untjim1995

It could just be that LIttrell needs an arm--any arm--just to have as a practice team QB for the next few years. And if he doesn't turn into anything of major note, at least he helped him get his offensive scheme implemented at this program that was built on a plodding, run-first, throw bubble-screen second type of offense under Mac. This is just a matter of a warm body and an arm that can help you teach the receivers. If its anything else better, that is just gravy...

And?? You think we are getting called up to the AAC or MWC anytime soon? Surely you don't think that these conferences want anything to do with us right now, correct?

If CUSA and the SBC want to be forward thinking, they would combine into east and west divisions, so as to keep their TV coverage, but make divisions line up geographically for travel costs and easier fan attendance. The AAC school and the MWC school are a different breed, a cut above the rest of the G5s. Now, it could easily see UTEP and Rice leave to go west to the MWC, which I expect to happen. But even so you would have this setup: SBCUSA West NMSU, UTSA, Texas State, UNT, Arkansas State, La Tech, ULL, ULM, USM, UAB and South Alabama SBCUSA East MUTS, WKU, FIU, FAU, Ga State, Ga Southern, Troy , Marshall, Appy State, ODU, and Charlotte Since scheduling is so hard for these schools, they will play 10 inter-division games, plus two OOC games--which will really help this when the P5s split away and we cannot play them anymore for a bodybag game to pay for our non-revenue sports. The winners of each division play for the SBCUSA Championship. If anyone leaves to go to the AAC or MWC, you just realign the divisions to continue to be geographic.

None of this should be surprising or even disappointing. Littrell is digging us out of hole tha tis miles deep. We aren't down here by luck. Our program was the worst in the country last year, and its not like we have enjoyed anything but bad to incredibly awful football for all of the last 11 years, sans 2009. Go back to 1995, when we went up to Division 1 football, when recruits weren't even a glint in their parents' eyes, all their parents and coaches have seen is a program that doesn't know how to compete at this level or, even worse, doesn't want to compete at this level, but knows that we can get funding from other schools by playing at this level. We are 84-166 since 1995, a .336 winning percentage. Against FCS schools, we are 6-2 in that timeframe, not including provisional teams like Troy, WKU, and USA. Against actual FBS programs, we are winning about 31% of our games...covering 21 years. 4 winning seasons, 17 losing seasons. Losing seasons of 8 or more games in that span: 13. To think that Seth Littrell, within a month of being on the job here in Texas, recruiting to a school with a horrid track record for results and support in football, as well as being new to the state since he is coming here from UNC, was going to raise the level of recruiting to anything above the UTSA's and Texas State's of the world is just dreaming. And I only list those schools because they had coaches leave late in the recruiting season, otherwise they wouldn't even be in this discussion. Littrell has one selling point--playing time in a wide-open offense. That's it. Stadium and facilities are very nice, but so are most of our peers now. Offense we run is basically the same as what every other modern football program runs, thankfully. Academics are good here, but so are they at a lot of other colleges we compete against. So that leaves the playing time--and every recruit needs to hear Littrell and company tell them that playing time can be had the moment you walk on campus...its not like the current roster even showed anyone that they deserve to start. You cannot go 1-11, suffer the most humiliating loss in modern college football history by quitting on the school on Homecoming against a FCS school, and expect to get to be given a starting job. The real world doesn't work like that--and every recruit, their parents and their coaches, should all hear that.

The non-power schools in the state of Texas ought to have a showcase that involved UNT, UTEP, Rice, UTSA, UTA, SFA, SHSU, Lamar, Texas A&M-CC and Texas State. Because there are 4 CUSA schools and 5 Southland schools and 1 SBC school, you could always have them face off without running into a conference foe playing. I'd revolve the venues to each section of the state in smaller cities that would come out and support this, places like Midland/Odessa in the west, Wichita Falls in the north, Tyler/Longview in the east, and a place like Galveston in the south. I'd do it in December, when the students are gone, when none of these school see anyone at their games of major note. It would be a five game extravaganza and it would pretty fun. The Power schools will never participate, but you could get 10 teams in Texas that are mid-majors to help each other on a lot of fronts.

I always thought his son would have been a solid player at UNT if he would have ever made his way here after choosing UCLA. I always wondered if Ronnie Morgan felt that UNT wouldn't maximize his potential for his son.

This has no chance because SMU and TCU don't want to do it. Its that simple.

