untjim1995

Beaty is gonna get probably 4 years up there to fix the mess that KU has on its hands. They are the P5 version of what SMU was last year. Both had coaches that had quit on the recruiting front and players that had quit on the coach. A terrible situation that will need LOTS of time. They gave Mangino years to get the thing turned around under him in very similar circumstances at KU and I suspect Beaty will get 4 years to turn things around or get fired. What I think will help Beaty is what helped Mangino--they both have playing time to offer to 2 and 3 star Texas HS kids, while still getting to play often in front of your family down here during the season. And when (if) Kansas State's wizard coach retires (dies), they could probably jump back up in recruiting within the state again, as they did the last time Snyder retired for three years. But with Kansas, the question always goes back to whether the AD and school will give football enough resources and attention without it hurting their basketball program. For most of the last 100 years, that question has been rather easy to answer, to the detriment of their pigskin program. Of course, when you have a basketball team that brings in so much revenue to make up for the football program, as Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, and a handful of other schools do, its not hard to see why they haven't hurt the goose that lays the golden egg. That was one of the greatest fallacies in the first wave of realignment in 2010--that football was ALL that mattered. As with most things, when actual thought goes into the strategic plan of what makes sense for your conference, TV markets, academic status, total success from revenue sports, etc...Its why the B1G learned after taking in Nebraska that Maryland and Rutgers were the next schools that were needed to tap into their locations. Same with the ACC taking Pitt, Syracuse, and Louisville. When the Big XII falls apart in the next 10 years or so, it will be why a school like Kansas, that could have a football team win 10 games in 10 years, will use its location, AAU status, and national hoops program to move to another Power league, while K-State will see what has been a ranked program for most of the last decade in football, get left out because their location is remote and academics are low-rated for a power league.

I would hand out free wing zone tickets to every Denton ISD student and I would give out free GA tickets to any military member or veteran who shows the proper ID. AQt that point, all you really want is for them to buy some concessions, souvenirs, and maybe have a reason to want to come see another game in the future. If it gets Butts-in-seats to go from 3000 to 6000, it was worth it on many levels. Or we could give the UNT 17 and the BOR actual butt pillows and let them place them in the sections of the stadium we will be naming after each one of them very soon.

Troy was the only other SBC team to go to a bowl game during our 4-year reign as the SBC champ...some of that had to do with bowl tie-ins, but most of the time, the SBC Champ was the only one with a winning record from 2001-2004.

It will be very similar, wardly. UNT is in a deep hole. People want to believe we have some talented pieces here, but for the most part, there aren't many. We have no depth at all, we have no size on the defensive side of the ball at all, and our QB play is just now at a below average place, rising up from the worst in FBS. The new coach, whoever it will be, is going to have to do two things quickly to get things turned around, IMO. Hit the Jucos for linemen and hit the Texas HS coaches hard for a throwing QB and tell them he can play almost immediately--as in the top backup at worst on day one. Your sales pitch in the next two recruiting seasons is simple--we have playing time available for you right now. At other G5s, you're gonna have to wait, most likely, to hit the playing field. Here--have you seen the results we have had?--you may get to actually play on the field in your first year here, maybe even start. We are among the 5 worst teams in FBS right now--use it to your advantage as the new coach. "Yep, we were awful, so bad that the previous coach got fired after he saw the team quit on him and get beat in the worst loss in modern college football history. And that's why I'm here today. I'm gonna rebuild this thing up and it starts with you playing for me as soon as you can be ready--other coaches will tell you the same, but I've got a team full of folks who quit on their team to the point it got their coach fired ASAP afterwards. They aren't going to play here for me unless they can show me they can fit into our plans. That's how I know I have playing time available for you. Son, I know you can play--I've seen your tapes and your games. You are so good, you are better than most anyone I have right now at your position. I can see you playing immediately. Chad Morris, Skip Holtz, Larry Coker, Sean Kugler, Dennis Franchione, and David Bailiff might say the same thing to you, too, but when they do, just ask yourself if they had a season like UNT just had and if playing time really looks available to you there like it does here...I think we both know the honest answer, don't we? So let's get this thing going up here in Denton!!"

