untjim1995

North Texas voted to disband football in the early 70s. North Texas chose to go down to I-aa in 1983 for 12 years and only went back up because they realized they could make more money from being a bought opponent from bigger college football teams as I-A member than as a I-aa team. If the student body chooses to challenge the current path that they have been given to follow at UNT, its not going to be the first time. And it certainly won't be because some posters on a website vented about worries that have occurred COMPLETELY because of the accepted ineptitude of our approach to revenue sports. At this point, the embarrassment that UNT has provided to us from athletics does far more damage to our degree. People can gripe about poor priorities, but many people rate a school on how they do within athletics to help support fundraising, research, and other academic endeavors. Is it right that they do that? Of course not. But its a very real issue and those of us with a UNT degree that meet other people who follow college sports either laugh at us, act as if we don't exist, or have no idea we even play at the level we do.

UNT does go all in... with music and being a "value' to build up enrollment.

Here's a question for you all--What does Benford have to do to get extended here after next year? Is a .500 season enough to get him extended for a couple of years at his current pay? I'd guess that is what you are looking at here. If Benford can be kept around for the same money, keeping the budget unchanged, without using up any BOR or UNT 17 money, as well as RV getting an automatic extension for a revenue coach getting renewed, that should all happen with a .500 season going into the CUSA Tournament. RV ain't going anywhere anytime soon. And he knows Benford represents his next chance to get an automatic extension granted from his contract. Folks, your UNT 17 Mean Green...

Laughter...nothing but pure hilarity at this ineptitude being accepted and continued... UNT'd

Then it would be nice if that was conveyed to the one beat writer that covers the team...

Uh oh... UNT90 was already talking about how the students are going to eventually question this athletic fee at UNT with no results and very little interest. This will just add some fuel to that fire...if that fee gets up for a repeal vote, that sucker is gone...and so is FBS football at North Texas, literally. If that fee goes away, Apogee becomes the finest FCS stadium in the country. This is what losing does. It makes people who care about sports walk away and it makes people who don't like sports even angrier that they are having to pay for them when they don't care. Eventually, you either turn it around or you're gonna have to pay the piper. We've seen it before here and the program almost died in the early 70s and in the I-aa debacle. If you don't win, you don't get support, financially or thru attendance. If you don't get support, you get lots of voices that get louder and louder to drop the sport, either down a level or two or outright.

I don't know medpilot, but I have seen him post on this board for years...he obviously has been around since the beginning of the SBC days, if not much sooner. He is leaving us for another school because of ineptitude at our athletic department's feet. And nobody in leadership even cares. Another one bites the dust and the UNT 17 Mean Green move forward... UNT'd. For a few minutes, apparently. Seems like a real solid use of time to drive all the way to the Practice Fields to watch ten minutes of stretching...

They want quantity overall--that increases paychecks. For certain colleges within the university, of course, those preferred areas get special treatment. But for the entire university, its all about increasing enrollment--i.e., creating "value"... Its basically a community college approach at a university level in a fast growing metro area. It literally takes the smallest of efforts to keep enrollment going upward here, with the location we have and the standards for admission we keep. But those numbers are your lifeblood to keeping a job when you make so very little effort at fundraising, as evidenced by the woeful level of our endowment for a university of our size and age.

Those who think Smatresk's main area of interest should be with athletics or getting rid of RV are seeing just how fruitless that expectation is. He doesn't have that power here, even if he wanted it, which nobody really knows. The BOR asks Smatresk to lead the university under their guidelines and protocol, just as they do Lee Jackson. Presumably, the BOR is influenced by two things: staying in budget and keeping their job. It would greatly appear that the overwhelming number of UNT students, alumni, faculty, and other members of the administration won't rock the boat to get rid of BOR members as long as the leadership continues to lead the university in a way that fits their views of what they want from our school. And the great majority, almost unanimously, don't want athletics to take a primary window here--therefore, we get what we get. And now, we have 17 people who like athletics and have basically bought it from the school as their own toy.

Decades of apathy would be my first answer...

Good write-up...Just to be sarcastic, I'd suggest that we should label McNulty, Greer, and Damarcus Smith as another term than "losses"...maybe call them guys who are gone. We didn't lose anything with any of them leaving, except that they were all losers...