In my entire history of being on gmg.com, I have ignored three posters: GL2Greatness/CheckFacts, MeanGreener/RyanMunthe, and Skiver/Andrew. Notice that each of them have had multiple usernames because the original ones got banned or ignored by so many? Remember that when you are arguing anything with Andrew. CheckFacts/GL2Greatness hated UNT for whatever reason. MeanGreener/RyanMunthe have anger issues, But this combo poster known as Skiver/Andrew is a different animal altogether, one who thinks his playing days at the PEB and in HS make him legit to talk down to posters and beg them to come play him in a scrimmage that is supposed to be a fun fundraiser. He has taken the stance that supporting Tony Benford as a decent head coach at UNT, when Super Pit attendance has dropped by over half in the last 4 years, as have the wins, is a way to show how much smarter he is than other posters. That's a very "special" mindset, indeed... Remember the old adage about arguing with fools...

There's just no way, not in today's college basketball. Nobody coaches in their contract year anymore. it would be so perfectly RV to somehow have Benford do that, though. He is dying to have a coach to extend, just to show the few thousand that still care that he made a hire worth an extension, plus he gets an extension himself if that occurs, IIRC.

Benford is Dead Man Cosching right now. The players know it. It's just a matter of when RV pulls the plug. I've guessed late January/early February for quite a while. I do think Rob Evans will coach as an interim to finish the season when it goes down. And then we get to find out who the next RV hire for a revenue sport will be...

That day should be in roughly 10 years...

Young BG, you are starting to understand...we told you that you will eventually see how things work here. All of us were just like you at one time in our lives, full of Mean Green belief and wanting to be included at parties full of Longhorns, Aggies, Sooners, Bears, Horned Frogs, Hogs, etc...to talk sports without getting laughed out of the house. We knew that one day we could become every bit as good as them, all it would take was the university committing to making us a winner. For me, it was basically 1990-2013. But 2014's regression in football, combined with the continued accepted ineptitude of Benford, made me realize that my roommates in college and our college buddies who long ago abandoned UNT Sports were the ones who were right about us not giving a damn about sports. My roommate was prone to say, "Why would I care about our teams when the administration doesn't care." I scoffed at that thought, thinking he just didn't want to give us his support because we were a loser. But it was in 2014, when a Texas HS Coach told me that his kids didn't want to go to UNT because of the fact that it was seen as a place that didn't care about winning at football, it made me finally realize what I was connected to all of these years and how wrong I was for believing otherwise. The light literally came on and I knew that expecting us to ever care about winning was fruitless. On a good note, this season showed that the UNT 17 have made it possible to not have to accept being totally embarrassed anymore, by ponying up the funds to fire McCarney on the spot after suffering the worst loss in modern college football history. That was the best athletic administrative decision that UNT has ever done in my lifetime of following them, which is really sad, but also hopeful, too.

"And if you don't kiss up to them, like I do, you'll get fired if you can't turn things around...that's why the last guy got canned"...RV to SL

Most of us like it when we hear about an alum that gets a promotion or a better job...kinda like when we read about an officer getting promoted...

I was listening to the College Sports Channel on SiriusXM the other day. It was a talk about college basketball--not college football--between Mark Packer and Tom Brennan, who was the former coach for many years at Vermont, obviously not a Power school in a power league. Almost immediately, as they talked about the greatness of March Madness, they both quickly began talking about the Power conferences pulling away soon--in everything. And they both agreed it should be done because of the unbelievable difference in revenue between the Power Conferences and the others. And that the NCAA Tournament, College World Series, and Frozen Four, as well as the current College Football Playoff will get condensed to their group. They have the fanbases, the media clout, and the legislative clout, all while holding the NCAA by the short hairs, since that organization makes its money on the NCAA Tournament mostly. All I want for us--we gave up any chance of being included in that game in 1982--is that we continue to field a football team. Don't UTA it and give up completely--Apogee probably keeps this from happening anytime soon. I still want to watch us play against teams we should be more on par with than when we went down to the Southland Conference, playing teams like SFA, SHSU, and McNeese State. As long as we are playing something competitively that is similar to who we play now in CUSA, I'll still follow the team.

