this are a very real possibility in the future: NMSU, UNT, UTSA, Texas State, Sam Houston, SFA, Arkansas State, ULL, ULM, and McNeese State La Tech, USM, USA, Troy, FIU, FAU, Georgia State, Georgia Southern, MUTS, and WKU Appy State, ODU, Marshall, Charlotte, and teams from the SoCon, like The Citadel, Chattanooga, Samford, VMI, Furman, and Western Carolina. The MAC, without NIU or Ohio, which would be at 10, as well. The Big Sky

So, here's THE problem for anyone who likes Mean Green Sports. The answers to your questions above about being ashamed of our ineptitude in athletics and doing something about it are not EVER going to get answered the way you want them to be answered. Instead, you'd get a collective "Meh" from the students and alumni on the first point and even worse, when asked about what to do, a gigantic majority would clearly answer to get rid of the program altogether, just to make their costs go down and to be used towards their majors, like UTD does. Your last sentence is the truth. It does sicken a lot of us on gmg.com. It probably sickens some of the 2% of the alumni and students who have ever cared about our program. But the 98% don't care or openly loathe the existence of the program. So your administration and BOR run the school and the AD like the majority want it to be run, never daring to step out of the box at all in regards to athletics. They know that the revolt amongst the students body, faculty, and local citizenry would probably cost them their jobs. And, now, they have done something brilliant to keep their ass off the line in regards to athletic funding and expectations by doing what the university's leadership has always done best--they sold off the program to a few alumni, allowing them to be in charge, while not having to allocate further resources to the AD. And RV, following the lead of the BOR, just insulated himself within the belly of the UNT 17, a place that RV cannot be forced out by a President who cared about athletics, just to not disturb the apple cart of those 17 donors. RV is the main symptom of the Apathy Virus. And the only thing that could change this is to win bigger than we ever have in almost 40 years in football. But nobody wins big at any place that doesn't want to win big at the administrative level. And we don't. This website, in all of its greatness, will remain for a lot of us as our only connection to UNT Athletics going forward--because of the entertainment, but also because spending one more second or more penny on a UNT Sporting event under this prevailing mode of thinking will always be a colossal waste of time and money. So you get a brand new stadium that cannot get even half full for a season, on average, or a basketball arena that probably isn't even 20% full on most nights. And the leadership has made it abundantly clear how that affects their direction of the program--not even one iota of change. I'm starting to believe that the only value our degrees can get from North Texas is for the university to stop embarrassing it by allowing a sports program to be offered like an ISD would do. Because, in business, its not even worth it to talk about UNT sports to anyone. Instead, the UNT alum just talks about the P5 college team they have adopted or the pro sports team the love. Its been that way for decades, and I suppose it would take something colossal to change that--like going undefeated, including a win or two over P5 teams that garner media and alumni attention. And that's where the great George Strait's song about "Ocean Front Property in Arizona" comes to mind...you might as well just throw a BCS Bowl berth in for free.

Yes, this is why CUSA is still the best conference affiliation we have had since the MVC days. Payout is much better, regional travel is much better, and our media coverage/fan interest is still better than anything the Sun Belt Conference will ever offer. No matter what, SMU leaving CUSA for their Big East (now defunct) dreams opened up a slot that I am forever grateful to have seen us take. Playing a division with USM, La Tech, Rice, UTSA, and UTEP will always trump what we had anytime in the SBC by miles...

La Tech gets away with a smaller budget because of two things that they have in their corner. One, they are in a very talent-filled state. Two, if you stay in Louisiana, because of Tech's history of being a winner and making football its primary window to the school, kids don't look down on an offer from them. That history trumps ULL and ULM by miles. Basically, they remind me of UCF or USF in Florida. Clearly both are behind FSU, UF, and Miami on the pecking order of recruits in that state, but they are both ahead of the F_Us, so they get some serious talent that has proven to be able to be shaped into a big relevant winner on a national scene. It also helps to rarely compete with the former SWC schools in your home that still looks at them as various levels of royalty, for sure. But when you don't let football or athletics be your primary window to your university, you cannot be too surprised when a school with a smaller budget and enrollment runs circles around you in that sport. We may have more students to make our budget look better, but those only a small percentage of those kids even want to watch us play football, much less follow us after they leave here. Its not that way with La Tech students and grads--not at all.

