untjim1995

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.

From what I know, UH and North Texas (State) were not all that far apart in the mid-70s, especially after we shut them under Fry. But UH got into the SWC Club and won the conference very quickly, as well as becoming a basketball force, gaining complete backing from the entire SWC. North Texas got blocked from the club--and then basically gave up for the next 20 years. UH still has major donors from those SWC days. We are still missing hundreds of thousands of potential donors because of what we allowed to happen athletics-wise after Fry (finally) left for greener pastures in Iowa. We literally did everything wrong from 1979 until 1995, from a football standpoint. And even when we moved back up, we did it in the cheapest possible way for another 15 years. When UH is bad, they still get a ton of recruits from that area of the state, both in Houston and around there. IOW, they have talent and they have built in-roads with the high school coaches around there. When they are good, they get the City of Houston's attention more than usual. We have to get our recruiting up to a level that is somewhat like this and hope that Denton will change its views toward our football program to hopefully follow their path. UH is way ahead of the other G5 schools in our region right now--from what they pay, how they get covered and supported, who they get to play against in Houston, and how they are perceived by recruits.

I'm not embarrassed, personally, to be an alum of UNT. Its a very solid school, especially for business. My degree has opened up many doors for my career here in the DFW Metroplex. But its embarrassing to be a fan of our sports teams right now. If you aren't embarrassed at what we have rolled out in football in the last 12 years, I'm not sure what to say. Same goes for Benford-ball at the Super Pit. I find it more than embarrassing when my clients, friends, and neighbors from other regional schools constantly laugh at me when I wear my Mean Green gear. As an aside, my personal favorite has been the "Shouldn't there be a piano on that shirt instead of a football?"--really awesome to hear that from my TCU neighbor...its not even the jokes from my SEC/Big XII pals that kill me (it's apples vs oranges and they know it), its getting laughed at by people who are grads of the following well-known football giants: Arkansas State, UTEP, Louisiana Tech, SMU, Rice, Houston, and, yes, Sam Houston State. And when the SHSU fan said we would have killed you guys this year if we played, all I can say is "Yep, no doubt". Throw in the SMU crowd that suddenly LOVES basketball again--while we are at a Trilli-esque level of suck, it just adds mayo to the turd sandwich we are given under RV's "visionary" leadership. I find that embarrassing.

We are where USM was three years ago and where SMU was before last year. USM went winless, SMU won one game, then both hired offensive-minded head coaches, saw improvement in play in the next season and on the recruiting front, even though they lost a lot (USM won 1 game in 2013, SMU won 2 games last year only because they played us in OOC). USM followed that one win season up with a few more wins in 2014 and then won the CUSA Western Division in 2015 with solid QB play and senior leadership. SMU appears to be ready to make another step forward in their quest for being relevant again, but probably aren't going to get back to winning any division championship this upcoming season. This is where we are as a program. The bright side is that we have two schools on our schedule every year in the G5 that we can hopefully follow in improving our team. The dark side is that we are buried so far down right now, that it may take even longer to get back up to being bowl eligible. The biggest question for 2016 will be if Littrell can make any headway with Texas HS coaches and recruits--if he can, 2017 and 2018 will be bright. If not, we probably aren't going to re-visit .500 anytime soon.

They don't know about us, either. See Chip Kelly's "North Texas State Fightin' Armadillos" comments earlier this year.

Versus them taking their toys and leaving? Look, its gonna happen. Its just a matter of when and how. I believe that the NCAA will continue to bow down to these schools so they won't leave. The NCAA gets its money from the Basketball Tournaments to fund its existence. If it means giving in to 66 schools to stay in existence, as is, then they will do it. The P5s own the legislatures, the media, the networks, and the fanbases. They aren't giving that up, nor is anyone taking it from them. I just think the G5s and the FCS schools are letting them do what they do so they can continue to fund their athletic departments off of the bodybag games in football and basketball. They know that the gravy train will eventually dry up and that will change the ways these schools operate, including us. Nobody pays attention to schools below the P5 except for our fanbases--a study from a few years ago showed that over 95% of college football media coverage went to the P5s. Setting up a more competitive situation for the G5s to create for themselves should be the ultimate goal. Setting up a playoff system like FCS would be a great start, IMO. Playing those games during December while the P5s aren't playing is a great way to get you the media coverage you don't ever get otherwise, not to mention that you avoid the 50 point, million-dollar losses that are total waste of times, as are the resulting buying of games at home against FCS teams for the G5s.

