untjim1995

Give Brett Vito a break on the QB stuff. If you had to cover teams that were coached by Darrell Dickey, Todd Dodge, and Dan McCarney day in and day out, you'd come to believe that the QB position at North Texas was about as inconsequential as a typewriter at the DRC. Yes, he has seen a few games where the QB play has been very good, but he has seen 10x those games where the UNT QB looked worse than what Ryan HS or Guyer HS roll out on Friday nights, particularly anyone not named Scott Hall or Derek Thompson that played QB under Dickey or Mac. Those days of having the busdriver du jour must have been painful to watch as a beat writer, covering it everyday. Because its been absolutely brutal to watch as a fan who sees it every week in the fall... Watching Josh Greer or Andrew McNulty play QB was like watching a child trying to learn how to ride a brand new bike...but not ever being able to figure it out. You'd just as soon have seen the brand new bike being used by someone who knew what they were doing, as opposed to watching the crashes happen over and over, knowing full well it was just getting worse and worse for the bike and for your investment in that purchase. Now imagine having to report on that experience for years, with nothing ever getting better for any real amount of time beyond a game or two...that would drive anyone crazy!!

People always love the backup QB. He did good against our defensive backups...which means these guys cannot break in past the starters on a unit that has been just terrible and has no size or speed. Trust me, Shanbour will play in 2016, but its gonna be due to Morris getting killed. Except for Butt Cookman, we will not play one defensive unit that is less talented than ours is.

Talking about dumb, the game in 2008 at Rice, in non-conference, was the absolute worst. I truly believed we might be able to hang with an in-state non-P5 school, even at their place. Instead, we found ourselves losing 77-20 in the 3rd quarter. Only because Rice's coach called off the dogs in the 4th quarter did we not see Rice score over 100, which they easily could have that day. And BTW, yes, our offense was exactly the same that day as it was in the shellackings you mentioned above, but without the paycheck. Its yet to be seen if Littrell's spread offense will look like Dodge's, but I fear that they will definitely rhyme...

Always... We've been trying to tell everyone that this year isn't going to be about wins on the field. We can very easily go 1-11 again, probably will be within a game of that on either side, especially if we cannot beat Butt Cookman at home, which will be the only team we face this year as a favorite. 2016 is all about wins off the field--winning over FBS recruits that are actually being recruited by other FBS schools, winning over the roster in the locker room to keep working to get stronger and more comfortable with the system that Littrell has put in place, and by winning over Texas HS coaches to actually consider recommending UNT as a place that would be a good home for their players as anything but a safety net school. If we go 1-11, but our recruiting is ranked above 90th overall, by next February, then 2016 will have been a huge success. We need a culture change within our locker room and we need a huge upgrade in talent coming into the program. If we don't get the last part, even a culture change within the team won't be enough to make Littrell turn this into a winner anytime soon. Basically, we are exactly in the same spot that SMU was a year ago, when they beat us and Tulane, but also lost to an FCS team at home that was better than we were in James Madison. Only once, against Tulsa, did SMU lose by less than 10 points. Every other loss was between 19 and 63 points. But their recruiting has jumped up and they have changed the culture over there to actually believe they will be good soon. Morris came from Clemson as an offensive minded coach, just like Littrell has from UNC. And if Morris can turn things around at SMU and get them to a bowl game in the next year or two, after taking over the absolute worst FBS program in the country, he will be headed to greener pastures somewhere in the P5 world. Sound familiar?

UNC was also ahead in most of their games last year. Those 4th quarter snaps were usually running plays. Littrell's offense will resemble Leach's offense. He always had one guy who could take handoffs in the backfield next to the QBs or go out into the flat and catch a dropoff and turn it into a big play. But those Tech teams threw the ball A LOT...

I agree. We got rid of QBs who proved they couldn't play at this level, Maybe Morris and Shanbour will prove the same, but we don't know. We do know that Connor Means couldn't beat out any of the two worst QBs I have ever seen in a UNT game, Greer and McNulty, or Damarcus Smith, who wasn't very good, either, but mostly because he didn't put in the work necessary to be good despite having the physical tools to be a decent QB. Morris and Shanbour, with this offensive scheme, should move the sticks. But to not fear the real possibility of an injury to either of them, with this style of play and an OL that is having to learn this scheme now, is just burying your head in the sand. We just gotta pray that they stay healthy and can move the ball for points. Otherwise, its very, very possible that a duplication of Dodge's first few years could be a reality. Better coaches with more experience should help, but we have very little talent and size. Without either of them, its gonna be a hard season to watch, especially if the QBs get Vizza'd over and over.