That's a new UNT slogan and a few billboards away from being the next promotion of our fine university's leadership... UNT Football....Accepting Less for Thousands Less!!

This is exhibit #1 as to why I love this website...I love me some irony.

I'm not arguing about finding talent to put into positions on the field, but I am arguing that it will provide more wins than losses on the scoreboard this year or next. Look, if we were playing Old Dominion, Charlotte, and an F_U this year, plus we had UTSA, UTEP, and Rice at home, and Army at home, I could see us winning more than 3 games. But not with the schedule we have and not with the dearth of size and speed on defense, much less a brand new offensive scheme to implement with players built for something 180 degrees different. Winning 2 games would be a major improvement over last year's team that should have been winless. Marshall, MUTS, and WKU are light years better than we are right now, just as La Tech and USM are. The Texas opponents we play in CUSA are all on the road, where its tough to win anyway. USM is our hope here--and not for a win against them, but to emulate their rebuilding. SMU is trying to emulate them, as well, and they just finished a 2 win season, that included punking us down there. They are a year ahead of us in the process, and way ahead in recruiting talent to their school. USM went 1-11 in Monken's first year, won 3 games the next, then won the CUSA West in the third year of his tenure--and they had WAAAAYYYYY more talent on their squad in Monken's first year than Littrell has right now. McCarney left him with a decent class from 2015, but with the absolute worst ranked class in FBS in 2014, as well as a really poor one from 2013--and we have seen that lack of development on the roster led to where we are today. We just have to hope we bottomed out last year.

Except for TCU, nobody else in that conference has ever been known for defense in the last decade...but Patterson is a freaking wizard.

You know, as I read this post, it really made sense to me...but for this to happen, Littrell and company will have to do what nobody before him has been able to do with any consistency in 21 years as a FBS program. Dickey got some talent here in that one class and Dodge got some offensive skill talent because of his HS reputation, but overall, La Tech has run circles around us for a long time. Not saying Littrell can't do it, but he's got his work cut out for him.

Lifer, from 1989 going forward, we played one money game a year. That was Steve Sloan's time as the AD, IIRC. In 1989, we played KSU, 1990, we played at A&M. In 1991, we played at OU. In 1992, we played at UT. In 1993, we played at Nebraska. In 1994, we played at Oklahoma State. Before Sloan left, he had realized that the way to making more money was to go up to I-A. Helwig figured out fairly quickly that playing multiple bodybag games, as well as 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 series at Texas Stadium with A&M and Tech would still provide net $$$ to us. In 1995, our first year as a FBS program, granted we were independent, but we played this schedule on the road with no return game: @Mizzou, @ OU, @ LSU, @Alabama, @ Louisville In 1996, our first in the Big West, we played @ A&M and @ Arizona State. In 1998, we played @OU and @Arizona State, as well as the last game at A&M. In 1999, we played @LSU. @ Tech (2nd of three visits to Lubbock), @ TCU (first of a 2 for 1) In 2000, we played @Tech (last of the trips to Lubbock), @Kansas State By 2001, Helwig was finished as the AD, even though his series were still to be played.

Basically, the NCAA did lower us because we couldn't/wouldn't meet the demands for stadium size that they required. But we chose to stay down there because it cost less for 12 years. Instead of taking advantage of Texas Stadium or the Cotton Bowl to play at for a season so that we could expand or destroy Fouts, we chose to just let the program rot. Only when it became clear that going back up to I-A would allow our budgets to get infused with cash from being a bought opponent in football as a bodybag did we decide to move up by putting 10,500 aluminum seats onto the end zones at Fouts, seats that were easily the worst you could ever sit in for a football game, if only because you were about a mile away from the field due to our track being around the football field.

I hope you're right...and I do think Littrell's gotta better pedigree than Dodge had, and that isn't even talking about he chasm in experience that his staff has over Dodge's coaching staff in his first few years. But those scars are still fresh, man...