No question about us being awful--that's why UTEP and UTSA on the road are probably the only FBS teams we can compete with next year. Right now, in CUSA, USM, La Tech, Rice, Marshall, WKU, and MUTS are all waaaayyyyyy better than us right now. UTEP is just slightly better, but we play them in El Paso next year. UTSA and us are basically equal, but we play them down there. SMU is a lot like UTEP, to me--slightly better than us and UTEP, but we get them at home. Army is a lot like UTSA and us, but we play them on the road. We are, obviously, not going to beat Florida, but we should beat FCS Bethune-Cookman. We have five games we can look at as winning or competing in--Bethune-Cookman, SMU, @ Army, @ UTEP, and @ UTSA. If we know we should beat Bethune Cookman, that leaves 4 games that we can hope to win, but three are on the road. That's why I see 2-10 as very likely, 3-9 as the ceiling.

This is pretty much spot-on. We will look better on offense, if only because we won't be running something that Amos Alonzo Stagg would have considered boring. Also, the Carthage WRs and Wilson at RB give you something on offense to complement the QB from Alabama. But the schedule is just brutal for us right now. And the defense is till really little and slow. If we win more than 3 games, it will be a great testament to Seth Littrell's coaching ability, which none of us know how that will go since this is his first head coaching gig. Vito is right--2017 is where you start looking at getting back toward bowl eligibility, not this year.

Really? Boise State has won three BCS games against OU, TCU, and Arizona last year. They moved up FBS in 1995 and their run really started in 1999 and hasn't slowed up too much. Several top 10 finishes, as well as top 25 rankings. Baylor has been to two and got punked by UCF in one and then choked massively last year in the Cotton Bowl in their own backyard against Michigan State. Before Briles got things rolling there in 2010, Baylor was a Big XII pushover. A great year for them from 1996-2010 was to win 4 games. Almost everyone across the college football landscape believes Boise State is a much bigger name program than Baylor.

KU is in the Big 12 because of hoops being huge there, plus its got the academic AAU prestige on its side, as well as bringing in the KC market. UH isn't bringing any of that to the Big XII--the Houston market is already full of Longhorns, Red Raiders, Bears, Sooners, etc...it wouldn't add one penny to the conference to duplicate a market they already are heavily involved in. UH has two P5 chances---the first one is very, very remote--the ACC added them to get to 16 basketball teams. Of course, they could also easily add UConn or Cincinnati to do the same thing and have closer travel for everyone else in the league. The other is the Pac-12--they get tired of waiting on the GOR to expire for the Big XII schools and decide to add UH to get into the Texas market without having to deal with UT and its LHN mess. They could add UNLV and UH and basically have 14 schools like the other 3 big Power conferences have, without taking away from the Big XII. Again, this is very remote. More likely, UH is still in some G5 conference in a few years. Texas wants nothing to do with them being the Big XII, which means Tech, Baylor, and TCU don't either. None of the other schools in the Big XII are going to make Texas mad by going against them, so they aren't getting UH in there. When the Power Conferences finally separate, my guess is that UH will either go independent again so as to claim some kind of quasi-P5 existence in football or they will stay in a G5 league because the costs are easier to manage. It sucks for UH, Boise State, Cincinnati, and other G5s that are certainly more valuable in every way than schools like Washington State, Iowa State, Baylor, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, or Wake Forest, but history and current conference membership trumps this all--at least until the networks and the schools develop a new confederation of football programs.

Clearly, after graduating hundreds of thousands of alumni, as well as currently educating several thousand students, while employing thousands of various employees, while being surrounded by millions of people, most people look at UNT Athletics and have made the decision not to spend a dime or even one second in following UNT Sports...

Its not going to change anytime soon, either. He is too insulated now. I applaud RV for winning the battle--he built up his own protection that has obviously worked. Very few could even attempt to do this, much less accomplish it. At least for myself, I couldn't handle putting up with the ineptness anymore. If UNT's leadership doesn't care about winning, why should I?

Welcome to the big time, TCU!! Player arrests for assaults, drug dealers on the team, and now suspended players before bowl games--you've come along way since you were a nobody in the WAC twenty years ago. But you certainly paid the price to move up the foodchain to the P5 Luxury Locomotive. Now that you are on there, don't be too surprised to see that many of these issues will continue to plague your university--see Baylor, Texas, A&M, etc...

BTW, just for those who aren't putting 2 and 2 together, this is after RV's 15th year at the helm as the AD, as well as during the 4th year of his hire, Tony Benford. There was a time where we were thrilled to be averaging double what we do now, but that took decades to accomplish. And in one, swift 3+ year epic fail, we are right back to the attendance glory days of Vic Trilli as our head coach at games in the Super Pit. And people still wonder why these venues are usually half to 80% empty on gamedays in Denton...