This is where things are headed here. Its just a matter of when. It might not be for another 5-10 years, but its gonna happen here because of that fee being on the back of the students. We barely kept the football program alive in the early 70s, with a student body vote that barely passed--and at a time when the students didn't have to pay much in athletics fees compared to today. We were gonna drop the football program in the early 80s, but the I-aa safety net kept the powers at be content with allowing us to play there for 12 freaking years. Only when it became clear that you could make more money for the program by whoring yourself out as a low-level I-A program did we figure out a way to get the program up to the level we are today. And we only have that brand new stadium because of the fee that stealthily got passed onto students who are now in school. That fee has a small shelf life, IMO. We don't like athletics here, as an institution. Never have, never will. It costs too much and it gives away too much power to hundreds or thousands of donors who usually have higher expectations based on accomplishment. Not here, though. We like music, arts, education, and large enrollments. We would die, as an institutional, based on the majority of our leaders, faculty, and students, to be considered in the same academic profile as UT-D. It is what it is. And its why less than 2% of the UNT Family gives one rip about our teams. Institutionally, for decades, we have just made it uncool to be a diehard UNT fan. That's why home games on Texas/OU weekend cause so much trouble here or other major sports going on around here during football season. We have about 5000 that are diehard fans, which is awesome when you compare it to the 1000 we had about 20 years ago, but its very telling when the university has moved up to D-1 21 years ago and seen enrollment jump up from around 27k to 36k, as well as the local population jump up by tens of thousands in Denton alone. The old line that you can't beat City Hall could easily by replaced here with the fact that you can't be the UNT Administrative Building as UNT sports fans.

Congrats...when are y'all gonna have the parade for leaping over that gigantic hurdle of being better at football than us?

I don't see how...two seems as high as I can see us achieving. Butt Cookman, most likely, and maybe an upset at UTSA.

True

OU is gonna truck you guys...

Do you feel wanted or appreciated by RV?

That's impressive--we paid Portland State $400k for an ass raping at Apogee, but that was less per hour than what UGA paid Ludacris...which is ludicrous.

It was brought up here earlier, but playing Tech here is a pipe dream. They play Baylor every year in the Metroplex, plus they get a game every other year in FW against TCU. Your only Big XII teams that could be had by a decent AD would be OSU, KSU, KU, and ISU. OSU and KSU would be nice gets for football fans in the area, while KU and ISU wouldn't really move the needle much, like playing Indiana here in 2011. I still think Mizzou and Colorado would be open to games here, too, but not with the current AD. If/when SMU buys out out series, it will be so interesting to see who ends up replacing them. It won't surprise me one bit to hear RV blaming SMU for our scheduling issues in the years ahead, the way he did Tulsa.

We will be MUCH better offensively, even if Morris gets hurt. That's because we have a coaching staff that knows modern offense. Our defense and special teams probably won't be measurably better, because of lack of size and speed. Our program will be better because of Littrell's fresh approach and recruiting should get better--in part because it cannot get worse than Metamucil McCarney's approach. But we aren't catching any breaks with the CUSA schedule. It's brutal for our team right now. We have one game we should win, in Butt Cookman, as well as a road game at UTSA that could be a win. SMU at home probably is a possible win, too, but less than UTSA, for sure. Two wins would double where we were when Littrell took over this dumpster. That would represent major improvement, as sad as that sounds. But the hole we are in is so deep, it's gonna take years to dig out of.

We get what we deserve. If we are too poor to buyout RVs contract and Benford's contract, you have to really ask yourself why we are competing at this level of athletics. Seriously, if we are that poor--and I don't believe anything Fly said about this, since Benford kept his job after the latest disaster--I cannot imagine anyone would blame us for dropping down or allowing certain sports to get dropped. If you don't have the money, you don't have the money. But, to me, it's completely worse if we do have the resources to do this and won't. It screams a power play by the big donors and it screams apathy by the leadership of the university. I guess, to me, the UNT 17 stepping up and buying out Mac was awesome and something to really commend them on getting done so quickly. But keeping RV just makes no sense to those of us outside those groups. It includes a large chunk of the DFW media, too, who don't care about us because of our losing, but even more, cannot believe that we keep RV as the AD. It literally makes no sense to a lot of us and it's why we cannot spend another penny or second on attending or donating to our athletic department under RV's continued direction.