Dickey's waterloo--and UNT's, for the matter--was that Tulsa game at Fouts in 2005. Up to that point, we were dominating the Sun Belt Conference, to a point that national outlets thought we were going to be one of the mid-majors that had the chance to really spring forward to a higher place in the college football landscape. That year, before the season, out of 110 or so FBS program at the time, we were rated by Sports Illustrated one spot below TCU, something like 54th to 53rd. And in one fail swoop, it was over and done, basically for good. We had a regional mid-major in town, in front of a large (for us) crowd at Fouts and just got prison-raped 54-2 by Steve Kragthorpe's Tulsa team. Tulsa went on to have a fine season, TCU finished in the top 10, beating Dan McCarney's Iowa State team in a bowl game, and we fell thru the floor. It became apparent at that point, that the "progress" we were making was only because the SBC sucked, as a mid major came in and just annihilated us. Then the SBC losses started mounting for the first time in our history in the league, where we lost more than a conference game. Then we got crushed at La Tech, another mid-major we thought we were ahead of. Darrell Dickey thought he was going to get hried away from this place after the 2003 season, as well as after 2004. Recruiting, gameplans, and fan/media interactions after 2005 pretty much showed that. He thought somebody at another university would just be super impressed with what he had down at UNT in that championship run and come after him--the problem was that absolutely no one gave that SBC run any credence outside of Denton because it was (still is) viewed so lowly and they knew that his offense was so boring it would never translate into butts-in-seats anywhere else. Plus, his demeanor was not one that anyone with a decent fanbase would feel connected to in any way, shape, or form. The Dickster was made to be an OC at a mid-major with an offensive-minded head coach to dictate his play-calling to the OC. Its worked well for him at Memphis, but it didn't work so much at Utah State, UNM, or Texas State, where the head coaches weren't exactly throwing advocates. If he ever gets to be a head coach again, I suspect it will be at a FCS school somewhere...

Chico, Franchione, and McCarney were the finalists...

How much are Wisconsin and A&M paying us to get pistol-whipped at their places?

Still to this day, one of the all-time funniest things I have ever heard at a UNT game was when we played TCU in Ft. Worth in 2000. They had Franchione as their coach, LT was having an awesome season, and were on their way to another bowl berth. But that day, our defense played great--to the point that LT was held to just around 100 yards. We trailed 13-3 going into the 4th, as we got into FG range because we faked a punt in the second quarter. Other than that, we basically handed off the ball every single down--where we ran into TCUs front 9 every down. Finally, the UNT fans had had enough and started chanting "THROW THE BALL!! THROW THE BALL!!" over and over...which the Dickster obliged by running more draws on 3rd and 30 until the game ended, which TCU won 23-3, IIRC. I was at the game with several TCU family and friends and they basically just patted me on the back and said that was too bad the Mean Green didn't try on offense or that game might have gone the other way. A complete defensive gem by UNT completely wasted because the coach had given up before the game started. Shockingly, that season ended at 3-9, when we beat NMSU at Fouts in front of about 250 people in the Saturday after Thanksgiving. In essence, for those not around for the Dickster, this his program in a nutshell for his entire tenure. If he felt we had a better team, we opened up a little bit more on offense. If he didn't think we had a prayer, he just ran out the clock as much as possible to try and keep the scores from getting too ugly. Unfortunately, as the spread became more popular at the P5 giants we would play, he couldn't keep UT or LSU from scoring under 50. But he was able to keep Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, and Texas A&M from scoring 40 on us, so I guess that made him feel better...

I don't think it makes any sense at all to have an awful AD hire someone to lead your largest revenue sport for the 3rd time in the last 9 years and then quit/get fired right afterwards, but that's just me, I guess. I am resigned to the fact that RV ain't being forced to resign... I was talking to a buddy of mine the other night who is an Iowa grad. Loves Hayden Fry so much that his oldest daughter's name is Hayden. His girls are all under the age of 6. He told me the that he was going to take his girls to a North Texas game to get them used to a football game. He decided to take them there because "No offense, but there won't be too much noise there, so that should be a nice easy way to get them used to watching college football live. It just can't be too loud for them or they'll freak out." I said, "well how do you know it won't be too loud at a UNT game for them?" He said, "Well, I don't know for sure, but judging by the pics of their games on facebook and the video I see on TV of highlights of their games, I think I can assume as much..." This is what poor leadership has continued to allow others to think about our program. And its not just fans of other programs that believe this...as a matter of fact, many of our alumni believe this, too.

