untjim1995

Your third paragraph is right on...they stepped up and bought out Dan McCarney's contract after he led us to the worst loss in modern college football history. That $2 million+ buyout told us all that we should expect that bad contracts will no longer be the reason for keeping bad coaches--then we kept RV as the AD...and then refused to buyout the final year of Tony Benford's disastrous career here. So, we go back to paragraph two above. If they care about ROI in regards to UNT Athletics, they sure as hell aren't getting anything from a winning standpoint, so it has to be the entertainment standpoint that is giving them the return that would keep the guy in charge in place. And the master entertainer, the man who sold them the bill of goods that they all own now, is RV. Allowing him to be fired would mean that those 17 would have to face the real facts that they were either sold a bag of beans for millions of dollars by RV or that the guy who keeps them entertained through access is gone, meaning that they might lose their privileges. I find that to indicate otherwise is foolhardy or being used for an agenda. Its broken here at UNT--and the only way it changes is for the leadership of the university from the BOR, Chancellor, and the President to change it. But they won't... I'd be willing to bet we will never find that out anytime soon because RV ain't going anywhere...those 17 people own the athletic department right now. To think anything else is not dealing with the reality of our situation and the history of this place regarding athletics. If you think otherwise, just know that you are a part of about 1% of the UNT Family that thinks this...and that might be too high. And 98% of that UNT Family doesn't give one rip about our sports anyway.

This whole year is all about teaching--the OLine has to learn a new offensive scheme and placement. The WRs and RBs have to learn an offensive gameplan that should be much more fun, but is 180 degrees from what they were recruited here to play. And the QBs have to deal with these guys learning on the fly. Don't judge anything in 2016's upcoming season on the wins and losses. The roster is just not very talented and was built around a gameplan that Knute Rockne would have laughed at as being too basic. Littrell is learning on the fly, as well. As long as he wins with recruits in their fieldhouses and living rooms, then we can know that things have a chance to get better in a few years. That is the real question is if he and his staff can make a dent in recruiting Texas HS talent that is also being recruited by other FBS level schools, having to overcome the stigmas that UNT has within those circles. If he does, and the wins follow, Seth Littrell will have the college football world's attention for sure...and his reward will be justly received.

They are 17 wealthy donors who have basically bought the athletic department from the university, after being sold the merits of "ownership" by Rick Villareal, who grants them access to the teams and facilities. He keeps them happy, they keep him employed, and the university stays out of their way so as to not lose their dollars. They think that being a big money donor at UNT is EXACTLY the same as being a BMD at A&M or UT or Tech, even though those schools wouldn't even know these guys names at their places because their giving wouldn't come close to being the top 17. But here, they are.

Cougar Queen is here because she is the worst kind of poster. She trolls sites to see where she can question and scoreboard programs that suck compared to hers, having been banned on several of them. She comes here because she thinks its cool to brag about UH's progress compared to our on the football field. Its basically the equivalent of scoreboarding a homeless person because you live in an apartment. She probably does this because the folks in the homes and mansions she used to live in twenty years ago don't want her around.

Your UNT 17 Mean Green, everybody!! Look, we don't like football here, administratively. But we keep it because there is a noisy minority of fans that want to keep it around. Less than 2% of the students/alumni care about it, as seen by Denton home game attendance and MGC donors. You are better off walking away and just following from this website. You'll find it much more interesting and entertaining anyway, plus you'll save yourself lots of $$$ and time. The university's leadership has always approached football this way. We barely kept the program even going in the early 70s, we damn near killed it by dropping down to I-aa in the 80s and early 90s, and since then, we have done many, many things that no other program would allow, from playing in a toilet bowl for 15 years after moving up to I-A in 1995, playing OOC games in Denton that almost no one cares to watch, and keeping coaches/ADs that are terrible. Why? Because apathy for athletics is what you get from up top. They don't care, so they gave it to 17 people to buy. Its their toy. This isn't changing, people. It is the status quo and the desired view of revenue sports. And it always has been. RV will be the AD for years to come. And the BOR and President will abdicate to the UNT 17. who love their buddy more than winning, as evidenced by the proof of the last 5 years on the scoreboard and in butts in seats. If anyone cared about this on the BOR, the fact that the Super Pit is less than 20% full on most nights would have garnered attention, as would the fact that the $78 million stadium being filled at well under 50% capacity in the 5th year of its existence under the same AD that has been in charge for 15 years would garner change. But it hasn't--because it doesn't even matter one iota to them. And because of their dismissiveness at top, it really, really, really shouldn't matter to you, either.