Just a reminder--in the last five years, with brand new facilities and sitting in the middle of the one of the most talent-laden areas in the country. Football: 5-7, 4-8, 9-4, 4-8, 1-11--total of 23-38 Mens Hoops: 18-14, 12-20, 16-16, 14-17, 12-20--total of 72-87 Womens Hoops: 15-16, 11-19, 12-18, 5-24, 11-19, total of 54-86 Average Attendance, per meangreensports.com, for last season for each: Football--13k Mens Hoops--2k Womens Hoops--798 The AD is in his 15th year on the job. Every one of the coaches that have led us to these records are his hires over the last five years. And he keeps his job. So you can say that those 17 people care about building a legacy here thru their contributions by building facilities, helping to buyout bad contracts that the AD made (Petersen, McCarney), and to help with funding other projects. But there is absolutely no proof--at all--that they care about winning. If they did, their AD would be gone.

What kind of season will RV need to see to extend Benford, which gets him an extension, as well? .500 or better? Top half finish in CUSA regular season? Remember, this isn't what you think he should accomplish to keep his job, its what RV thinks he needs to see to keep Benford as the coach? My guess is that he has to finish at .500 by the end of the regular season and needs to finish the regular season in the top half of CUSA, meaning 7th place or higher. If this is correct, can Benford somehow jump up that bar?

Add in the fact that the guys on the team were built to play the polar opposite type of offense that Littrell runs, just like Dodge's was to the Dickster. We saw how well that went. But in Littrell's defense, he has actual college coaches to work with, as opposed to the mostly high school coaches that Dodge brought over in 2007. Poor Alec Morris will probably get killed, if past experiences teach us anything about this offense in its first year under a new coach.

Oh? Because I have read nothing on here that said Ernie wants Benford to be gone after 4 f'ing years of just putrid basketball in front of about 1500 people...for that matter, nothing else has been said publicly about Tony Benford still being our coach in the last year of a five year contract. Idiocy is accepting a viewpoint that believes that winning matters here to the powers that be. History is on my side here, UNTLifer...

It was Helwig. He was brand new, had just fired Dennis Parker, as well as several other guys in the AD who got run off. That, in and of itself, isn't really all that bad, but the problem was that he hired poorly, too, and was allowed to stick around too long, which hamstrung us with incredibly poor OOC schedules for the two main revenue sports. I never had any problems at all with George Dunham getting the gig, as he loves the university tremendously and was a part of the local sports station that was quickly climbing the ratings, allowing us to still get mentions in DFW sports media, when usually we just go ignored (some thing really never change...) Bill Mercer is legendary in these parts and I think his legacy of tremendous students becoming great voices in sports speaks for itself. And I'm glad to know that George and Bill finally got reconciled to the point where hard feelings are no longer at play.

I never thought about this before I answered this in a post earlier, but the ROI for the UNT 17 may very well be measured by its "entertainment" value than winning. The ROI may be in getting recognized for building facilities and for funding projects, rather than demanding wins. Otherwise, there's no way RV keeps his job if winning mattered the most to these people. They are too successful in their business ventures to think they would accept anything less than what they want--in this case, winning must not be the important thing, it must be the entertainment of owning this thing as their own that matters the most. This is just so very North Texas...

I have served on several ACTS Retreats and Kolbe Ministry Teams...his story is not unusual, in finding his way back up, with the help of these retreats. ACTS Retreats are held by parishes within the Catholic diocese, while Kolbe retreats are done within the walls of a prison for the prisoners. Damon West is an example of someone who found the wrong path, but he was fortunate to have a community that opened up their arms to help him help himself. If you know anyone who ever needs help, Catholic or not, I cannot recommend an ACTS Retreat enough for that person, male or female, to attend. Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Denton has a strong ACTS Community, as do many other parishes in the state. If anyone ever has an interest, please feel free to PM me. You might just help save the life of someone, like it appears it has done with Damon.

Ding!! Ding!! Ding!!!

As in 50 years ago...