untjim1995

There aren't many like you and your family...as proven by the 80% empty seats around you at the Super Pit most nights. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I can't argue with much of what you say, but Cumbie was given much credit from the DFW and national media for opening up the TCU offense--that Patterson sought him out specifically to open up their attack and get Boykin more opportunities to make plays. Maybe Meacham was really the engineer of it all, but I've never really heard people mention him the way that they do Cumbie as being the architect of the offensive renaissance that TCU has had under Gary Patterson. All that said, I doubt that Cumbie will come here or Dooley, for that matter. I think Cumbie will wait out a higher profile opening, especially if Tech's job ever becomes open again. Dooley may just be perfectly content as an NFL coach going forward, too. Now Jinks, he being a position coach at Tech, after a long successful run as a High school coach, he probably looks at this as his next step up the ladder in his career.

I think Cumbie has proven that he can go out on his own and bring in an offensive system to a new school that had a different setup previously and make it work big time. Briles hasn't shown that yet--maybe he will, but Cumbie has already proven he can do it. Dooley had success at La Tech, enough to get them turned around and get the Tennessee job. The UT job proved to be too much for him, no doubt, but if La Tech fans complain about him, its pure sour grapes. No way someone doesn't leave a G5 school for a P5 payday, especially at a school as poor as La Tech. I just don't hold the Tennessee thing against him too much when considering our opening, as well as using his connections to the Cowboys for recruiting purposes. That said, I realize that he may very well have zero interest in our opening or most college jobs right now. I don't think the powers at be even remotely want RV gone. I think they either adore him for access (UNT 17) or just think he's a fine AD because he keeps us within budget (BOR). I was wrong about McCarney getting fired before the 4th year of his contract ran out, so maybe this will be different, too. But the way the UNT 17 have come to RV's defense, whether it has been on here, because of the banner flying around, or with Smatresk, its pretty clear that the BOR doesn't care what they do, as long as those 17 big donors pay for it over and above what the university provides. Smatresk was my last hope--thinking that somehow, he would want more from the AD than what he has seen so far and that he would maybe get a BOR member or two to give him the opportunity to bring in someone else, just to rest things at the athletic department. But it either appears that Smatresk doesn't care enough to make a change or the fight to get him removed is just too much because of the BOR and the UNT 17. Either way, until RV leaves, a lot of us just won't come back again.

BTW, it seems preposterous to imagine this, but had Benford actually been even a decent head coach with the team he inherited here, I have zero doubt that he would have been hired at his alma mater in Lubbock. RV hiring Benford was always going to be lose-lose--if he won (HAHAHAHA!!!), he would be gone to Tech or somewhere like that, if he lost, we were stuck with him for 4 years. Unfortunately, for us, the recruiting assistant coach for Marquette has shown a complete ineptness for x's and o's (Shocking!!), so we have enjoyed his losing for 3+ years, in front of a Super Pit that rarely gets a quarter full.

If UTA continues to have an awesome year--and beating Ohio State and Memphis on the road is unbelievably awesome--Cross will be coaching at Big XII/SEC team next year. If I were a booster at Okie Lite or Arkansas, Cross would be on my call list come March if their current coaches don't see any improvement.

The bowls are just a matter of supply and demand. I think that as long as they can be run at a profit for networks and the bowls themselves, as well as being viewed favorably by the city that hosts them, it won't be going away.

RV happened...and continues to happen...

