untjim1995

How did you get the talking points memo? I thought you were just here to have a good time, win or lose (but usually lose)...

Attendance last night?

UTSA, allow us to introduce you to our head coach in a revenue sport that was known as a "recruiter" at a Power school before we hired him to come here...his name is Tony Benford. This is basically who you just hired to run your football program. Good luck with all that...

Greer might have been a good starter at a Division II or III college. McNulty probably would have been a starter at a bad FCS school. Smith would probably be an All-American at a FCS school.

So, in finality now, there is absolutely no doubt that TCU getting into the Big XII is a miracle. Talk about winning the lottery--they get to be a great G5 team, somehow parlay that into a Rose Bowl bid against Wisconsin that they win, time that with Texas A&M leaving the Big XII to go to the SEC, and have the other Big XII North schools demand that they get another team in Texas to play for recruiting purposes. Teeny, tiny private school in Ft. Worth that got left behind by the Big !2's original Texas crew, they are now in the club. For how long? Who knows, but if you are a UH fan, you have to ask yourself just exactly how did we get the shaft here? Just amazing. TCU and Utah all got bumps upward from the G5 to the P5. The other former Big East schools that moved away caused the league to fold up into the AAC, but they were always power schools in a power league. Now, UConn, Cincy, and USF all got kicked backwards and cannot seem to get any traction to move up to a P5 league. Those are your biggest winners and losers in realignment, by far, actually...

Jason Attaway was a walk-on QB from Sanger. He started for us in Dickey's opener at OU. Led us to victories over Boise State twice and Texas Tech in 1998 and 1999. He was the closest QB in that list to Greer and McNulty and yet was still miles ahead of either of them. McNulty just wasn't very good, but he was mentally tough. Greer might have had some talent when he got here, but when facing a real FBS defense, he looked scared to death. Greer actually made McNulty look less awful, which was not too easy to do.

Its a tough sell because of the losing. That is all that TX HS Coaches, players, and their parents know us for, which doesn't help that we always start the season early with bodybag whippings at regional P5 powers that have plenty of T-shirts around to put us down. Of course, when we finally step out of playing SEC and Big 12 powers and actually play a team that we normally would compete with fairly well in Iowa, we play their best team in decades and start the worst QB we have had in decades and get murdered. But with future games at Florida, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Iowa, its not gonna stop anytime soon. I understand the need for the bodybag game, since almost every G5 plays at least one, but I'd have been scheduling games at every team in the northern reaches of the country, like Washington, Minnesota, Maryland, Syracuse, etc...if you get killed by them, there aren't tons of kids walking the hallways at your normal Texas HS wearing t-shirts of those schools. but when you get beat 65-0 by UT, 56-3 by LSU, 79-10 by OU, and whatever Arkansas and A&M beat us by in the years to come, those t-shirt fans in HS don't exactly have a huge reason to look at UNT as their primary school to root for, even if they end up going there because its closer to home or cheaper than anywhere else.

I figure that you have these G5 schools that would be available for conferences to be more regionalized in the future: Marshall, ODU, Appy State, Charlotte, FIU, FAU, Georgia State, Georgia Southern, MUTS, WKU, UAB, South Alabama, Troy, USM, ULL, ULM, La Tech, Arkansas State, Tulsa, Rice, UTEP, NMSU, UTSA, Texas State, and UNT. Add in SMU and Tulane, just as they may not quit football altogether, and it gives you 27 teams. Easily, the SW division would be UNT, SMU, Tulsa, UTEP, NMSU, Texas State, UTSA, Rice, and Arky State. The SE division would be La Tech, Tulane, ULM, ULL, USM, UAB, USA, Troy, and MUTS. The Eastern Division would be Marshall, ODU, WKU, Charlotte, Appy State, Georgia State, Georgia Southern, FIU, and FAU. The farthest point of travel in the SW division would be NMSU to Arkansas State. Right now, NMSU has to travel to Appy State for its farthest point. The farthest point in the SE would be MUTS to ULL. Right now, MUTS has to play in El Paso or South Florida for furthest conference trips. And in the East, the farthest is Marshall to F_U, which they already do and won't have to travel to El Paso anymore. This is the reality of what regionalization will be like within ten years for our level of college play, give or take a few subtractions and a few FCS move-ups.

McNulty and Greer are both, without a shade of doubt in my mind, the worst QBs that we have had to start a season in my 25 years of following the team. Scott Davis, Wendell Moseley, Mitch Maher, Jason Mills, Jason Attaway, Scott Hall, Daniel Meager, Riley Dodge, and Derek Thompson were all better to MUCH better than those two guys.

Not a one. It was obvious that when a new coach would get here that these guys would be leaving or just staying buried on the depth chart. If you couldn't play QB in the Metamucil Offense, it was obvious you couldn't play. Greer absolutely sucked as a FBS QB, Damarcus Smith was too erratic, McNulty only played because Grandpa loved him, and Means and Shanbour couldn't jump over this collection of QBs that probably wouldn't start at a lot of FCS schools. Alec Morris will be a breath of fresh air compared to this list, even if he is just average.