If Chico becomes a head coach at some point in the future and becomes fantastic, it will be because the place he went to was serious about winning at football.

Good Lord, this is more than embarrassing...of the 8 teams listed below us, we lost to three of them (FIU, Army, and Tulane) in that timeframe. If you weren't a Mean Green fan and you saw this list, the first question you would get is, "Who has been your coach and AD during that timeframe?", most likely followed by "Why are you playing at the FBS level?" 111 out of 118. Thanks BOR and UNT17...

Baylor gets 40k in attendance for their home games, plus many of their conference games are heavily demanded, meaning extra revenue from higher ticket sales. They shouldn't be playing FCS, either, but its more understandable for them because they are good already and don't have revenue problems. Houston is probably more in the middle, where they need revenue that won't come from a FCS game, but they also are winning and going to bowl games, so this game provides some benefit for them. Right now, a game at Apogee against a FCS team, particularly ones that we have never heard of as even being a good FCS program, provides zilch to our program. You win against teams that Denton Ryan would clobber, providing you with absolutely no clue of who can make plays against actual FBS opponents and providing no decent revenue stream from a heavily attended game. This doesn't even count the utter embarrassment that a loss (or an epic beatdown) causes. They are no-win propositions to UNT right now.

Pretty simple for a lot of us. You keep RV around as the AD and allow him to help in hiring another revenue sports coach, you lose us, probably for good. In my line of work, 5 years is considered a full business cycle. You'll see a lot of ups and downs in that timeframe, but you'll also get an idea of who knows how to manage money in both good and bad times. The AD has had 15 years to build up a program from the ashes in 2001. And in his first 5 years, he did a pretty good job of this with football. The next 5 years were a solid improvement in basketball for the men, even as the football program began to fall apart. The last 5 years have seen the bottom fall out and now we are back to where we were in 2001 in wins and losses and in recruiting. In 2015, we have 300k alumni in the region (guesstimate), 36k students, and thousands of faculty and employees at the university. This isn't even factoring in people who live in and around Denton. And we draw on average, right now, about 12k for a football game at a stadium that seats 30k and about 2k for a game at the Super Pit, which seats 10k. So whatever facilities have been funded and built and donors that have been cultivated in 15 years, its not bringing in fans to games. 5 years into the tenure of an AD anywhere else, that kind of attendance and the lack of winning would have gotten you fired. Here, after 15 years of it, the same guy is still in charge and looks to be getting at least another few years and hires to make. Eventually, at some point, you just cannot be surprised when the fact that only about 2% of you potential fanbase cares to attend and follow your program actually dwindles to even less than that when you watch over three revenue programs with a combined record of 465 and 560 under your watch, including 65 and 114 in your main sport of football, of which RV has hired, extended, and eventually fired every coach he has worked with here.

You and I definitely agree on UTSA being terrible...they are really bad. At the beginning of the year, I predicted we would go 4-8, with wins over SMU, Portland State, UTSA, and UTEP. I felt that we would be better than UTSA with what they had coming back and playing them in Denton. My caveat, though, was if we don't beat SMU, there isn't another FBS team we should beat, that Portland State would be our only win. Well, obviously, Portland State rolled us, but it was clear that UTSA would get seal-clubbed by Portland State, too. And UTEP probably fits in that equation, as well.

I gladly ate crow on the firing of Mac. Pleasantly, it was the first time I have ever seen us absolutely reject losing ahead of budget constraints. It was a great thing to see. But I just think that you cannot reward the person who caused that man to have to be bought out at over $2 million bucks. RV should be gone as the AD...not tomorrow, not next year sometime, not in 2018. He should have been replaced at some point in the last few weeks, to have absolutely no impact on the next football hiring. That was what I heard...