Thanks

Look, whoever comes here, under the visionary leadership of the current athletic director and the dynamic support of the BOR and UNT 17, will have to dig out of a hole that is probably even worse than what Dodge had to dig out of under the Dickster. Both the Dickster and Mac left the next coach a roster full of offensive players built on running the ball 2/3rd of the time and throwing passes no more than two yards down the field on the few pass plays we ran. Dodge's offense was able to make Daniel Meager have a career day against an atrocious SMU team that still beat us in his first year, but that fell apart quickly, to the point that we put Vizza in as QB and he got his brains beat in for the next year and a half to the point of quitting. Almost amazingly, the next coach will inherit an even WORSE situation at QB here when he gets here. I truly believe that not one of the QBs on this roster will start next year, unless someone gets hurt. I think Greer, Means, and Chumley will be gone, and Damarcus Smith is a total question mark on whether he can stay eligible and if he can even handle competing for the starting job again, but with guys that can actually play QB at a FBS level. It won't surprise me one bit if the next coach doesn't immediately got to Kevin Dillman and tell him that he wants him to change to QB right now and see if he can win the job right away, just to buy time until you can begin recruiting a QB, which won't be until next year's recruiting class at the earliest. I don't have any earthly idea who will get this job. I like the resumes of Lincoln Riley, Chris Thomsen, and Sonny Cumbie a lot. I don't think the RB coach at Texas Tech resonates up here like people think it would--seriously, he'd be better at UTSA than he would here, because of his history there and the fact that their recruiting is very centered on Central and South Texas, where his name is Dodge-esque down there. Just don't think he is a good fit. Same with Kendal Briles--I think he is nothing more than a daddy's boy, someone who won't succeed without daddy next to him. He reminds me of the football-version of Pat Knight, who was a colossal failure at Tech as the head coach. Withers at JMU intrigues me, because he is a winner and knows how to lead, but has no connections to this state and our situation within recruiting circles and with an apathetic university. I like the idea of Derek Dooley a lot, too. As a matter of fact, I'd probably peg Dooley as my first pick, followed by Chris Thomsen, Sonny Cumbie, and the Riley/Withers. Honestly, all of them have their plusses/minuses, but we have no idea how much interest we have in any of them or they have in us, beyond sending in a resume or using us to get a raise in income from their current employer. But we do know this--the guy hiring them has more than proven that he has no idea how to find a winner here, nor how to help the situation thru better scheduling, promotion, and raising revenue and membership for the MGC. And because of that, whoever takes this job will get setup for failure, just as the predecessors have been. It hasn't mattered if its SBC or CUSA, Fouts or Apogee, or if the head coach has been conservative or aggressive on offense--the one constant has overseen an amazing amount of suck for 15 years. To expect anything different with this hire is just whistling past the graveyard, in my opinion. And its why so many of us cannot understand--or put up with--the continued support for the AD from the people who control the situation within the BOR and the UNT17. Even the UTSA spare poster on here, as well as friends and colleagues who have any knowledge of the AD situation here, understands how completely inept he is and how pathetic it is that he gest to keep his job in the aftermath of what has occurred here, both in the short-term AND the long-term. When you have a conference mate come on here and post about the reality that our "win" over them here, while stinging to them, may actually be a win for the rest of CUSA, if it means RV keeps his job, should tell you how poorly he is looked at by the very few outsiders that even know North Texas has a football team called the Mean Green, not the NTSU Armadillos. At this point, its just a sad reality--until real change occurs above RV, its impossible to see how things will measurably change here, no matter who we hire.

This game may not see 1000 people in attendance if the weather is a cold steady rain in the 40s.

BTW, how many seats in The Super Pit had actual butts-in-seats yesterday evening?

I love the name Kramdrew...perhaps Ryan Gooding or Ben Munthe could also become a thing as well, on here. But then again, I'd probably get included in this with the title UNTjim9095, which is really confusing and not that funny...

Something tells me that Les Miles will working in a TV studio as a talking head for the next couple of years. He'll take a break, look at the landscape of what will be available, then go to the highest bidder. I doubt he coaches a day next year, unless LSU changes their mind.

Last year's class was ranked 90th by Rivals. The year before,coming after the HoD winning season, we were ranked dead-ass last in FBS. The previous classes were ranked below 100, as well. When you run an offense that Darrell Royal would have believed to be too conservative in 1965, you probably won't get too many talented players on offense, usually...

Iowa State is a graveyard for coaches at the P5 level. Your talent pool is very small, basketball is the #1 sport on campus, your in-state rival gets the lion's share of decent recruits in the state, you play in a league where certain teams have access to more talent in one class than you will ever have on your whole team, and finally, the one public school in the P5s that is most likely to get left behind when the Big XII falls apart at some point before 2025 resides in Ames, Iowa. Nobody on the list that they had in the Ames newspaper will go there, not Briles, not Riley, not Meacham, not Cumbie. And the Navy coach isn't going there, either. Their best bet is to get one of the MAC school's head coach to go there, someone who knows the lay of the land up there, someone like Babers, or the head coach at NDSU, who would probably like a raise from FCS to P5...