No worries on the misunderstanding. But the Michigan budget is easy for them because of the revenues they get from their athletics. Granted, we wont ever be like that, but we certainly can strive to be like Houston, another urban-area public school that does put an emphasis on winning and it shows up in their academics and endowment. But, at this point, its probably too late anyway for it all to matter.

Completely pathetic part about Benford is that his alma mater's job has now been available for the taking twice since he's been here. IF he had remotely been successful, there's no doubt he would be coaching there now. That was another part of the colossal failure that was the hiring of Benford by RV--even if he had been successful here, a school in the state was ready with $$$$ to hire one of their own. It was a questionable hire to begin with, became a disastrous one, and yet it still continues...

Never said that the COM was the problem--its the primary window for the university and its what they hold very high, in terms of pride and expectations. All I have ever said was that I wish the university held the same viewpoint for revenue athletics. I have absolutely nothing against the COM--its the one thing that UNT is known nationally for. But the cost for the COM versus athletics is much cheaper--which makes the numbers apples to oranges for budgeting. Results and expectations for both are also apples to oranges, which most people can easily see.

That's because the leadership at the university cares GREATLY about the College of Music. Athletics is a whole other deal, obviously/

Oh, they'll cover the debt...in the exact ways you just listed. Cost cutting would be huge, but if it happens, its all on RV's terrible leadership that was deemed adequate and acceptable under the BOR and the administration. That fee should have been laying the golden egg for us. But because we have absolutely blown it since it got put in place by making poor hires and keeping awful personnel in place, as well as some of the most piss-poor scheduling ever seen, this is where we are. 13k and 2k for average attendance to North Texas games at Apogee and the Super Pit, venues that seat 30k and 10k. A record of 23-38 under his previous football hire and 42-53 under his current mens basketball coach. OOC games at Apogee have been Texas Southern, Idaho, Ball State, SMU, Nicholls State, and Portland State, with Butt Cookman this year to be added to the list and Army, Lamar, Incarnate Word, and Abilene Christian as OOC opponent at Apogee in the next three years. Spares a-plenty at the Super Pit in the last 4 years, including the most embarrassing loss ever remembered at the Super Pit in the last 15 years when SFA came here and had more fans than we did as they plastered us by 30. People aren't gonna just stand by and keep paying fro complete garbage. They will either pay that gladly somewhere else to enjoy winning teams at their school or they are going to try to get it rescinded. Its pretty easy to see this being in our future. Its impossible to know if he flat out doesn't give one rip about athletics here, which is probably why the BOR hired him, or if the BOR has made it completely clear that he doesn't need to make any waves regarding the AD, that the UNT 17 handle that instead. Either way, its just a continuation of how things have typically been here in Denton from the President and above for decades.

That would be up to the university to figure out. Its their debt. The student body had a vote to willfully place that fee on the backs of students in the future. There's no reason they cannot vote to rescind it, too. In the current economic environment, particularly with a university that has a lot of students who are working to pay for college or borrowing to pay for it, as well as having a more liberal bent to it, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the chancellor, president, or BOR member that says a vote to rescind this fee will not be accepted. Have you seen how those protests work on universities lately? Don't care what the reason is, it isn't going to be pretty if that happened. And it wouldn't happen here, because the leadership is incredibly sympathetic to that mindset of lower cost of attendance. That sucker would be gone and so would our FBS playing football program. Like a fart in the wind, it would be gone in a heartbeat...

By a student body vote...

