untjim1995

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.

Its like when we made the NO Bowls and went to the NCAA Tournament in New Orleans and Oklahoma City. We had fans there that probably had never once stepped into Fouts/Apogee or The Super Pit in their lives and probably couldn't even find them on a map of the campus. But they had somebody tell them about the bowl berths and the tourney invites and they were in for a fun trip.

June Jones to Hawaii makes total sense for both parties. Good move. UCF ain't hiring Dan McCarney--nobody is as a head coach. UNT hiring Chico would be such a give-up, its not even funny. Just because he has managed to beat UTSA, at home by a TD, when they have their 4th and 5th string QBs playing, doesn't exactly mean that he should stay. Chico has watched over two dead-cat bounces because of flawed and very-flawed head coaches that had him as their OC. That's not extension worthy anywhere else...which is exactly why its probably a top option here.

This. No way, we are going from a 1 or 2 win team to a 6-6 team next year with a new coach and a roster full of classes that have been among the worst that FBS has offered in the last 3 years. I think that next year is a year where getting 3-4 wins would be a great sign. Bethune-Cookman, @‌‌Army, @‌ UTEP, and @ UTSA are all games we could win next year. We want to tell ourselves that we can beat SMU, USM, La Tech, Rice, Marshall, WKU, and MUTS, but we won't be ready next year to do that with this roster, a squad that openly quit on the university.

I think that the top 4 will change out a lot, just as it did last year. This week, the loser of Bama and LSU and the loser of TCU/Okie State will be out of the mix. Michigan State @‌ Ohio State loser will be out, as will the loser of the B1G championship (MSU/OSU or Iowa). Clemson and FSU loser will be officially out, as will Stanford/Notre Dame and Baylor/OU. All I'm saying is that Ole Miss holds their destiny in their own hands. Win out against Arkansas, LSU, and at Miss. State and they win the SEC West and then probably the SEC Championship. Not likely, I realize, but its the scenario that scares the hell out of the P5s. If Memphis wins out, with wins over Navy, at ranked UH, and Temple twice in a home and home, while Ole Miss wins out, I think they will get into the Top 4, unless the AAC teams they beat lose some more games along the way and water down those victories.

UNT90 is dead-on about the scheduling. I made the decision years ago that if we scheduled a FCS game at Apogee, I wasn't going. Those games don't help our program one bit...Texas Southern didn't and Nicholls State sure as hell didn't. But, now, with the worst loss in modern college football history to FCS Portland State on our Homecoming as our only home OOC game, that bomb detonated and made us the laughingstock of college football. You can lose a FCS game by less than a TD--you can't lose to one by more than this, much less by damn near 60 points. The point is that we should have never played any of them--none. But, instead, the few remaining fans get to look forward to great OOC home games against Bethune-Cookman, Lamar, Incarnate Word, and Abilene Christian, to go along with SMU and Army, two of the absolute dregs of FBS college football. Scheduling is the absolute worst thing we have done here...we haven't given any non-diehard UNT fans an opponent to draw their interest to come and watch us play in a great facility. Basically, the best team we have hosted here to garner any decent interest was Houston, who opened the stadium. A team we hosted at Fouts--very easily, I might add--just like every other OOC game we have played in Denton since we built this great facility.

The backward path at UNT is going behind the scenes to be great pals with the UNT 17 and the BOR--it amazes me that a total of about 30 people can have that much control around here...

When the P5s eventually split away for good, that is when the coaching salaries for your G5s will drop down accordingly. I still bet that schism occurs in the next 10 years. What will really be interesting is if Memphis gets into the playoff. They are at 13 now, still play undefeated UH, who is #25, #21 Temple, and 6-1 Navy, and could play Temple again in the AAC Championship game. If Ole Miss runs the table and Memphis runs the table, I think they are going to be in there. The Big XII leaders are going to cannibalize each other, the Pac-12 looks down, and if Notre Dame loses again, which I think they will, that is going to potentially leave you with this scenario: Ohio State Ole Miss Clemson Memphis You could see several G5 schools really overpay coaches if they think they can duplicate Memphis's success in this scenario. The only problem is that Memphis and Ole Miss are old rivals that play each other every year in this crazy thing called a home-and-home series. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see the SEC or the P5s pressure Ole Miss to drop that series immediately.

This... But, in reality. the current AD isn't going to get this right--he has more than proven that in the last 15 years. To argue otherwise is to either be one of the UNT 17 or BOR that holds this place hostage or just being a pure Mean Green Homer.

I think 3 years is probably a legitimate expectation. The new coach, assuming he is a wide-open offensive guy, will have to get time to teach a team full of players recruited to play a plodding offense, as well as to find recruits that can be developed into good fits for his offense. Much like at SMU, it is going to take a while...

ahh forget it, he's on a roll... Baylor, because of their political ties, won the lottery by getting into the Big Xii when they did. Nobody wanted them, but they had the right political ties, so they got in. Literally, they were the punching bag of the Big Xii in football until Briles showed up. One year, in the mid-2000s, Baylor won 1 game, while TCU and Boise State combined had only lost one game. They were both top ten, but not yet BCS busters, so they got matched up in the Ponsettia Bowl in San Diego in mid December. TCU beat Boise to give them their only loss, so both finished in the top ten, IIRC. But what really stood out that year was that the bowl money that TCU and Boise took in from that year was less than what Baylor got from the Big XII's other teams--combined. Baylor found their latest iteration of Grant Teaff and they are going to be great as long as Briles stays there. But it certainly wasn't always like this...and even at their worst, which was either getting drubbed by us at Fouts, 52-14, in 2003 or when they lost to UNLV on a fumble return of 100 yards on the last play of the game when they just needed to take a knee, their coffers have always kept them higher on the food chain than every single other G5 team around. Briles himself showed that when he left a good UH program to coach at Baylor when they were the dregs of the P5 schools.