I can't wait until we have a thread that is titled, "Final Week Before a New Athletic Director at UNT"

I think it's pretty clear that RV will be the AD here, no matter what happened in that game. I'm just glad y'all had your 4th and 5th string QBs out there. That win over y'all just made sure that our worst ever team in our history didn't go winless. So thanks for being an even bigger spare than you already are, by losing to us. If we hire any coach worth his salt, he will tell every recruit out there that our worst team ever still beat y'all this year, which is the opposite of when your coaches told recruits that in our best year in a long time in 2013, we still got beat at home by y'all, costing us the conference division title...and our recruiting followed suit after this.

For the purposes of talking about how Mac caused us to be in such a hole, talent-wise, his offensive strategy was completely unappealing to recruits. The only kids he could get here were either of two types: kids with questionable character or kids with less talent. That talent never got developed into anything better and the character of the roster showed its ass with the Portland State fiasco. The sooner this roster is completely turned over, as well as the entire coaching staff, the sooner we will have a chance to move forward. And that isn't counting the colossal handicap of the worst AD in America. The next coach will need two seasons just to flush the $hit around here down the toilet. Maybe there are some usable parts, but our recruiting rankings tell us that what has occurred shouldn't be a surprise at all. When you finish dead-ass last in FBS recruiting, as we did in 2014, you should be awful. And have we ever seen just how awful we can be with these results. That's all on McCarney...

We are witnessing history--this is our worst team. There's no way we would even have a win if it hadn't been for UTSA rolling out there 4th and 5th string QBs, allowing us to beat them by one TD at home. This team has quit on the university and the fans. There has been no worse season to sit thru ever than this one. Not one loss has been even close. I suspect UTEP will beat us in a similar fashion this week.

This thread contains so much depressing truth. I think that throwing another cent at this AD is just wasted. Give it to the university's general scholarship fund or your college directly within UNT. Give it to charities so you can still help people and get a tax-deduction. The BOR and administration don't care that Apogee's capacity isn't being half-used, on average, for a full season or that the Super Pit isn't even a quarter-filled, on average, for a men's basketball season. They want known money--see whore games and allowing 17 donors to control everything over there. They go by known costs only. They give you those two choices--deal with it or go away. Either way, they don't care what you choose. I always thought it would change after we went up to Division 1 in 1995. I believed it would finally change when we built Apogee and hired an experienced head coach for the first time in 30 years. And I believed it would change after we went 9-4 and won the HoD Bowl in 2013. And each year, until this year, I watched in amazing disappointment that the BOR and administration didn't change anything in regards to running an athletic department that wanted to win, not to breakeven cost-wise. RV is merely the puppet to this mindset. The BOR and administration are the only ones who can change it. And they look at the UNT Family and see that 98% of their "constituents" don't give a flip about our sports teams, mostly because they haven't give them any reason to think differently. That's who they pander to for their decisions--and quite frankly, its hard to blame them. Its the easier path and its the one that keeps job security. I have come around to understand that our College of Music is the equivalent of Notre Dame Football, well-known in its circles and highly followed by its fans and graduates. Its pure greatness, something I never imagined admitting in my life, because I was so jealous of what they got and athletics didn't from the BOR and administration. And its why I can't imagine that our leadership would put up with a subpar Dean of the College of Music or professors who weren't keeping that reputation of great music at an acceptable level. I just wish they gave the same level of passion to winning at athletics as they have toward the College of Music--because there is absolutely no doubt that it has paid off greatly for the university. It seems like that would be easy to translate to our leadership to do the same thing in athletics, but it obviously hasn't, and doesn't appear that it will anytime soon.