If we win out, he's our coach...and deservedly so. He would have beaten a team we hadn't beaten yet in UTSA, the CUSA West leader, La Tech, on the road, beat P5 giant Tennessee on the road, MUTS on the road, and in-state rival UTEP at home. And if I go buy the right lottery ticket, I will be retired...both have equal opportunities of occurring.

He's better than their 4th and 5th string QBs...who damn near pulled off a win on the road against us.

No he won't...the UNT 17 and BOR adore the guy to death--so much so that they were prepared to fly a banner to counter the one we all paid to fly at the UTSA game. Think about that--after 15 years of almost pure suckitude on the field and on the court at UNT under RV's visionary leadership, the wealthiest donors were prepared to counter a banner flying over the stadium to replace their guy with one that would encourage people to know he has their undying support. A guy who has now watched over the football program at a 65-114 clip in his tenure. And they are defending that--after paying for a $2 million dollar buyout of another failed hire just a few weeks before. RV isn't going anywhere until he wants to go or until the monied supporters behind the AD dry up. Right now, if you think the UNT17 or the BOR aren't telling everyone that RV is our guy, you aren't paying enough attention. Smatresk may not want him around--we don't really know--but the BOR and big money donors aren't letting him fire RV anytime soon. At the earliest, we will see him gone after 2017's football season and most of the 2017-2018 hoops season. At that point, RV gets to be involved with this football coaching hire and another mens basketball coaching hire next spring most likely. History tells us clearly that these hires won't go well...yet, IIRC, if even one coach get extended in a revenue sport, RV gets an automatic extension, as well. I'm telling all of you, as pathetically sad as this is to type, that athletic complex will have something over there named after Rick Villareal at some point in the next 5-10 years, if not the whole building. If one donor can give a million dollars to the university and demand it to name the practice fields after a losing coach, what the hell do you think the UNT 17 is gonna be able to have named in their buddy's honor over there? He is truly the #UNTADforlife...he will go when he wants to go. If he has survived this ridiculous year without any mention of removal from leadership, he's golden. We have fired two revenue coaches in 2015, costing the university (or the donors) over $2.5 million in one season--and we will still have yet another buyout coming forward with Benford in the spring. The AD put together the absolute worst schedule a UNT fan could ask for this year--bye week in the first week of the season and no other ones, one OOC game at Apogee against a FCS team nobody has heard of and still got crushed in the worst loss in modern college football history, and a home game on the Saturday after Thanksgiving when history tells us that crowds are beyond small in Denton. And he gets to keep his job...with an almost undying support from the folks who make the decisions around here. Make no mistake about it--RV is the big winner here...and UNT Revenue Sports continue to be the big loser.

This thread is symbolic of why we can't have nice things at UNT. And its unrealistic on many, many levels. Dickey doesn't want to come back here anymore than our dumbass AD wants him to even come back to Denton in any capacity. Dickey had three winning seasons here--out of 9. He clearly had no interest in interaction with and building up the fanbase. Basically, Dickey was boring as hell. And not exactly a warm guy. When you win and go to bowl games, that's fine. When you win 2 or 3 games with a gameplan that features the strategy of running out the clock as fast as possible, you aren't going to make many folks jump up and down to have your back. That is what got Dickey in the end. The SBC caught up to our talent and in many ways surpassed us at the time in facilities and funding. Be thankful for the 4 SBC Championships that did grow the program up from about 2000 diehards to where we are now, with about 8000 diehards. And celebrate his time here when you see the Darrell Dickey Practice Fields, after his 42-64 tenure here, that the university allowed to be named so that we could keep a million dollar donation from a guy who won't give a dime back to us ever again. Pretty soon, you'll be able to enjoy those fields from the Rick Villareal Athletic Department Complex, so that should provide a lot of comfort to the RV and DD fans. Go get Chris Thomsen from ASU. Let him build us up, like he did at ACU. Or get Sonny Cumbie, an up-and-coming coach with great Texas ties from his playing days at Tech and his coaching days at Tech and TCU.

