untjim1995

There's no way we averaged this in actual attendance, but even if we did, its less than 20% capacity. 4th worst in CUSA, in front of stalwarts, F_Us and UTSA. CUSA has to be wondering why the hell they invited us.. UTEP 7386 ODU 7038 Marshall 5474 MUTS 5184 UAB 4946 Charlotte 4668 La Tech 3856 WKU 3672--this has to be an alltime low USM 2994 Rice 2205--Rice has under 4000 students, IIRC UNT 1979--with over 37k students and hundreds of thousands of local alumni UTSA 1072 FIU 1007 FAU 872--WTF?? Obviously, why would anyone buyout an extra $325k to try and change this very successful trajectory we are on, after finishing 12-20??

I think we better start looking at who will be available in 2017...

What JJ built here, after taking over a program that is every bit of where McCarney left football, is damn near miraculous. Nobody--and I mean nobody--should denigrate anything he accomplished in his time here. Was he great x's and o's coach? Not great, but he was good enough at it as a mid-major coach here to build success. He was a very good recruiter, which is also why he built success here. Johnny Jones left here after a long successful run to go coach in a power conference. Nobody else has done that at UNT in the three main sports since Hayden Fry in the late 70s. He built us into a winner, a team that drew 3000-4000 a night at an arena that holds 10,000 people. Today, we are thrilled to see a real crowd of over 2000. And, of course, we are thrilled to see our team finish near .500, which that pesky level has been reached once, and only because the OOC was completely dumbed down to a level not seen here in a revenue sport in years. RV took a flyer on an assistant from Marquette, with Texas ties, that had a pedigree for being an ace recruiter. He gave the keys to the nice sedan we finally were able to afford to drive and he quickly totaled it. If a new coach was hired today, with the talent that Benford has been able to bring here, it wouldn't take years to rebuild this thing, like it will Littrell in football or how it did for JJ after Vic Trilli was fired. A real coach could get us back into a winning record very quickly--that's the beautiful nature of college basketball. But, instead, we will keep the bad driver on as head coach, because its affordable, and we are keeping the AD in place because he provides access and is friendly with the people in charge. I laugh, only because it feels better than to cry about it... UNT'd

Laughter...

You know, when you think about this, it is really MUCH worse than that. Imagine if football had more games to play in a season than basketball has had, or vice-versa, what would that percentage look like? That's why I always look at RV's overall winning percentage in those three sports in his time here. BTW, when you combine 15 years of football and both basketball teams, you get football at 65-118 (.355), mens basketball at 244-219 (.527), and womens hoops at 179-266 (.402), you get a whopping .447 percentage. In the last five years, we are 23-38 in football (.377), 54-99 in womens hoops (.353), and 72-87 in mens hoops (.453). Rv's "visionary" leadership and fleecing has led us to a stellar record and winning percentage of 149-373 (.399). Who wouldn't deserve to keep their job when their main products and services were successful at less than a 40% clip after 5 years? I mean its college sports we are talking about, so there's no way that anyone connected to that kind of losing would even get 5 years, right? Wait, the AD over this pile of dogcrap has been here for 15 years? Embarrassing. And if you aren't embarrassed by it, you should be.

Oh I agree, but the sentence isn't about could or should...its about will/would. We aren't going to do this in any timeframe you want to mention. Why? Because I believe some BOR members look at $325k and freak out at how much that could be used towards. When there is no will, there is no way...we don't have the will to pay off another revenue coach's buyout, or even the AD who put us in this position. Instead, we let 17 people decide if he stays. Its not gonna change, either. They own the AD. And the BOR isn't ponying up $325k to pay off this hire when they know he can wait a year and it will just not get renewed and the budget stays intact, with no BOR appropriated funds necessary. The UNT Family rejoices that the BOR continues to stand up to evil athletics, while the BOR stand up for the UNT 17 for taking this off their plates to keep the UNT Family overwhelmingly pleased. And the UNT 17 stand up for their good ol' pal RV, because he allows them access and has fleeced them out of millions, which none of them want to admit.

I really don't know this, but I'm gonna guess that it has something to do with our incredibly large student body and the athletic fee...but I know its not from the MGC that grew by 864 people in the same time the university graduated 75000 people or whatever it was that Cerebus reported during RV's tenure.

You know that we don't make decision on opportunity costs or unknown revenues--its only about known costs, nothing more, nothing less.

Money, as in $325k, apparently...

I'm not sure about the first sentence of yours anymore. Almost amazingly, I am now of the belief that if Benford makes it thru this weekend, he's gonna coach for us in a contract year. I would have pegged the odds of this occurring at no more than 1% even a few weeks ago, but it is now it appears to be the way things may just go. JJ replacing Benford wouldn't surprise me at all, and that may very well be what RV is counting on for how he will get the PR machine going when it becomes clear that Benford cannot be extended, costing RV an extension of his own, and must be replaced. What better way to buy some time with the 17 donors than to bring back the guy who had success here?

