untjim1995

You just won the internet...the only thing I would argue though, is that his "clients" to please are the BOR and the few monied donors around here, with whom he has been amazingly adored for years now. I'm telling you, he has the AD job here as long as he wants it. The AD thinks his major scheduling coups are getting long-standing series with Army and SMU. The ADs monied friends think tailgating is the end-all-be-all for us and that RV basically deserves a lifetime contract for opening up this up to the fans. The BOR thinks he is awesome at staying in budget and not publicly causing any problems. Both Army and SMU should be the second OOC game scheduled with at least someone like them, i.e., Ball State, Texas State, or some other FBS team, but instead we get Portland State, Liberty, Lamar, Incarnate Word, and Abilene Christian. His hires have been below average, at best, for the three revenue sports in his tenure, of which he has hired or extended Darrell Dickey, Todd Dodge, and Dan McCarney who have led us to a .374 winning percentage in his tenure, as well as Shanice Stephens and Mike Petersen, who absolutely sucked as coaches for the women's team, and Tony Benford, who has single-handedly crushed the one decent program we have had in the last ten years. And most likely, unless Benford does something he hasn't yet done, which is finish above .500, even with several NAIA teams to play, he will get replaced this year, leaving us with yet another chance to see who RV hires.

BY the time RV retires, the P5s probably won't even be playing G5s or FCS teams anymore. Even if they do, it will be like one game a season, at their place, which we will gladly play. BTW, La Tech is getting $1.1 million to go play at UT to lead off the 2019 season, so that kind of money does pay for a lot of non-revenue sports and salaries. Of course, knowing La Tech, they'll probably either scare the crap out of the Horns or beat them...

So looking at future schedules, we play at Florida next year with a home game against Liberty, in 2017, we play at Iowa and play Lamar at home, in 2018, we play at Arkansas with Incarnate Word at home, and then in 2019 we play at Wisconsin and at home against Abilene Christian. SMU comes here in the even years, Army comes here in the odd years, thru 2021.

Yes, its much better. You know that they have been beaten in the past by Fresno State and TCU when they were non-P5. I'll take my chances at a B1G school over playing at the southern power of your choice...

I think the smart thing to do here is just increase it by the 10% each year until you get it to the same cost as our peers at UTSA, Texas State, and Lamar.

As a fan of UNT, why would you? There is almost no historical reason to expect more from a school that has made it abundantly clear how they feel about athletics. You care about winning at revenue sports way more than the BOR or administration does...RV being here for 14 years, with the records we have, the coaches we have hired and had to fire, the OOC scheduling in football, and the increase in the MGC of about 800 people in the same time that almost 80k have graduated from here tells you this. Today, you, I, and the others on gmg.com have chosen the road MUCH less traveled, the road of UNT Sports fans. About 2% of UNT graduates care enough about UNT sports to follow the teams, attend games, and support with dollars. The other 98% absolutely don't care and most likely never will--they have other colleges they follow closer as their adopted teams or they are fans of pro ball. I tried the "expect more" bit for 25 years around here, always thinking the sleeping giant was ready to wake up and run. Instead, I've realized that the giant is in an institutionally-induced coma, from which the caretakers just want the proceeds from keeping the giant alive, but not alert. Tony Benford getting a 4th year to spare us all to death is just another layer of financial proof that we don't care about winning, we care about costing. I expect that we will make yet another coaching change in a revenue sport, this time in basketball, and we will hire whoever wows RV in the interview process, whether its thru talking, with a binder, or some other accessory. And going by his track record, RV will be making another hire for the football team in 2017 and another mens basketball hire in 2020, which would be a great way to celebrate (and encapsulate) what will be his 20th year at UNT as our AD.

Chico would be gone, but Mac won't, no matter what happens this season...or next, either, unless we combine to win 2 games in the next two years. Even then, I doubt it. We brought Todd Dodge back after he won 3 games in his previous two seasons, all to save an extra $275,000.

I'm glad he is mad and I have no doubt that he will motivate his team properly...but that offense, especially at QB, needs major help. You cannot throw the ball downfield with McNulty. And you cannot hand off every down and expect to compete with anybody decent, either. That FIU game last year at home showed the worst offense I had seen since the Dickey Days. That approach might beat the FIUs of the world, but the Rice's and Marshall's of the world, much less Iowa and Tennessee, are going to love the rest their starters will get when they play us if we cannot move the ball downfield with a more balanced attack that can have a QB actually throw downfield accurately past the first down marker.