You would kill recruiting by doing this--and that seems to be the only thing Tony Benford is decent at doing, recruiting. We have done this bit here where we let the coach at UNT go into his last year of the contract and have been rewarded with two awful years--Jimmy Gales' last season and Vic Trilli's last season. They couldn't recruit anyone here because of the negative recruiting that other coaches rightfully threw at recruits looking at us and the team basically quit listening to the coaches once the losing got going in earnest. It would be an awful idea to let Benford coach one more day beyond this season, but ESPECIALLY if its going into the last year of the contract without an extension. RV ain't going anywhere anytime soon. The UNT 17 won't allow it so they won't lose access and the BOR likes what he does as an AD because he doesn't rock the boat while keeping the budget in line with what the BOR gives to him each year. He has it made--he will leave here when he wants to leave here, IMO.

You're kidding right? This has to be a bit... Nice job on the troll. but just in case you aren't trolling, the university would actually have to step up and buy out this newest RV debacle hire. If it doesn't, my point about the BOR gets proven for the millionth time. If it does, it's because somebody realizes that for $325k, we get a Super Pit filled to about 20% capacity at best. That's a lot of empty seats that could pay that buyout on its own by making a good hire, something RV has not been able to do with any success in the last decade.

Last time I checked, gmg.com isn't only accessible at Apogee or the Super Pit. Sorry it bothers you that the 75-80% of empty seats around you at UNT games are saying the same thing I am. I know it hurts to be labeled a loser in the days of participation ribbons, but that's all we are under RV. Until he goes away/dies, it's gonna be this way. I've got history on my side on this one.

Forget Chris Beard, hire the guy who had a great track record before him at UALR for 12 years and was let go by a stupid AD--Steve Shields. He has family here in the Metroplex and is currently an assistant at Mizzou. He would coach circles around Bumford...

It would be soooooo North Texas for us to somehow convince ourselves that Tony Benford should coach our team beyond the spring of 2016...BTW, what was the reported attendance last night for this old school Southland Conference matchup in Denton?

Morris will be a talent bump over what we have now. At best, we have one guy, Damarcus Smith, who MIGHT be a capable backup at a G5 program...everyone else is FCS or lower material, but came here because we were their best/only FBS option (see McNulty, Greer, Chumley, D.Smith, etc...) Can Morris improve our team? Absolutely. But that improvement may mean we win 2 or 3 games instead of 1 like we just did. The collective talent here is woefully low and the schedule we play is just brutal for where we are currently sitting. But getting a guy like Morris here will buy Littrell recruiting time to get a HS QB here that can be coached into something way above what else is currently here. 2016 is all about recruiting, installing a new system, and finding out if you have buy-in from the guys in the locker room. Wins and losses shouldn't even come close to mattering to you, as a fan, for this upcoming year. Even if we go 1-11, it is still about digging out of the massive sinkhole that Mac has left us in. 2017 is when you look at winning 4 games or more, than 2018 is where you aim for bowl eligibility and possible CUSA West Division contention.

This. He will start here, day 1, barring any injury. No more FCS or D-2 QBs starting here anymore. With Morris and Damarcus Smith as a backup, we should be in the best shape at QB we have been in since the Dodge days. Great pickup, Seth Littrell....

Higher star ratings are for the top P% programs--I pay no attention to their inflated classes that are used for subscriptions to follow said P5 giant by blowing smoke up their collective asses. That said, one thing I do thing matters in recruiting rankings, in a very big way, though, is when collectively, your class(es) are low ranked against your peers. That's usually a sure sign that you are about to suck badly. And that is what we have endured, basically, under McCarney. I'm fairly certain that the Carthage WRs we have our very solid players who could probably play at any P5 school in the country--but collectively, the class they came in with was ranked dead-ass last for a reason by Rivals, when comparing it against other G5 teams. Those low-rated classes in 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011 combined to get us here, along with poor coaching schemes and an offensive gameplan that was ancient. Now, maybe that 2015 class that finished ahead of about 30 other G5 programs will be the one that Littrell leads up to a winning season in a few seasons, like Mac did with Dodge's 2009 and 2010 classes in our 2013 HoD Bowl Championship season. I don't expect anything from this upcoming class--its almost impossible to see him building up enough talent in such a short amount of time to be decently ranked, as a class, against our G5 peers. But if he can find a few pieces that are developable and can add that to classes in 2017 and beyond that are more talented than anything we have seen around here in five years, he's going to have something cooking by 2018 and 2019. And even if he leaves or gets fired, if he can duplicate recruiting classes like Dodge did, his successor will be light years ahead of where his predecessor put him today. We thought Dickey left Dodge a talent-poor roster--those leftovers for Dodge look like a diamond compared to what McCarney has left Littrell. And its all a moot point, for sure, if he cannot get a decent QB in here soon.