Oh, there's no doubt about it. But when the P5s fully pull away, teams in the AAC, which are no doubt higher on the totem pole than we in the SBCUSA are, will have to make a choice. Keep playing in a league where SMU plays UH, Tulsa, and Tulane in conference play, but also travel to Temple, Navy, UCF, and USF for conference games in every sport. The regional teams that they play don't bring anyone to their stadium like we do. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of teams will look closely at this. Temple shouldn't be playing football against SMU in a conference game. Same with East Carolina and Houston. UNT has no business being in a conference with F_U, nor does Rice need to be in one with Old Dominion or Marshall. And Texas State and Appy State playing each other as conference mates is beyond ridiculous, too. The only other possibility out there, to me, is that the top end of the G5s, your MWC and AAC schools, plus a couple of others like Marshall and Northern Illinois, will get exempted from a P5 pull away, somehow keeping quasi-affiliation for OOC purposes. Those of us in the SBCUSA and MAC get dropped down, where other high-end FCS teams move up and that becomes the new FCS/I-aa. That would protect the P5s from almost all kinds of media our legislative outrage, not that they cared about any of that or had to worry about it anyway.

Clarification--what is in the box score, not actual butts-in-seats

One of the things that kills us in the chance to fight off the pro-RV crowd is that we have one media outlet that covers us, the DRC, which gets frozen out by the university's leaders when or if they push too hard. If there was an embarrassing outcry in the bigger DFW media, for example, Randy Galloway or Dale Hansen cared enough to ask how in the world the guy keeps a job, it might grab more attention. But none, and I mean none, ever question this. It sure as hell isn't going to be George Dunham, the one guy who cares about us and is well-known. Tim McMahon has a following and he has interest in UNT, but that isn't a voice that would carry a lot of weight. It's the apathy that got created in Denton that permeates into DFW, too, about almost all things UNT-related. Literally, millions of people in the DFW area absolutely don't care about us having a team or don't even know we field teams. That's what our "leadership" has delivered to the area for decades. The citizens of Denton don't support the athletics of the university, nor do the clear majority of students, alumni, faculty, and administration. I still believe that it has to come from the top to change this, that administratively, they have to change their view. And they don't want to do that because they know that the support underneath isn't there to insure that they keep their jobs. So we keep on, keeping on...marketing our "value" to the region, as well as our school's reputation within liberal arts and education, which are noble and terrific, but don't bring in a lot of cash, nor does it really attract guys like me, the guy who actually loves college sports with a huge passion. But it is what it is...its not gonna change anytime soon.

Attendance is a lot easier to have when you play local and regional teams. Plus, it controls costs. The MAC gets it. The MWC gets it. The three southern dummy G5 leagues are the only ones who don't get it, all because they want to have a higher place on the totem pole than to make/save more money. I got really terrible news for our AAC brethren not named Cincy or UConn. You aren't going to ever play in a higher level of football unless you agree to go independent, like BYU, and become pseudo-P5. That doesn't have long-lasting power, unless you sell out every home game and have a network to distribute your games (see BYU). And even BYU would leave independence if the Big XII would call them to join the league. NMSU-UTEP, SMU-UNT, UTSA-Texas State, UH-Rice, La Tech-ULM, Tulane-ULL, etc...they need to understand that being in a conference with each other will be fine. Add in Tulsa and Arkansas State and you have 5 states, covering the markets of El Paso, DFW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Lafayette, Shreveport, Monroe, Little Rock, Hot Springs, and Tulsa. You cannot tell me that this setup wouldn't draw better than what the current SBCUSAAC does today. And that it wouldn't keep costs down tremendously.

I think the administration won't spend a dime on buying out Benford because they already spent money to buyout Petersen and probably have some skin in the game on McCarney's firing, although most of that one came from the UNT 17. Follow the money--if it is gonna cost more, you can guarantee that its not going to happen admininstratively. It'll take someone in the 17 to foot that bill. And the buyout of Mac pretty well knocks that one down. Someone is going to have to step up to buyout Benford's last year. If not, he comes back in a contract year, something a real program would never allow to happen. But we aren't even close to real.

As I said, if Benford gets retained, especially without an extension, that loud laughter you will hear is mine--and yes, I'll be laughing at my alma mater. And other than the 1500 that show up to the Super Pit, so will a lot of other folks. It is fitting that this is becoming hilarious...after all, #itsallajoke.

And watch RV get an extension, too, since one of his revenue hires also earned an extension... UNT'd

I still believe that JJ will be our coach again. Think about it. If LSU buys him out, this year or next, he would be welcomed back so quickly by RV, the fans, and the administration. I truly believe that he will make it back here. He's the one coach here in a revenue sport that left here as a winner since Fry left, IIRC. He has been able to win in spite of his boss--that's the real miracle here. If we got him back, it would be a perfect fit.

This. RV will leave if and when the UNT 17 want him gone. Not a day before. The BOR ceded control of the athletic department to those guys. It's basically the UNT17 Mean Green now...

Because we replaced a 60 year old decrepit toilet bowl of a stadium that needed multiple generators just to host a college football game? And that happened because the SGA President led the charge? To me, Apogee had to get built or football was done at this university within a decade. And its beautiful, from an aesthetic standpoint, as well as a financial standpoint, in that it is paid very handsomely by the students who go to school here via a sports fee. That fee, is well under what peers like UTSA, Texas State, and Lamar charge their student body for athletics, as allowed by the state. Plus, our fee is set to be sunsetted when APogee is paid for in the years ahead. This isn't even counting wins/losses and personnel hirings/firings. I'll stick with my opinion--we don't care about winning in revenue sports, never have, never will.

Yeah, because taking over Johnny Jones' most talented team ever is EXACTLY the same as taking over a squad that was led by Vic Trilli, who was our first version of Todd Dodge before Dodge ever made it to campus...

I'm sure it will all change very soon...

Baby steps

Tell him that those guys will praise him if he will help us get rid of Benford...

As much as I wish JJ was able to come back here, LSU cannot afford to buy him out right now, both fiscally and politically.