untjim1995

This is my point, as well. If either of these guys accomplish a big turnaround in the next 3 years, they are going to get hired away. If they don't, they each probably have no more than 4 years at their job and will get fired. There are exceptions, of course, but G5s are usually training grounds for the P5s to buy them when they like what they see.

http://www.cfb-history.com/2012/11/09/1977-college-football-polls-apupi/ What is really hilarious in this is that Kentucky (??) finished #6 in football by the AP voters---but was unranked in the Coaches Poll...

This isn't happening, so its a moot point, but if it did, I'd go after someone who has done well at fundraising in a G5 urban school, i.e. not Arkansas State or ULL... Losing is always tough to deal with, in part, because a lot of different components affect outcomes (recruiting, health, grades, schedule, etc...) on the field or on the court. But to have 15 years to cultivate 17 BMDs while overseeing an increase of about 800+ people in the MGC when 70k+ have graduated in that timeframe shouldn't be a very difficult hurdle to jump over for ANYBODY who is a decent AD. And to the RV apologists, if you're right, nobody else comes in and does better at this, then it will be obvious that we aren't ever gonna be able to build this program up to where we hoped it would get. Again, though, its a moot point. He isn't going anywhere, anytime soon. He is too protected right now. Its an amazing accomplishment if you really think about it in these times of huge athletic budgets and the size of our student body and alumni base.

Hell, not even getting to .500 has gotten extensions at UNT--see Dickey, McCarney, and RV. And if he can do it, RV would gladly extend Benford, who can't even get over that pesky .500 hurdle with some of the weakest schedules that we have ever seen--and he still might get extended at the end of this season, although its incredibly doubtful.

Yeah, that's exactly the same... And if you ask UT fans about DeLoss Dodds right now, most of them will tell you that he left them in very bad shape. He completely missed on the realignment mess and with the LHN. Now, UT is stuck with the kids that A&M got away from to the SEC, knowing full well that when the times comes for the big XII to implode and they have offers to go to the Pac-12, B1G, or ACC, that they have to figure out how to deal with potential lawsuits from Baylor, TCU, and/or Tech being left behind. But I do know that under DeLoss Dodds, since he was Men's AD only, UT won national championships in football and baseball, while also going to the Final Four in mens hoops. He cultivated the largest budget in collegiate sports, allowing him to fire Cliff Gustafson, Fred Akers, David McWilliams, John Mackovic, Bob Weltlich, and Tom Penders. He didn't fire Mack Brown or Rick Barnes, that was done by Steve Patterson. He fired 6 people in his revenue sports...equal to RV...

That certainly isn't a problem in 2016...Since 2006, he has fired these people he extended or hired in his tenure--Darrell Dickey, Shanice Stephens, Todd Dodge, Rick Petersen, and Dan McCarney. Tony Benford is standing on a banana peel looking over the Grand Canyon right now in terms of getting shoved out. Its very probable that RV will have fired 6 coaches in the three revenue sports in ten years--that is not just experienced, that's damn near Hall of Shame level firing of your own personnel that you hired/extended. Dude, you are way wrong on this...no way only half would have left. It'd be more like 75% or more... No access, no money...

I don't blame Meacham--better jobs will be available for him

And he is still here after all of this mess...that 2% is the UNT 17 and BOR, basically. Its good to have friends in high places...

Afterwards, the KU fans that stuck around and watched Buddy Hield finish up an interview with ESPN on the court, gave Hield a standing ovation for tying the scoring ark by an opponent at Allen Fieldhouse--that place is only 61 years old...

Hold on!! We have been told many times over on here that RV is the one who got us Apogee...certainly not anyone else, like Todd Dodge or UNTFlyer...