I have said this for years. When we paid $78 million dollars for Apogee, it was with a promise from the AD that we would schedule better and be able to have more home games, as well as additional revenues for the athletic department to use. So far, in the 5 seasons we have had Apogee, we have had two 5-home game seasons, where the only OOC game was a FCS team (TX Southern and Portland St.), our FBS OOC opponents have been UH, Indiana in Year 1, Idaho (barely) and Ball State in Year 3, and SMU in Year 4. We play SMU again in 2016. We also have played/scheduled great programs that really bring in the fans like Nicholls State, Butt-Cookman, Lamar, Incarnate Word, and Abilene Christian. We watched 17 people pony up to buyout DMac's monstrosity of a contract for over $2 million, but the "increased" revenues couldn't get us rid of the mens basketball coach, who gets a 5th try to have a winning season here. When we get drop-kicked back down to the new I-aa level, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in leadership at UNT and have to answer as to why we put all of that money on the backs of the kids who go to school when the previous shithole of a stadium more than adequately housed the fans for games like those we have scheduled. I just don't know how anyone can justify that expenditure and ongoing fee with the results that the university has given. It certainly hasn't raised any value for the school or the degree its alums have earned. I can guarantee you, that if a vote is given to the students to recall this fee, it will get overwhelmingly voted to be repealed. The only reason it passed the first time was because of the stealth campaign that UNTFlyer brilliantly led. Even he seems to know now that it was a colossal waste of energy for what has come from getting a brand new stadium, which is a damn shame. Apogee is one of the absolute finest football stadiums in the G5, if not even above that level, too.

TTG, Its been real, man. You've always been my favorite poster on this site. I hope that you'll stay connected to the university's ridiculousness thru this website, only because it helps to have others to laugh with. I really do feel bad for you--you fully believed that the university would rectify the situation in basketball, only to see Bumford get another chance for 4 years in a row, without ever having a winning season. I know how much that burns you up--and many of us don't blame you. Just hate it when anyone has to come to the realization that winning in revenue sports doesn't matter one iota to the leadership here. But that said, keep posting here and laughing at the situation. Its kind of cathartic... untjim

And it keeps on getting awesomer... Embarrassing. Your UNT (17) Mean Green!!!

You are smart enough to recognize where the best value for your time and money aren't located at this point in your life.

This is gonna happen. The question is when. The leftover programs and the top end FCS schools will form a new division of play, that may even combine bowls and a playoff system. But when the P5s leave, we won't have any choice. I am coming around to the idea that the top end of the G5, your AAC and MWC schools, may very well get to play P5s going forward, but the culling of the bottom end of FBS will begin soon. The Big Xii's future demise will probably be why the MWC and AAC won't get dropped immediately, as they will house the leftovers of the Big XII's remnants, such as Baylor, TCU, Iowa State, and anyone else who gets left behind. Those leagues won't be Power Leagues, but they will be able to play the Power Leagues and probably still get a BCS bowl slot guaranteed. But we will be in the new I-AA, probably meaning that we will be in a regional league with other SBC, CUSA, and SLC teams. We have nobody to blame except our leadership. They punted back in the 80s, damn near killing the program. Then, with a new chance to start over again, we have managed to blow every advantage we had to build up a solid FBS program. And we completely torpedoed our progress in basketball, making us even less appealing to other conferences above us. Where there's a will, there's a way...and when there's no will, as we have seen, the way is basically standing in place while others have zoomed by. But, hey, you can get a degree for thousands less here in Denton!! And we don't even expect you to have any other affiliation with the university or town ever again!!

FIFY By the way, FCS is gonna happen. Its just how and when it occurs. My guess is the Power Leagues schism in the revenue sports occurs within the next 5-10 years, but in stages. The SBCUSA and MAC will go first, allowing the AAC and MWC to acquire whatever pieces they want from those leagues to stay as a higher league that can still play against the Power Schools. Then the eventual culling of the rest will happen after this. We gave up decades ago on being anything close to a school that is even in the upper echelon of non-power schools. Those schools above us literally want nothing to do with us as conference mates. The I-aa debacle put us in a coma, we came back to life, but we just don't have the stamina or the will to get healthy enough to be anything better than we were in the 70s. And that's how you have a whopping 2% of hundreds of thousands of people who actually attended and graduated from the school be the only ones to give one rip about sports.