This article could have been written by combining several posts on this website. These students aren't going to keep paying this fee without getting anything back for it. When that vote gets places to rescind that fee, the excuses that RV is throwing out in this article should more than clearly tell you why it gets reversed. He is a terrible, terrible AD. He doesn't understand that attendance in hoops went from about 1200 to near 4000 every game in a decade, which is triple what it was and is today. And a real AD and staff could have really sold JJ's teams much harder to the community than they ever did. But he's got the UNT 17, so...

I'm kind of coming to the reality that maybe FBS football just isn't what we need to compete at. Not because I want to see it happen, but because the university's hierarchy of leadership and monied donors continue to make it abundantly clear that they don't care about winning at this level, mostly because of cost and fear, fear of losing known donors who would walk away if RV was ever fired. You cannot win at this level with a fear of losing money--you play with the mindset that winning will bring in more revenue. Instead, we get funds by scheduling bodybag games to cover expenses. Winning in revenue sports doesn't matter one lick here...costs in revenue sports is the priority. And you cannot win consistently with that mindset--as completely evidenced by the last 21 seasons, especially that last 11 years in football. When you average 13k in attendance in your 21st season at the FBS level, with an AD who has been in place for 15 years, and have enrollment of over 36k and hundreds of thousands of local alumni, as well as millions of people surrounding your town within an hour's drive, you really have to ask yourself what changes need to be made, beyond hiring the 5th coach to run your program since 1994, which doesn't include Chico's two interim seasons. If you aren't going to change the mindset at the institutional level, then you probably need to consider changing it at a competitive level. We have proven rather solidly that we cannot do it at this level in those 21 years, as we have an 84-166 record in that timeframe, as well as a 65-118 record under the current AD. So you have two choices, at this point. You either drop down to try and win at a lower level, which seems like pure give-up, or you just accept the status quo, that losing isn't a problem. Sadly, winning, under the current mindset, isn't a real option--and whether you look at the last 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years, that isn't an opinion, its a pathetic fact that has been accepted. And acceptance only happens because of one simple disease--apathy, which has long ruled the day at UNT in regards to sports.

We have 17 of them now. And they just paid to buyout over $2 million of Dan McCarney's contract...unfortunately, they forget that they paid that much because the idiot who extended him for 5 years after one good season is the same one who has sold them a bill of goods for "access". So we keep the worst AD in America because those 17 want him around and have made it clear to the BOR that they will walk away if RV gets fired, meaning that we sold the university's athletic department to 17 big money donors who won't accept the fact that the guy leading that department is better at running pizza chains than he is at running a real athletic department. And, yet, here we sit with a decade of putrid results in football, as well as accepted and continued suckitude under RV's hire, Tony Benford, who single-handedly torched all of the progress that JJ had made in his time here. Until RV is gone, so many of us will never step foot in Apogee or the Super Pit again. And the 17 will never let that happen anytime soon, nor will the BOR let him get away as long as he stays in budget and doesn't cause any problems. So we know that a game in Denton isn't in our plans anytime in the next decade, at least. Your UNT 17 Mean Green...

It apparently really sucks in criminal activity from our athletes...

Exactly, Deep Green... Baylor was the largest tick on the Big XII hound for years. Then, out of nowhere, their mens basketball program and football program come charging up as top ranked teams. When that happens, you know that cheating is occurring. Whether its the bible full of cash that Scott Drew is believed to carry with him to get top 10 national recruits to Waco or if its Art Briles letting in uber-talented kids with extremely questionable character to be hidden under the veil of being "reformed" by their Baptist principles, that place is nowhere near being a place I'd want to be associated with right now. Winning has trumped everything, all so they can be able to compete in a power conference. But they have one gigantic problem that they cannot beat--UT's lawyers and media. When you beat them, you get the scrutiny. The Waco Tribune might turn a blind eye to crime at Baylor, but the folks at Texas Monthly, the DMN, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman, and now ESPN (with its LHN investment) aren't letting this stuff skate by. You beat UT enough as a school in Texas, you're gonna feel the wrath. Baylor is no different today than it was with SMU, A&M, or UH during the 80s and 90s. Baylor deserves sever punishment, somewhere around what Penn State got, for allowing a culture of rape to be covered up and allowed. This from a place that just 15 or so years ago saw their mens basketball team lose a half season of basketball because the old coach tried to cover up a murder on his own team by a teammate who was being paid illegally. That place has been filth for a long time.