You can't say that plan isn't perfectly effective for what the UNT BOR and administration demand...it all goes back to why RV is perfect to them. He stayed in budget with what they asked when we didn't have the UNT 17. Now that we do, RV will never have us out of budget from the university, meaning he has a job here until he doesn't want one. He does what they demand---stay in budget so we can show what a "value" we are, without so much as one word publicly that is a complaint about the situation. They are never going to rock the boat by firing a guy that does the job perfectly in their eyes. Look at Smatresk--he either follows the BOR's view perfectly on this or he has been ordered to follow the BOR's view on this. And that's why RV is still here to oversee Littrell as the football coach and whoever gets hired to replace Bumford as the mens basketball coach.

There are many problems with the ratings game--those sites want subscriptions for their views. Hence, the most egregious example being UT, these outlets rank these recruits based on the school recruiting them. With UT, for example, kids were getting 4 and 5 star ratings because Mack Brown was recruiting them and the guys doing the ratings just happen to be the ones making money off of subscribers to their newsletters (see Geoff Ketchum). On the same token, when a player chose A&M, Baylor, or TCU over UT, they often got downgraded. In the end, when these classes turned out to be more or less busts, Mack Brown took the blame for coddling them (which was true) and fell on the sword eventually. But nobody ever asked Bobby Burton or Geoff Ketchum why they ranked Tyrone Swoopes as the #1 QB in Texas even though he played 2A ball on a bad team. Instead, he got the "Next Vince Young" comparisons. Its my opinion that these rankings were inflated because UT fans buy subscriptions on a monthly basis to hear how things are going in their program. People like good news, so that is what these guys give them. A&M has their guy, Billy Liucci, who does the same thing, too. Sumlin is already seeing the effects of highly-rated talent not being able to be meshed into a cohesive team, meaning his job is probably on the line in the next year if things don't get better in Aggieland. As for us, the star ratings are what they are. As was mentioned, offers tell you a lot about who you are getting at a G5 level. When you have a brand new coach taking over the worst program in the country from the previous season, who has never been a head coach before, nor does he have any name recognition in Texas, the fact that having one winning season in the last 11 all combines to the reality that Littrell's first class is just going to be full of a lot of P5 transfers, low G5-offer high school recruits, and a few recruits that you beat out because of our location. There's a reason we will be near the bottom in these rankings at the end of the 2016 Recruiting Season--other than playing time, we have very little else to offer that other G5s in our region cannot also offer. Our saving grace, at this point, is that UTSA and Texas State are in even more transition than we are, and UTEP isn't someone we usually battle a lot for recruits, like we do for the other CUSA West schools and the Western AAC and SBC schools. Its gonna take time here, folks. Southern Miss didn't turn it around in a couple of years. SMU hasn't, either. When you hit rock bottom (hopefully, Portland State represents that point), its usually takes a few years just to get back to competitiveness. It took USM 4 seasons to go from CUSA Champs to CUSA West Champs, winning all of 4 games in between. SMU went from a 4-year bowl run to winning a total of three games in the last two seasons. Next year, realistically getting to 4 or 5 wins would show solid improvement under Morris. These are the two G5 programs we are basically following. USM made their way back up. SMU hasn't, but its early. Time will tell if Littrell can do something here that would grab the attention of the college football world. And make no mistake about it, just as Monken at USM will see, P5s are going to be salivating at hiring a young coach who has turned around an awful situation at a G5. Morris, if he can continue to improve SMU, will be the same. That's why I expect Littrell's time here to be no more than 3-4 years--its an either/or deal...he either gets hired away for a bigger job or he gets fired for not making this thing get better. And if it doesn't get better, at all, as in the team doesn't win more than 3 games in any season in the next three, the UNT 17 have already shown that they will pay up to rectify the situation, instead of waiting on the university to deem it affordable. That's quite a safety net we finally have here, as fans, that never existed before at UNT.

Its almost as if the AD here is following a BOR command on staying in budget as his top priority...and make no mistake about it, this is what RV does best--and he does without ever complaining in public. Just a hard worker that always keeps his head down... This is why we have the #UNTADforlife posts...RV is beloved by the BOR, especially now that he has 17 donors paying for his mistakes and not costing the university any money. We continue to own the Best Values Rankings...stupid UH brags about being in the top 10 in football and idiotic SMU brags about being in the top 10 in mens hoops--don't they know how much that COSTS??

Larry Brown may get you into trouble, but the $$$ you make from him being your coach is pretty strong. Hell, SMU still benefits from the Death Penalty by SWC media that think it was somehow "cool and so Dallas" that they cheated bigtime, always championing you guys to be included in the Power Leagues. In college sports, cheating pays--it always has. SMU's only problem is that they are a small private school with a recognizable name for the NCAA to hammer down upon, instead of hitting UNC or Kentucky hard for their past indiscretions.