So this year, we played Rice at home in early September in the afternoon (Still hot), we played Portland State (FCS nobody on Homecoming afternoon of Texas/OU), we played Western Kentucky (on a Thursday night), we played UTSA (on Halloween NIGHT), and we play UTEP (on the Saturday after Thanksgiving). That list of games may look on par with most of the home schedules we have played in Denton for the last 20 years, but its the worst "scheduled" schedule we have ever been dealt. I guess that's more on CUSA than it is on RV, I suppose, but RV's job is to make CUSA leadership aware that gams on Texas/OU weekend, on Halloween night, and the Saturday after Thanksgiving will never draw well. And scheduling afternoon games in early September in Denton also isn't a real good idea, either. Maybe there is nothing that can be done about that timing of games, but it is without a doubt, one of the worst schedules I have ever seen. Bye week to start a season (WTF??), only OOC game is a FCS spare for the Pacific Northwest, a game on Halloween night, and a game at home on the weekend after Thanksgiving. Whoever you want to blame it on, the reality is it just plain sucked--which perfectly complimented the team we have rolled out this year.

Shocking...

You are so dead-on about the missing generations of UNT fans--its the killer for the program. You have thousands of alumni you pissed away when we went down to I-aa in 1983, thousands of students/alumni of that time who never got engaged at all, and now their kids of an age that they grew up as fans of UT, OU, A&M, etc...because we 1/4 assed it with athletics. Baylor was actually a pretty good program under Grant Teaff from the mid 70s thru the early 90s, often ranked, and won a few SWC championships in that time. TCU was a piñata for the last 50 years of the SWC, except for a year or two here and there. TCU and Rice were the whipping boys, for sure. But what always helped both of them was that they had moneyed alumni, had civic partnerships with their cities that helped with attendance, and they played opponents, especially Baylor, that drew people to their games. Literally, not one of those three things have ever been on North Texas' side. We are a teacher's school and fine arts' school, as well as being a "value" school to get your degree with as little connection to the university as possible. Denton has been apathetic to us, at best, hostile, at worst, certainly nothing like what FW has been for TCU. And we have played "spares" in the media's eyes and casual fans' eyes for decades, meaning very few people ever came up to Denton to watch us play from those schools playing here or from casual outsiders that would rather stay at home and watch football on TV or drive to Waco to watch Baylor play A&M or TCU play Texas Tech. The HoD Bowl drew thousands of MG fans, yet the very next season, after the best season we had seen here in a decade and an economy that had actually been improving, our season ticket bas DROPPED...WTF?? Denton doesn't care about who we play and if we don't give them a decent season or opponent, we don't get our stadium 2/3rd full. Just as we saw with the crowds in NO for the bowl games and the NCAA Tournament appearance, as well as the other NCAA appearance in Oklahoma City, we have people who show up to those events who couldn't identify the Super Pit or Apogee/Fouts on a map of the campus because they have never set a foot inside one of them. To be honest, after 25 years of watching all of this, I'm convinced more than ever that it probably won't ever change. Of course, we haven't really tried sustained winning over a stretch of seasons against teams people care about, so maybe that does change everything, support-wise. But the Fry years and the Dickey years of winning teams didn't move the needle other than a game a season that drew crowds that would fill the stadium at more than 2/3rds of capacity. Maybe Apogee finally changes this, as well as playing in CUSA, but people didn't show up to watch MUTS, WKU, or F_U when we were in the SBC, as well as so far in CUSA, so I don't see that changing very much in the future. I think we will continue to see SMU and Army as games that draw well at Apogee, as in over 20k, but that's about it, unless we are winning and playing a team like UTEP that also brings some fans with them.

Southern Miss is definitely the blueprint here to follow. Give the new guy time. He took over a team that went 0-12 and followed it up with a 1-11 season, winning their last game. But they got better last year, improving to 3 wins, and now sitting at 7-3, with two games left, at home against Old Dominion and at La Tech. Very possible that they are 8-4 and going into a bowl game in his third year. Its my belief that we will have a season next year very much like this year's, as the new coach gets used to the roster he has and tries to bring in recruits that fit his system, probably winning a game or two. If we can get to 3-4 wins in Year 2 of the next coach, it would be possible to see us getting to 6+ wins in Year 3. That would mimic USM and would signal major improvement.

Nope...he survived this mess, he is good until he wants to retire. The UNT 17 love him because RV gives them access to the athletic program and the BOR loves him because he keeps us within the budget they give us without complaining. Nothing else matters. We will have the Rick Villareal Athletic Department next to the Darrell Dickey Practice Fields when RV retires, if not before then. Not embarrassing at all...