untjim1995

Here's my speculation: Scott Sidway is very smart...as in he is using this as his way to get a new job with an actual newspaper. Burning bridges with RV and the BOR when you are about to get a new job...its actually genius.

I hope that UNTLifer now understands what we trying to post about yesterday, regarding the UNT 17. RV ain't going anywhere, anytime soon. The $$$$ that will leave is too much for the BOR to risk. The RV 17 is what I'm gonna now refer to them as going forward...awesome program you guys have built!!

This is where we hit yet another new low point... At his rate, we should be near the Earth's core in about a year or two.

The problem here is that these coaches know what they face here. A P5 coordinator looks at their current job and thinks if they can get a raise or another season of success, there are better pay days ahead for them at their current schools or at another job. We are raising our pay, apparently, but that's a number that is below a lot of a schools not in the MAC, CUSA, or SBC. That makes it hard when schools like UH will pay their coach $3 million a year.

So if Littrell and Meacham both get away, does that leave Bruce Chambers as the front runner at that point, based on the list that was posted a few days back?

If Meacham gets a huge raise from TCU, his family doesn't have to move, he keeps his same job, with the perks of recruiting to a rising P5 program, it might not be that RV couldn't sell him on this. It could be that TCU just made the situation much more comfortable for him, in a situation he has obviously thrived. The next three years at TCU should be a lot easier to coach in than it will be here in Denton digging out of this avalanche.

I wish that was realistic, but I just don't think it is with our current situation. Maybe before, with the proper leadership, it could've been, but not now. Hopefully, those UNT 17 donors will continue to pony up and pay the buyouts when the next RV hires flame out again...but that hits on the bigger problem, doesn't it?

yep--just gotta find the right leadership....should be simple, with our illustrious history.

It's too bad that UH won't be able to be a p5 school. Just no need for that market to get gobbled up by the Big Xii or SEC. Great program, great facility now, and great tradition--they'll challenge to be the best G5 program when they have a great coach like they do now.

I didn't know that Lee Jackson was in a cartoon overlooking the university's athletic corpse...

See my answer above...they have made it clear that RV is their guy. It doesn't matter what you or I do as donors now or what we would do IF we were big donors. All that matters at UNT is that 17 people have made it clear to the BOR that RV is not to be removed. Smatresk, whether he cares or not about RV as President, isn't gonna be able to make a change there. So he gets to pick another football coach and another basketball coach to hire as replacements for his failed hires that will have gotten fired in the last 12 months (includes womens hoops). Nowhere else would this be acceptable with one of the worst attendance figures for your main money sport in the 15th year of your tenure...nowhere but North F'ing Texas.

I want to see that coach who looks at the previous 21 years of suck around here and decides, "Yeah, I'll go there for a three-year contract." If you find that coach, I'd be the first to tell him that he was a colossal dumbass for accepting that deal. Those other P5 programs you mentioned don't have the worst program in America right now. They are giving coordinators a shot because they know the current players and are willing to see if they can keep it going. If not, they'll buy them out on the spot. At a school like ours, that basically offers football because they feel like they have to (like we are an ISD), with the worst AD in the country, whoever comes here is going to need 3 years just to try and build us up to something NEAR .500 because of how far down we are right now. Guaranteeing that coach 5 years of salary, knowing that there are folks out there who have proven they will buyout a contract over $2 million dollars when necessary, gives me pause for thinking its acceptable. Think of it in these terms, FFR. Would you come here to coach, with RV as your boss, with a 3-year contract, at a place that is 65-118 under said AD's "leadership and vision"? Especially when almost every other G5 job offers 5 years? Agents aren't stupid--they know that their job is to get the best deal for their client. And any of the guys we are talking about can get solid money at a top level P5 job as a coordinator at these large public schools until a job opens up that will give them the terms they want--and none of them are the worst program in America right now. Hell, Cumbie going to UT would get paid damn near what Meacham will probably make here as the HC. Offer what can be bought out--and the UNT 17 have already proven they will do just that. Surely they wouldn't start being hypocritical NOW about losing in a revenue sport that they are funding and basically controlling with RV as their puppet?

The UNT 17 moniker came directly from Flyonthewall, who said that there weren't a dozen big donors running things, it was 17, to be exact. You can start there...but it will be a colossal waste of your time. They like the access to the program that RV gives them. They have convinced themselves that being close to RV is exactly same thing as their UT, A&M, Tech, Baylor, TCU, and SMU buddies that either brag about knowing their ADs personally. Fly, in particular, said that this started for him when he and his wife decided they were tired of being embarrassed in their circle of friends when college athletics got brought up, so he decided to buy his place within the ADs inner circle to help influence the direction of the program. HE COMPLETELY BUYS INTO RV"S VISION!!! So do the others, who don't have any interest in admitting they got swindled on their investment, nor do they want to mingle with the 99% of the fanbase that contribute under them. RV cares ONLY about these guys--they buy him time because they buy out his dumbass hires, which keeps the BOR happy because the university doesn't have to buy the contracts out and it keep us in budget. You don't get to be a Great Value by staying out of budget...