Yeah, if UTSA had Bogenshutz healthy, we get rolled. Our defense wouldn't be able to handle a decent QB. But I'm glad we finally got that UTSA Gorilla off our backs. If we can beat UTEP at the end of the season, to finish with two wins over in-state programs, that would at least help us to win a few recruiting battles against both squads in the winter. What's really funny is that SMU beat us for their only win, we beat UTSA for our only win, and UTSA beat UTEP for their only win. UTEP has 3 wins because they beat NMSU (in OT), FAU, and Incarnate Word. And NMSU only has one win (over Idaho in OT), too, as does ULM (over FCS Nicholls State). Texas State has 2 wins over South Alabama and Prairie View A&M. Basically, the bottom 4 Texas teams are really, really, really bad. Regional programs like Rice, La Tech, Tulsa, Tulane, Arkansas State, and ULL will all have a leg up on us, SMU, UTSA, and UTEP in recruiting this fall and winter. I intentionally leave out UH because they are currently light years ahead of the rest of the teams listed.

Denton always turns out well for old SWC opponents, compared to attendance for the rest of the teams we play in Denton. That SMU game will get over 20k for sure, possibly 25k if it is scheduled at the right time--as in 6pm, not 11am or 2pm on a Saturday afternoon in early September.

Yep, no doubt about this. I truly believe this about Dan McCarney. He came here with huge amounts of positivity and motivation to build this thing up from the ground. He thought this was going to be a USF starter kit, which he saw first hand while coaching there after leaving Iowa State. And he was nothing but great in his first three years here... Looking back, we should have sensed what was coming--he began airing his frustrations about attendance and fan support in the first couple of years. He started complaining about our losing history and how hard it was to recruit here. He lost it at some alumni functions, if stories on this website are to be believed. Nobody wants to really accept it around here, since we don't want to hear excuses anymore, especially from the head coach who is drawing the biggest salary in the history of the school, but recruiting here is always going to be harder than it is anywhere else in Texas, save for UTEP. Our history of apathy from our alumni and students is legendary in this state in the HS coaching ranks. The I-aa fiasco killed us with older coaches and parents, the epic losing has killed us with younger coaches and parents, and the acceptance of losing by the BOR has killed a lot of the fanbase, as well. Nobody has or will ever deal with that I-aa fiasco, and other G5 teams in this state and region haven't had any kind of losing like we have in the last decade. Recruits and their coaches, parents, and guardians see this all clearly. Now, if McCarney had run an offense that was even remotely modern, maybe some of that changes and we get QBs and receivers that would have kept us at that 2013 HoD Bowl level or higher. But he didn't...and now, we are buried so deep right now under the ground that it will take a very special coach years to get this back up to that 2013 level. We need Mac's positivity, along with Dodge's offensive mindset and QB recruiting, and Dickey's ability to develop a stout defense to manifest itself in one coach here. Unfortunately, except for Hayden Fry and Corky Nelson, we really haven't had that around here since 1990.

Truth... Truth

I think that having RV as your AD alone means we are in serious trouble...and I think there will certainly be coaches out there that look at this job as a "coach killer" and won't consider it because of the AD and the complete acceptance of losing and apathy that exists here.

We have had four winning seasons in 21 years as a FBS team...including 1 in the last 11, covering three head coaches and one interim coach in the last 10.5 years. We are 36-92 in that stretch. That's winning less than 3 games for every 10 you play. Expecting a new coach to change that in one year, with a roster that is ranked extremely low by the recruiting agencies and hasn't exactly been developed into anything special, seems a tad homerish to me. But then again, there are a lot of people here who think RV is just fine as an AD, Chico should be the head coach because he beat UTSA, and that we have a squad full of players that are just diamonds in the rough... True, but I'm going on the premise that SMUs recruiting class will be much better than ours this year, which piggy backs on the previous classes that they had better talent than we had. A coach who hasn't quit on his team and has a scheme that will be able to attract quality talent for a G5 program should make SMU better next year--at least better than we are going to be to start next year. That's why I think we aren't going to be at a place by our opener next September to beat them. Now, by 2017 or 2018, that's a whole different deal. If we don't beat them by then, I'll be afraid we failed again with our next hire, unless SMU becomes a big AAC team.