I really think the G5s and FCS teams realize that the P5 money will dry up sooner rather than later. That's why their level of contentment to be "bought" is such an accepted reality. These folks--especially like RV--know that the non-revenue sports have to get paid for and it is FAR easier to just play a bodybag game every year and pack the coffers that way. What people on gmg.com want is for the university to look at itself, thru the window of athletics, to emulate UH. I mean they are an urban school in the state that is huge and has a large alumni base, just like us, so why not? Well, the why not is that UH looks at athletics as a primary window to their school. We don't--and never have. They have some great history in the two revenue sports and they have BMDs from the 60s, 70, and 80s that want UH to be big-time, like they used to be in the old SWC. We don't have anything that compares to this--not even close, actually. What many on here need to understand is that our place in college football got basically cemented by our 1-aa debacle. Even if we had a better AD for the last 15 years to make us more revenue and successful in coaching hires, we weren't ever going to jump UH or SMU on the college football landscape because of their pedigree and SWC media still backing them. We couldn't jump into a league WITH SMU and UH because they refused to have us, much less go past them. What is realistic for us in the years ahead is to prepare for the regionalization of college football on the lower levels. Some, like I mentioned with the MAC and the MWC, have already embraced this reality. The other three G5 leagues have not. I suspect that some will drop football if they cannot make Power Independence work for football, just for the sake of not allowing themselves to be "lowered" to permanent status in the G5/FCS collection. SMU and Tulane are two schools that immediately come to mind in that vein of thought. Apogee and the Super Pit are wonderful venues, no doubt. And we will be playing in them for years to come. But it would be very wise to understand that our place in the college athletics landscape is not going to be with the Power Conference teams or even those that could get affiliated with them because of their budgets and history. If we hadn't basically give up on I-a football in the early 80's, it could very well be different today, but we didn't do that and it killed off too many resources (i.e., giving fans and alumni). Its a lot like the guy who never saved his entire work life and now wants to retire in the next ten years and live like his buddies do because of how much they saved. In the end, you can save more for the next decade, but your buddies got a large head start on you that will never allow you to catch up. At that point, it becomes all about changing your expectations to a more realistic view. That's what we have here now. We can still enjoy Mean Green sports, but its not going to be against the teams we all dream of them playing against on a level field. Its just not how college sports works.

The original CUSA had Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Cincy, South Florida, Memphis, Charlotte, UAB, USM, Tulane, and Houston. That was a great collection of traditional basketball powers. Then the old Big East poached away Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, and Cincy, replacing them with SMU, UTEP, Marshall, Rice, Tulsa, ECU, and UCF. Certainly a drop down in hoops power, but Memphis was still kicking ass in the Calipari years. But then the AAC takes away UCF, USF, UH, Tulsa, Tulane, Memphis, and ECU. Schools like UAB, WKU and UTEP, as well as improving programs like ODU, La Tech and MUTS, and programs that are down now but used to be good like Charlotte and USM, have to look at us, UTSA, Rice, Marshall, FAU, and FIU, and just cry at what we are doing to their RPI and the conference's RPI.

Just passed the legislation to allow for a 10-team conference to have a championship game. Welp, UH, I guess you are gonna continue to enjoy the AAC for a while...

Yeah, CUSA was very poachable by the AAC, once the Big East fell apart. Most of the AAC's parts that are valuable to other conferences all got picked off (Rutgers, Pitt, Syracuse, WVU, TCU, and Louisville) and they had to replace them with the best of what was left--UH, SMU, UCF, ECU, Temple, Memphis, Navy, Tulane, and Tulsa all joined with UConn, USF,and Cincy. If you got left behind in CUSA, its only because you either had no TV value at all or your geography hurt you--see UAB, USM, Marshall, Rice, and UTEP. What CUSA added were teams like La Tech and WKU that fit the mold of the other CUSA teams that had to stay behind because of small markets, but the rest of the adds were simply based on TV markets. The only problem with that is that the college football world doesn't give one rip about us, UTSA, F_U, MUTS, ODU, or Charlotte, nor do they give a rip about any SBC school. To me, this is where the MWC and MAC have it right in doing everything geographically. The MAC schools know what they are, which is a collection of schools that are able to make each other better because of the tightness of the geography around most of their membership--i.e., travel costs are better for teams and fans. The MWC, while more spread out, obviously, still have some very strong rivalries and easier travel amongst its membership than anything the SBCUSAAAC teams have--that's all because the teams in the South all want to look down their noses at other schools instead of being conference mates with them (see SMU-UNT, UTEP-NMSU, La Tech--ULM) for recruiting purposes. It figuratively cuts off your individual nose to spite your conference face...

I doubt that they will add anyone ever, just from a payout standpoint, but if they added two teams, you can almost certainly bet it would be Cincy and Memphis. Should it be HOuston? Yes, but its not gonna happen because they add nothing new to the conference from a TV standpoint and a recruiting standpoint. I would see the AAC adding MUTS to replace Memphis with Nashville's market and NIU or Ohio to replace Cincy, which would leave the MAC at 12 teams and force us to add one team, which would most likely be ULL.