In a weird way, I could also see these leagues liking KU MORE because their football team is so bad. It brings in a team that won't be challenging the status quo any time soon, kind of like Colorado to the Pac 12 or Rutgers to the B1G, but they bring in a good TV market, excellent revenue sport in basketball, and a very solid academic profile. KU has friends in the Pac-12 that would love to support them in Colorado, friends in the B1G in Nebraska to support them, and a sport that would attract friends in the ACC. I still believe that KU will be in the B1G within 8 years, probably with OU. I used to think the Pac would get the Texoma Four, but I think OU, would love to have the Nebraska game back, plus keep Kansas as a travel partner, and keep UT as an OOC rivalry, as well as OSU, too. Ironically, I could see OSU getting into the SEC if this happens, as well as KSU. Texas going independent in football just seems too logical at this point, since the LHN is in full gear until 2031 for $15 million a year. They could play Baylor, Tech, TCU, and OU still, as well as any of the other Big XII schools that want to still play them, plus games with fellow independents ND and BYU, and other Power conference teams, too. If that occurred, the remnants of the Big XII would be Tech, BU, TCU, ISU, and WVU. Almost overnight, UConn, Cincy, Memphis, Houston, USF, UCF, and Tulane would be Big XII members, which would at this point just be a newer version of the AAC, a non-power league with former P5 teams in it. SMU would get blocked by TCU, Baylor, and Tech. The AAC would probably respond by adding one F_U, MUTS, Rice, UMass, Marshall, USM, and La Tech to replace those that left. We would get blocked by SMU. CUSA would then add ULL, Arkansas State, Georgia Southern, and Georgia State to get to 12 members again. UTSA blocks Texas State. UTEP blocks NMSU. UAB blocks USA and Troy. Ahhh, the wonderful world of keeping your place on the totem pole of college athletics...

Kansas has three things that work for them for any of the other conferences--they are a basketball power, they have a nice market that loves college sports (KC), and they are a member of the prestigious AAU academic research community. The B1G is made up of all AAU members, except Nebraska, which was an AAU school when they moved over originally, but got dropped out. KU would also give the other conferences a CST partner, which would help the B1G, Pac, and ACC--I'm assuming that Mizzou will block KU from ever getting any SEC invite.

I think the guy is dead-on about the situation here that Littrell has inherited. Just getting a class together right now is tough.

2016 Recruiting was a lost cause before Littrell got hired. The program is the worst in America right now and has absolutely no sway at all with TX HS Coaches or recruits. This is where a name coach or a current assistant in Texas (like Meacham) probably helps you out more immediately in recruiting, but may not pay out over the long term. Littrell is an unknown to these folks, right now. But he's just working to keep it from being the worst in the country--UTSA and Texas State have both certainly helped us on that front. Recruiting for 2017 is where we have to hope that Littrell and his staff can win some battles. And that they get better in 2018--and beyond. As I have said before, Littrell has a pass for on-field results in 2016. But its going to be his battles off the field in recruiting and in cleaning up the locker room that are the true tests of his first year. 2017 and beyond is when you want to see USM-like improvement. If we see a turnaround similar to USM's by the end of 2018, LIttrell is coaching somewhere else above us on the college football totem pole. If he hasn't turned us around to being bowl eligible by 2019, he will be done coaching here, unless he just cannot get us out of this whirlpool of losing that Mac left us in, similar to the Dickey and Dodge years. Then, its very possible that the UNT 17 buys out his contract--that is what is probably the most promising thing we have seen in terms of athletics at UNT in the last 5 years--we will buy out a contract with more than a year left on it now, instead of waiting until the university deems it "affordable". Littrell is here for 3 or 4 years, IMO. Either to leave for richer trails or to go back to play calling at another university as an assistant coach. Its just hard for me to see anything other than that for a young head coach in his first FBS gig.

Fair enough... And I totally forgot about the CUSA Conference Championship Game--I wonder why... You got me, MGT--seriously, you got the best of me on this one...

Wow--condescend much? If CUSA schools cannot draw people to games after Thanksgiving, it would seem that, again, they could go to their TV partners--with some fairly telling data--and show them that this is a weekend we will take a bye. For the second part, where you were not being condescending, everything you hit on would be very appropriate to do as the AD.