This is where the Aggies love (delusion) for their school comes into play. I've said forever that being an AD at Texas A&M has to be the easiest AD job at a Power conference school. They don't care about winning nearly as much as they do about their university. Sure, if they have losing seasons, they will get rid of their coach, but that is because they have the funds and fans to do it. Otherwise, an AD can ask for anything to cover costs for athletic facilities or buyouts and it will be done within a week or two. Aggies are ingrained to love their school, from their alumni, their students, their faculty, and their administration. They make the 12th Man a huge deal. I'm not sure that there are any other places quite like A&M, in that regard. It certainly isn't from being front-runners, since they haven't won a national championship since 1939 or a conference championship since 1998. Our goal should be to try and be like UH, but that doesn't appear to be feasible at this point.

RV has to say that stuff. Otherwise, there is a smidgen of a chance that somebody with the UNT 17 will actually think that they have been sold a bill of goods for all that "access" they have been granted. And Smatresk and the BOR don't want to waste a second on anything related to stuff like this--they have their other primary areas of interest to focus on, many of which aren't even in Denton. It is what it is.

Memphis and UAB have been rivals for decades. Both are good, both will create interest for each other's fanbase, and most importantly, will probably get a national TV broadcast. Right now, we literally provide zero of those things that UAB offers Memphis and its fanbase in hoops. Besides, RV has to schedule home games that Bumford can win, so that they both can get an extension, as well as road games that we can make money from...#theRVway

What if he isn't? Just for a second, think about if Littrell doesn't make things any better than they have been here since the Dickey-led SBC Championship teams that ended in 2004. To me, that crossroad we are at right now has way more to do with the AD and above than it does Littrell. He has a great pedigree, but to many of us, we just have serious doubts that he can change the direction of a program that has very large institutional issues regarding winning at revenue sports . If Littrell does turn this thing around, he's gonna get a hefty raise somewhere higher up the football totem pole. Just like we saw Todd Monken get an NFL gig after bringing USM back from the dead in three years, if Littrell does that same thing here, he's gonna catch the eyes of lots of FBS ADs and other coaches across the NFL (same goes for Morris at SMU, too).

The fairgrounds seems like an appropriate place to hear from RV and Tony Benford--anywhere near the area where any of the animals drop their waste would fit perfectly

Yeah, and he didn't even have to create a sock account either...

Unfortunately, that will never happen here as long as RV is your AD. And make no mistake about it, he's gonna be the AD for years to come. By the time a P5 could come here, unless SMU buys out the series in the coming years, P5s won't even be playing teams on the road at the lower G5 conferences (SBC, CUSA, and MAC). Once the P5s split away, but keep the MWC and AAC as the non-p5s they will play and allow to keep playing for a chance at BCS bowl games, our division of play will be the new I-aa. A good AD would notice this and try to build up a winner that could actually join one of the two conferences above us. But that isn't who we have and its not what the UNT leadership wants, so we will just continue this ride until it has to end. That's where your true lack of expectations and interest truly hurts the program. You can have posters or general fans that buy into that thought, but the fact that the leadership of the university allows it and accepts it is why this thing never had a chance to improve the way it did at UCF and USF, as well as at Boise State, Nevada, and Utah State. The I-aa debacle of the 80s was the first bout of disease that struck the program, caused by apathy and loathing of football. Although some of the loathing has dropped, the apathy remains very strong. And it appears that it will again cause us to drop back down a level of play in the years to come. . It all could have been avoided, but we didn't have the will or the interest from the leadership to change it. Instead, we just accepted it all, allowing coaches and ADs to stay around for as long as possible without accomplishing much at all.

The problem with playing a P5 is that these conferences send their worst team to that bowl game. Hence, when Penn State gets declared ineligible for bowl games, we get stuck playing UNLV in the HoD bowl, as opposed to a 6-6 Northwestern or Iowa team that year. Then, if you lose, you lost to the B1G's #10 team, watering down your season. And if you win, you beat the 6-6 P5 team that wasn't worthy of playing a conference champ.