I feel so very bad for you, TTG. You've believed every season that North Texas would fire Tony Benford since he fell flat on his face after one season here and wasting away the best talent this university has probably ever seen on the basketball court. Yet, each year, without fail, you've had to watch RV play the role of Lucy and pull the football away from you, just as you were ready to kick it hard like Charlie Brown. You are probably the most knowledgeable fan on this board, even though Andrew tells us he is...and yet you have been rewarded with nut kick after nut kick. Why couldn't it be Ryan Munthe instead of TTG? Or GL2Greatness? Nope, we have crush the hopes and dreams of the best poster on the site... UNT'd

Littrell may very well be a bust, but we won't know that after this season. He just inherited the worst roster of talent in FBS, one that also quit on the university and endured the single worst loss in modern college football history, 66-7 to an FCS team on Homecoming. If he wins one game this season, he gets a pass. The only wins that we need to see out of him are in the living rooms, classrooms, and locker rooms at UNT and across the region for recruits. If Littrell wins three games, he will have outpaced what Morris did at SMU, who took over the worst roster in FBS last season and had a MUCH harder schedule than we had or have and they won all of two games, which included us. It won't shock me a bit to see us go 1-11 or 2-10. 3 wins or better would actually make me believe that Littrell's future is as bright as the sun if we got that in 2016 with this roster and our schedule, which is ridiculously hard for where we are at currently. As I have said before, Littrell is either coaching somewhere else before his contract's 4th year here for turning this thing around like Todd Monken did at USM or he is being replaced by RV in 2020 sometime for not being able to turn things around here, like we did with Todd Dodge.

It would appear that their are many sports writers at the NT Daily who don't know much about basketball if they think next year will be any better. This single decision to keep Bumford for his contract season just set the program back a couple of extra years, just from a recruiting standpoint alone. If you agree this upcoming year to come to North Texas to play for Tony Benford as a high school or JUCO player for anything from 2017 and beyond., you may be amongst the dumbest people alive.

Of course I do. It was awful--under the chancellor's watch, I might add. Really, I have no problem with Smatresk. He is following orders, nicely. He does seem like a very smart and nice man. But, again, the point of it all is to focus on what matters most--he kept us under budget!! He didn't get us anything in increased revenues, that say, oh I don't know, winning athletics would provide, or at least sending a message that a putrid AD will no longer have a job, would bring, but then again, that 's the BOR's job. And it is rather apparent that they have zero interest in hurting the relationships with the UNT 17, who love their boy RV. Hence, the UNT 17 Mean Green...

Well, at least you shouldn't have any trouble getting tickets...

Nice... It is refreshing to get confirmation of the rather obvious view of how things are run here. Hopefully, there are others on here who will continue to see the light.

The last sentence is the reality of what the UNT leadership offers. Go along with it or go away. Either way, we don't care. we get easy money from an increasing number of students and we have 17 donors who pay for this and we aren't disturbing that apple cart. Nothing changes here unless the leadership's view of athletics changes drastically or until the mega-donors decide access isn't more valuable than winning. I wouldn't expect either of those to change anytime soon, so the answer is to walk away and just follow UNT sports from the comfy confines of gmg.com. You'll feel better about saving your money and time...and even belly-laugh a few times.

Sorry, Ben...it sucks when this realization sets in. Trust me, it happens to almost everyone who has ever cared about UNT being good in revenue sports. Eventually, you'll pick another college to root for or you'll go all-in on pro sports. You'll tell everyone you went to North Texas and quickly add that we don't care about sports to your Aggie, Longhorn, Sooner, Bear, Red Raider, etc...acquaintances. You will even see them spout off about times when they remember UNT not being terrible, making bowl games and the tournament. Then you'll hammer them with the reality that since 2005, our football team has had one winning season and that mens basketball went to two NCAA tourneys, as 15 seeds, and prompty got whipped by the 2 seeds they played. And then you'll bring up the fact that the women hoops team hasn't even had a winning record in that decade, either. And finally, you will twist the knife by saying we have has the same AD the ENTIRE TIME and doesn't even appear to be on a hot seat. That's when you'll get eh shaking of the head and the very polite apology and request to come join their fanbase. Welcome to 99% of the UNT Fan Experience!! It happens to almost all of us at some point in life.