So exactly how is it good for UNT that Kansas or Iowa State or Colorado can come down to DFW and run these camps and get in with the HS coaches and recruits? Because I don't see one damn thing good about it for us. We should already be talking to kids and HS coaches in East Texas, South Texas, and West Texas.

Absolutely. I look at TCU and I look at how completely different they recruit. Patterson sees RBs in a small East Texas HS and can see them becoming an All-American Defensive Lineman. They recruit for defense first, unlike every other program in the state. But that just speaks of Gary Patterson's greatness and TCU's commitment to excellence beyond just having a lot of cash. As for offense, this spread stuff is what the kids and the majority of HS coaches like in Texas, which is why every offense in FBS in Texas runs some form of it. But if you don't have a decent line, as we saw with Dodge, the QBs can get the $hit beat out them and the offense tends to bog down in the red zone because the offense cannot run under the center very effectively (or at all). I'll always believe in building your lines up first, then setting up an offense that maximizes your talent. I'm not a big fan of setting up an offense and then finding pieces to try and fit into it as your top priority, but that may have more to do with the shellackings that we endured in the Dodge years, too. Its why McCarney crashing so hard was so disappointing. I actually thought his specialty of developing linemen would be huge here, especially on defense. But not only did he fail on recruiting, he even failed worse at developing solid line play on both sides of the ball in his last two years here. Add that to the QB situation he chose to stick with and it equaled pure suckage. And now, we start completely over, in a gigantic hole, with a brand new coach running an offense that we watched in 2007-2010 and allowed us to see a grand total of 8 wins and 40 losses.

McCarney's views on Qbs were his own fault, for sure. But even if he wanted better throwing QBs who were undersized, they were never coming here to play in an offense that Knute Rockne would have felt was too conservative. What frustrated McCarney to now end, however, was that his staff couldn't get recruits to come here "just because"...he literally believed that kids in DFW and in the area would come here like they did at USF when he coached and recruited there. He truly felt this was gonna be just like that. When he realized after the HoD Bowl that the kids that were here already and had stayed after Dodge left were here because of Dodge's system and reputation in HS circles, it caused him to basically go crazy. Ironically, his last class was not bad, but the classes before were just unacceptable for a school in the middle of Texas. But UNT's inherent issues with apathy and losing were hurdles that his staff couldn't jump over. Maybe Littrell and his staff will be able to jump over them, but those hurdles have only gotten taller since Mac left, leaving us in a hole MUCH deeper than what he inherited, as well as the one Dodge took over from Dickey. Its gonna take years for Littrell to get us out of here...and he may not be able to do it. It could very well be that Littrell doesn't turn us into a winner, but gets us into a place where another coach will be in better shape to take over the roster than the colossal hole Littrell has inherited.

Or an OLine that can keep said QBs healthy...

Idaho had no choice. And their FCS Big Sky affiliation is a solid one, with other regional rivals they have known for decades, which will help them with attendance and fan travel. They are actually in better shape doing this than NMSU will be, with no FCS teams anywhere near them. NMSU might be better off just dropping football if they cannot get into a FBS league, which only happens as a remote chance if UTEP leaves to go to the MWC and CUSA decided to replace them with NMSU, which seems doubtful. I will say this--I think the Big Sky, SLC, and a few other FCS leagues will see themselves joining the MAC, SBC, and CUSA in the years ahead when the next pruning of FBS occurs in the next 10 years. You'll see the Power 4 (no more Big XII) plus the AAC and MWC considered as FBS, with the Power 4 getting the playoff, but keeping the next level of schools still having a possibility of joining into the Big Bowls or even a playoff spot (highly, highly doubtful, though). That way, Boise, Fresno, UH, Cincy, and any Big XII castoff will still be sold that they can still play OOC games against the power schools and can have a chance at earning a place within the playoff system.

This may have been the kid that chose Tech over Central Arkansas a couple of years ago at his recruiting announcement...I'm serious, this actually happened.

FIFY

How many attended the Spring Game? I haven't seen any numbers on that...

He would be an awesome get for Littrell and co...