Me, too. I'm just saying that waaayyyy more people connected to UNT care about music than they do about football. Not on gmg.com, obviously. But we are overwhelmingly known for our Music programs, which attracts students from all over. Add in the students and alumni who follow Denton's music scene and it dwarfs our athletic support. Maybe it wouldn't have been that way if we treated football better in the decades previously, but we didn't. Its a liberal school and is well-known for music and arts, as well as being a teacher's college. Those aren't really well-known fans of football. And the faculty, administration, BOR, and citizens of Denton have shown forever that athletics, particularly football, will never be accepted as the major window to the university, supplanting music and arts. It won't happen. If you need further evidence of this, see, Villareal, Rick being your AD for 15 years. Even if Smatresk wanted to fire him, which we don't know, those above him have made it clear that they won't let that happen. Would the College of Music's Dean be allowed to stay in his job for even 20% of that time if every metric available showed that the department was completely failing at its mission? There's no chance--that tells most people where the university's priorities lie. And I am not even saying that's wrong. Its just completely different from every single FBS university in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and the other states we compete with in athletics.

Sure...

Yeah, because at a school with 36k students and hundreds of thousands of alumni, our attendance just really kills it. We love UNT Football so much that 13k people decided to invest time and money into attending games this past season. There's no way that more than 13k people at UNT, the best music school in the region, could possibly have more students and alumni that like music more than sports...

Now you can see how those who graduated or attended UNT in the 70s and 80s feel. We quit on them by dropping to I-aa for 12 years. They have never come back. I don't think this is going to ever happen, but I just don't want any other G5 public school in Texas deciding to drop football because it isn't financially viable. Its just inviting Pandora's box to be opened.

I will gladly stand on the reality that if you and I went around and asked UNT students, faculty, and the local citizenry if they would rather watch a UNT Football game at Apogee or to watch the Green Brigade perform, the number of people who would choose the Green Brigade would monumentally crush the number of people who want to watch UNT Football. We are a top Music School in the country. We just finished as the worst football team in FBS this past year, which represented the 11th out of the last 12 as a loser. There are Mean Green covered glasses and then there is reality...

To me, Greer would have been a solid fit at a FCS school. Its obvious that the FBS level is too high for his ability. Its like the guy who kills it at AAA, but comes to the majors and can't hit or pitch. He gets the label of being a "AAAA" player, too good for the minors, but too bad for the majors.

I'm just saying that if you had a vote today, that included both students and faculty at UNT, to vote on whether to keep the football program or not, meaning the athletic fee goes away, you'll never convince me that it wouldn't be a razor-thin vote. You'd have a ton of media and political influence to show a school that is trying to lower costs for students and place academics first. If a school like UTSA decided it wasn't making financial sense for them, don't think that administrators at other public schools like ours wouldn't look at the subject a lot closer--and that isn't even counting the folks in Austin on the Texas Higher Education Committees. If they could figure out a way to get schools like UTSA, Texas State, and UNT to give up FBS football, that would give their Longhorns, Aggies, Red Raiders, Bears, etc..., more t-shirt money. As always, follow the $$$$. See Alabama vs UAB. Will it happen here anytime soon? No. It won't happen at UTSA, either--not anytime soon, anyway. But I will never underestimate the way UNT looks at football. 25 years of being a fan has taught me that. Apogee is a god-send, literally being a life-line to staying at FBS. But there is a large segment of the UNT Family that looks at Apogee as a world class venue to showcase the Green Brigade and to use it to attract concerts in music-crazy Denton.

I always enjoy it when another school shows ineptness while dealing with their football team. UTSA probably just killed any hope of being decent for the next 3-5 years. I'll go ahead and mark them down as our 2nd for sure win in 2016, along with Bethune Cookman. Can we replace Texas State with UTSA in CUSA already? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

We don't need UTSA giving any ideas to anyone else in the state in considering giving up on football. As we have seen here in the past, that idea would gain serious momentum in Denton. And I wouldn't put anything past the folks in Austin to come up with some reason to UAB our program. Any of this even remotely possible? Doubtful, but the way our program has been treated in Denton and having no pull in Austin whatsoever just makes me wary of any political shenanigans.