So the reality here is that the P5s will become the P4 in the next decade. When the BIg XII implodes, the P4 will issue a concession for schools to still get consideration to the party--pay up by showing how much you want to be a part of this when no conference will invite you thru football independence. Yep, we are about to kick it old school--as in the glory days of Penn State, Miami, FSU, Louisville, Pitt, and so many others that were independents, schools like UH, SMU, UCF, USF, TCU, Baylor, ISU, Memphis, UConn, Cincy, and Boise State will go Power Independent because their budgets can afford to do it, at least at the onset. This will give the P4s their new bought opponents, too. The rest of us...well, you're hitting on what lies ahead. Your MAC schools, your MWC schools not named Boise State, your lower AAC schools, CUSA, and the SBC will absorb some of the top schools in FCS and create our own subdivision. I'd love a new conference that would like this: UNT, Tulsa, Arkansas State, La Tech, ULL, Tulane, Rice, UTSA, Texas State, UTEP, NMSU, and Sam Houston in a conference gives you New Orleans, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, DFW, Tulsa, Lafayette, Shreveport, and Arkansas. I'd take that over what we currently play because I have zero interest in F_U, Charlotte, ODU, WKU, MUTS, and UAB in football.

I don't think June Jones was a failure at all at SMU. He inherited a team that one won game (against us) the season before he got there. In his first year, they won one game, as well, but in each of the next 4 years, they went to a bowl game and won 3 of them. Yes, his last season plus went downhill, but if SMU fans think he was more of a failure than a success, that says more about their Football IQ than anything else. When we hired McCarney, I thought it was a great move, just because we actually spent decent money on an experienced coach who had Hayden Fry's backing. We had gone decades since doing that, so it made us pony up more for a coach than we ever had before, which is why we can pay Littrell over three times what we paid Dodge in 2010. But the problem with McCarney was his stubborn approach to offense and his inability to get recruits to look at us as anything but a last resort. It literally killed Mac's spirit here--remember how much we loved hearing him give us something good to hear about our university and our program's future? That was gone after the HoD Bowl, when recruiting never picked up and all of the talent that Dodge had gotten here and just needed to be coached up by an actual college football staff finally left, it became apparent that this thing had no chance to end well--and it didn't. Was McCarney more of a failure than a success here? I would say yes, clearly, just because he had one good season out of the 4+ he was here and he left us with almost nothing in the cupboard and an incredibly all-time embarrassment loss to FCS Portland State--as in most embarrassing loss in the modern history of college football. Littrell represents a lot of good things for this place--great roots, great pedigree, great values, and great play calling--but none of us have any idea if he knows how to build up a program and lead it, both on the field and off the field. We know that he is youthful and has some good young coaches on his staff to help him, which should help in recruiting, but we don't know if he can get Texas HS Coaches and recruits to look at UNT any differently than what they have when McCarney and Dodge were here as head coaches. We want him to and we think he can, but its possible that the many reasons we have documented before about our program are just too much even for him. And to a lot of us, the number one reason that we believe no one has been able to win here is because of the AD. And that AD isn't going anywhere until he wants to quit, retire, or until he dies. So we will continue getting articles, blogs, columns, etc...that basically say the same thing this one does from one of our "own", someone who is completely embarrassed of our program and has most likely gone on to be a lifelong fan to be of UT. Make no mistake about it, we have hundreds of thousands of alumni and students just like him, just without a media outlet.

To be honest, I still can't believe we won a game in 2015. I'm seriously glad we did, but it was very unexpected. How anyone could look at that Portland State game and recognize the fact they are FCS and it was on Homecoming at our place and then not give us an F- is really beyond me.

You cannot convince me that we would have beaten UCF if we had played them.

Some just lost more than others...

But the real question here is if you would say it to his face...#askCBL

I know that you are younger and that you are of the generation that "mehs" all the time as loud as possible, but did you ever think that just for once that maybe--just maybe--the citizens of Denton, by a large percentage, feels the polar opposite about UNT Football as those of us on here do? Has that ever crossed your mind when we average 13k in attendance in a bad year and no more than 19k in a good year? IOW, the people in this town and at this university have never shown an interest in helping UNT Athletics beyond when they play someone they care about, like a former SWC team or service academy? Maybe, just maybe, Vito and the DRC are just reflective of the readers of their paper... I know, I know...Meh...

I'm no member of the UNT 17, so I have no agenda. Just sharing my opinions on a message board like most everyone else here.

They probably did run the spread, but none of the QBs on this roster have played in a spread offense at this level, nor have they shown that they can even throw decently at this level of play, including Morris, who I really think will be the starter here and will be the best QB we have seen here in years (like decades). We will see, I guess.

You guys outplayed us the first year in Denton, no doubt. And the next year, you were just better than us. This year, we outplayed you guys in Denton. This upcoming year, we look to be better than you guys and your coaching situation is in disarray, which is why I think we will even the series. Look, I don't hate you guys. I think its nice to have an instate rivalry finally. We both need to do a lot of improvement in the years to come to get out of the level of rankings that suggest we cannot beat FCS teams week-in and week-out. Right now, as well as with UTEP, the three of us are all really, really terrible football programs in need of some serious improvements.