Oh, don't get me wrong. I agree with you completely that we will still have a football team, one that will be playing at a G5 level for years to come. My question is at what point do you look at our situation and just realize that it isn't one we can succeed at? 21 seasons, 4 coaches, 3 conferences, 2 stadiums, and pathetically amazing, just 2 ADs have all added up to 4 winning seasons, 17 losing season, 84 wins and 166 losses in football alone, a .336 clip. That's damn good if you're a baseball hitter, otherwise it just plain sucks something huge if you're anything else. I guess the reality is that UNT has the chance to show us that this can get turned around, that 2013-type seasons can occur here again, without being an outlier to the other 9 seasons around it. I personally don't believe it can happen, though, with RV as the AD. Maybe the BOR replaces him with somebody totally worse--its UNT, we can always do worse--but the losing culture and fan apathy is the worst its been in 20 years for our revenue sports. When one guy is the constant over that time in leading the athletic department, that goes much higher than just the AD. It runs straight up to the Chancellor and BOR and the culture of the students and faculty. And its my opinion that athletic apathy won't change here unless the BOR decides to do something about it, which literally means putting their jobs at jeopardy with a community that has made it overwhelmingly clear that they don't care about or want athletics at UNT to be a bigger deal than it is right now.

I don't care how long it is--3 years, 5 years, or 7 years...just buy the damn thing out like you just did with McCarney when it becomes obvious that the guy isn't going to turn things around. I'll say something great about the UNT 17--they proved that they won't let buyouts get in the way anymore, like we always did before when we only had the university funding things. So, from that point, going forward, they have made it clear that there won't be anymore Bumfords or Todd Dodges drawing checks for an extra year or two beyond when they should. Because otherwise, it would just look rather hypocritical to not accept Mac's failure, while continuing to accept the failures of coaches like we have endured for most of the last 20 years. If you cannot buy it out, don't offer it...

At some point, don't you have to wonder if maybe this level of athletics just isn't the place for us? One good season in football in the last 11 years. 4 winning seasons in 21 years. Today, we are the worst FBS team in America and have almost the lowest average in attendance for FBS schools. Texas State got more people to a game than we did, for crying out loud!! They play SBC nobodies and they drew better than we did. If you won't change the person in charge of that program for the last 15 years, where we have sucked for most of them, how can you expect anything to be different at this level? And for those that think I'm advocating a drop down in levels, I'm not at all--I'm just questioning if we can truly turn this around here for more than a year, particularly with the culture that allows RV to stay as the AD. I can honestly say that I don't think its possible with the current leadership and attitude of the personnel in charge at the BOR, administration, AD, and his circle of BMDs. I want us to be a great football program, just like everyone else here does, but at some point, don't you have to look at the fact that we have been just about awful since we moved up to FBS in 1995? We have two wins over Texas Tech, a win over Baylor, a win over Cincy, a win over UNLV, and a win over Rice when they won CUSA in 2013. Sure, we had some other solid wins--two over Ball State, a couple over SMU, and a win over Tulsa--in those 2 decades, but we have also suffered the worst loss in modern college football history against Portland State, 66-7. Our attendance is horrible, our record is terrible, and our fundraising is pathetic--and that is sadly compared to SBCUSA schools now. And with all of that to look at and absorb, the leaders around here look at it and clearly say, "RV, great job, buddy!!"

And Lamar!!

Silver, what say you about this glorious part of our history?

Craig Helwig sucked as an AD, but he runs loops around RV when it came to getting one decent OOC game at Fouts, usually. We opened seasons in Denton at Fouts, in front of 19K or more (which was HUGE by Fouts standards back then), for games against UNLV, Baylor, and TCU, not to mention Texas Tech at Texas Stadium twice. Compare that with paying for season tickets at Apogee to watch Portland State, Nicholls State, Texas Southern, and Bethune Cookman.

Will he allow his interim OC to fight a fan in the stands at halftime of their bowl game without getting a wrist-slap?

$$$$

Amber Alerts might be necessary to find some of our oldtimers again...last seen, walking out of Apogee/Super Pit, muttering to themselves, while a large, mustachioed man was walking behind them, screaming about a "vision"...If seen, call the UNT 17 immediately-- so that they can get their buddy some legal representation.

Why not just wear non-logo gear? If I go to a UT game or an A&M game with my buddies, I just wear a neutral color shirt. I don't care who it is, when a fan wears the apparel of a team not playing, it looks very, very strange...I'm always amazed when I watch the Texas-OU game on TV every year and see the random Aggie Fan with his 12th man jersey on. The fan may think it makes him look extremely loyal to his school, but in reality, to the rest of the world, it screams many bad things I don't wish to post on this website...

So, since we averaged over 13k in attendance at a school with three times that in student enrollment alone, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of alumni, as well as the millions in the DFW area, when does the anti-stadium crowd begin ranting about how much of a waste it was to spend $78 million dollars on a stadium that is paid for on the students' backs? They can easily argue that Fouts handled our crowds and opponents with plenty of room to spare. Apogee is a god-send, no doubt. But I've always wondered how the 98% of the UNT Family that doesn't care about our football team or absolutely loathes it don't bitch and moan to the highest points in Denton about what a colossal waste of money this was in the face of the ineptness we have shown. What would be deliciously ironic is if they bitched so much that it led to the firing of the chancellor and the AD who were in charge when it got passed, two people who have allowed our program to fall apart.

Meacham would be a solid pick. Jinks and Littrell have more upside and downside, IMO, than Meacham, at this point. Chambers shouldn't even be mentioned with the other three--but the schadenfreude that the CUSA West foes would have if RV hired him would be off the charts. There's a reason that the UTSA poster on here suggested that our win over UTSA this season might be worth it for them, in the end, since it means that RV gets to stay. Its never a good thing whan a rival openly asks that you keep your AD or head coach during dismal seasons...