Look, its clear he's been bought off or threatened. You can do that kinda stuff at a place where athletics is run by 17 donors who are friends with the AD and BOR and President. If Littrell's success is dependent on RV's job status, then he's gonna fail--RV ain't going anywhere, anytime soon. He will just fall in line with every hire made by RV not named Johnny Jones. But, again, in the end, it doesn't really matter. He is here to stay as long as he wants as AD. There aren't enough people who care, so it is what it is. You just have to accept it. You either stick it out or you walk away. There is no in between. And the BOR doesn't give two $hits on which path you take. They know that there are others right behind you that are enrolled or recent graduated.

My God, UTSA is making worse decisions with their football program than anyone could have imagined. You lost to the worst team in the country, yet kept your coach. You finished a turd of a losing season, yet kept the coach. Then, all of the bowl games get played, JUCO recruiting comes and goes, and high school recruiting's deadline is coming up in less than a month and you decide that NOW is when to fire the coach? That makes RV look somewhat less incompetent--and that is quite the accomplishment. Way to go Lynn Hickey!!

This. 2016 is a throw-away year, w/l wise. Its got to be about two things: examining the current roster to find out who will/won't be on board with Littrell's system and to try and build up some in roads in recruiting, most likely at JUCOs immediately and taking the longer path for years to come with TX HS coaches. Don't be surprised at all to see Oklahoma HS kids get hard looks from our staff. There's a lot of talent up there that won't go to OU or OSU, but will consider Tulsa and us because of proximity to home. If we only beat Bethune-Cookman next year, which will probably be the only game we are favored in, its still ok. To get away from the old-grandpa, Metamucil offense we ran, as well as the woe-is-me attitude that McCarney ended up having after recruiting talent here became much harder than he ever imagined it would, it all adds up to a better 2016 than last season, even if we match the same record as last season--and that is entirely possible. Littrell's energy and learning on the job will make this year more interesting than anything from last year. The only way that 2016 is a disappointment is if we go 0-12, which I don't think we will do. Bethune-Cookman isn't anywhere close to Portland State, plus the roster won't be full of quitters when we host them like it was when the team quit on the university in the worst loss in modern college football history. Recruiting wins in 2016 are what we need to celebrate--I realize you cannot tailgate at those, which kills the segment of our fanbase that thinks RV is the greatest AD ever because his "vision" led us to open up tailgating at a university in the South (Wow!!--RV is the greatest AD ever!! He should be the AD here forever!!). Those victories in the offices of high schools and in the living rooms of recruits are the only ones that will help us climb out of the miles-long cave we are currently in. Don't worry about on-field results this year--we have to teach a new offense to a team that doesn't know a thing about wide-open game plans, as well, as to run out a defense that is probably smaller and slower than a lot of 6A high schools in Texas.

At the latest...but if we are like 5 or 10 games under .500 by the end of Ferbuary, he'll be gone, even if the possibility exists in RV's mind that we could still make a run in the CUSA Tournament.

Free Throws are all about discipline and practice. Kids know that dunks, 3-pointers, and behind-the-back passes get attention from the fans. Good coaches know that defense, rebounding, and free throws get you wins. Coaches known as recruiters only don't usually translate into good head coaches because they don't know how to gameplan or execute in games, nor do they run decent practices--of which free throw shooting is huge. Benford's days here are numbered. We aren't finishing with a record that will allow him to get extended. When it becomes mathematically impossible to reach a postseason invite, he will get fired. My guess has always been in late January/early February. I still believe that. The only thing that will shock me is to see him coach one day beyond this season, extension or not. Either way would represent UNT Athletic Leadership at its finest...

What you don't know is if Smatresk looked at RV's record and wanted to make a change but the BOR/UNT 17 said "No, you aren't" or if he looks at RV, and just like the BOR/UNT 17, says, "Love his vision, glad we have him." Either way, its depressing. But its also so very North Texas that this guy will decide on his terms when he leaves and will probably cut the ribbon in front of tens of people when the athletic department gets named after him, while overlooking the Darrell Dickey Practice Fields.