And if we go 3-9 or worse then, are you gonna be here casting it in a positive light, since its triple the win total of the program now? If you do, you'll have plenty of company around here. And that's fine--if that helps you want to attend games and help keep the status quo, it really doesn't matter to a lot of us who have had it with our school's acceptance of losing in revenue sports. We aren't the ones wasting dollars or time anymore--and by the looks of the attendance figures in box scores at Apogee and the Super Pit since November, it appears that there are A LOT more of folks that are taking our view than yours. But again, that's fine. I hope that you have a good time when you go to the games--it was a lot of fun to go and watch our solid basketball team play at the Pit or to see a football team that could tackle and move the ball downfield during non-mopup time. For your sake, I hope that you get some moments like that again soon. And when RV retires/dies, maybe I'll get to come back and enjoy the same good teams again...but, make no doubt about it, many of us won't step foot near either of the venues that host the Mean Green's revenue teams until he is gone. Years of mostly putrid results on the football field and basketball court by RV hires in each sport and the bigger issue of accepted losing by the BOR to the point of RV having a lifetime job have combined to reach a point that many folks cannot in good conscience support this anymore. There are other areas within the university to support--and frankly, they are way more celebrated and supported by the UNT Family than athletics has ever been.

I completely agree on your views on high school coaches having big egos and playing a very important role in their players' lives. So my question is this: how long does it take to change our school's perception with these coaches and the players and their families? In the last 11 years, these people have seen our school post 1 winning season, which covers 4 head coaches, not including Chico. In those eleven years, they have seen us post exactly one other year where we won as many as 5 games in one season. The other nine seasons in that 11-year stretch include two 4-win teams, two 3-win teams, three 2-win teams, and two 1-win teams. These people we are recruiting aren't steering players here because they don't believe in our commitment to becoming a winner--their egos want their kids to go somewhere else that isn't a perpetual loser. The younger coaches have seen us suck something fierce for the last 11 years, no matter the coach, the conference, or the stadium. When they look back at since we moved up to FBS in 1995, they have witnessed 4 winning seasons and 17 losing seasons, of which only 3 of them finished with as good as 5 wins in a season. And then there is the 1-aa debacle that older Texas HS coaches remember all to well, while the SWC was king of the state, from 1983-1994. Its my belief that Littrell has major work ahead of him on the recruiting trail. He does offer playing time at a FBS university in a Metro area and a youthful energy, but he has never dealt with going into high schools and dealing with coaches that think his program is not where they want their kids to go or families that have no interest in North Texas. If he can overcome those realities by finding diamonds in the rough and under-recruited kids and develop them into bigger and better football players, that will be very impressive. I've been told that HS coaches liked McCarney and his staff, but they knew without a doubt that their kids didn't want anything to do with playing his plodding offense and that winning at UNT is looked at as very challenging. This is what they told their kids under an experienced college coach who had skins on the wall from previous stops to regale the coaches with. How will they react to a guy who looks the part of a Texas Football Coach and runs a offense that is much more like what they run today, but is extremely green in experience? My guess is that they will eventually warm up to him and his staff, but its gonna take awhile. I think his best bet is to hit the JUCOs hard for infusion of talent at QB and on defense until he can get more HS recruits to look our way. This is what happens when your program reaches the low point of its modern history--you have no talent on the roster and you have to go recruit to get those kids here when nobody has much interest in the program. But he has the advantage of three other Texas schools in very similar situations (Texas State, UTEP, and UTSA) dealing with a lot of the same problems. To me, Littrell's top priority in 2016 needs to be in recruiting wins over those three schools. If he does that, he can get us ahead of all three of them in a fairly significant way really soon, like by the 2017 season. Once that occurs, then he can take aim at kids that are going to Rice and SMU and the other AAC and CUSA schools in the region. Its why I think 2018 will be very telling around here. He will have his players here, a much easier schedule, and have more experience as a head coach. If 2018 goes well, he's probably coaching somewhere else in 2019. If it is an average year (4-6 wins), he's probably got one more year to get things right in 2019. And if 2018 is a disaster (3 wins or less), the UNT 17 will probably buy him out like they just did McCarney.