I would be pleasantly surprised with 3-3 through the first half of the season. We would have won the two we should win, plus the 50/50 game at USM. The other three teams are just much better than us right now, even if we play two of them at home. McNulty will be the starter at least the first 4 games, in all probability. Mac will talk about his senior leadership being so valuable to start the season at SMU and at home against Rice, then how meaningful it will be for MiniMac to go back to Iowa as a starter to prove himself in front of his loved ones. Unless we start off 0-3, I think USM will be McNulty's last chance to prove he is the busdriver that Mac wants. If we lose there, dropping to 1-3, the Portland State game will be when Damarcus Smith gets his chance, just like Dajon Williams did last year against Nicholls State. If he cannot run the offense the way Mac wants it and we keep losing, I suspect that he will just go back to McNulty handing the ball off 90% of the time and throwing 2-yard passes the other 10% for the last 4 games of the season. I think we will be 2-4 at that point, but 3-3 would be a nice start. I still think 4-8 is where we end up. SMU and Portland State in the first half of the season, UTSA and UTEP in the second half of the season.

So the question becomes essentially about revenue producing results or results producing revenue. The results, while usually pitiful, don't do it, obviously. But even when we have a good year or years in hoops or football, just as we saw after winning the HoD Bowl, the needle still doesn't get moved here, as we saw season tickets actually drop after that. The extra funding, to me, would help ensure that bad hires get fired quicker, while also rewarding good seasons with bonuses and reasonable extensions (not like Mac's 5-year extension after finally having one good season that now handcuffs again). Right now, that is the single biggest problem we face--we get a hire that doesn't produce winning results, yet we won't buy them out until they are deemed affordable. If--and its a big if-- the university raised the student fee up to $15 an hour, for example, when UTSA and Texas State get the full $20, and actually used it to help buyout the Benford's, Dodge's, Trilli's, etc...you could see a much better feeling amongst the prospective fanbase that we are serious about winning. Almost everyone can see that all we are serious about at the moment (and for the last several decades) is being the best value we can be to get more students up here. That's why you haven't seen any MGC growth--most of these people (like 98%) feel like they are not getting their money's worth out of the program or worse, couldn't care less about it or the school itself. Its gotten better, school-spirit wise, in the last 10 years, but we are not going to feel any goodwill from that financially for decades ahead, if ever. But if you fire people who aren't doing their job and hire people who have name recognition as actual college head coaches, you can attract some attention from folks who might see that new hire and give us a shot. Sure, if we go back to losing 79-10 to OU or losing to Alabama-Huntsville in basketball and keep losing in the first years of these coaches, you'll blow your chance probably for good. But if after 2-3 years of not getting it done, there is literally no chance of getting anyone to buy into Year 4 of said coaches seasons, so you lose money on that, too. That's where a higher revenue stream from a completely legal student fee could be much more helpful than it is today here.

Recruiting, in general, is a crapshoot. You've got schools that get great recruits, no matter what, just because of their reputation, but even then, as we have seen with Texas in the last few years, that means very little if the right coach and playbook are not in place to fight complacency. What is special is when you get guys like Gary Patterson that look at HS running backs and see them as future defensive linemen or linebackers for his scheme. But again, even at any program, you have hits and misses. The problem here, though, is that we have almost no positive history in the last 35 years to recruit with toward players, coaches, or their parents. All they have known us as are losers, quitters (I-aa drop in the 80s), or just not being a serious school about football. Today, you've got a coach in Mac that makes in-roads with the high school coaches because of his relatability to them and his experience as a long-time coach, but both the players and the coaches think his offense is too boring and they think that the school doesn't really think highly of the program itself because of the beatings we take every time we play someone that is a p5 giant. We have a good school, located in a nice town while still being near the big city, but our recruiting rankings almost every year are just pitiful. I know Mac feels frustrated by it. And I know that the previous coaches wished they had what he has to recruit with today, but I don't think either had the personality or track record to make any serious in-roads around here beyond a few success stories. The Dickey days had some great RBs and defenses, but we had no strong throwing QB that could put the team on his shoulders, as well as his attitude of just finishing games as fast as possible without getting too hurt when playing OOC games. Other than Mac's obvious upgrade in attitude towards trying to win every game, the rest of it is basically the same as those days. Have an awesome defense and running game while playing teams that are usually rated near us in conference equals bowl berths. Don't have those, you don't get anywhere near .500. And its always being under .500 that continues to kill any recruiting progress.

Its tough to compare the two, since we play several more OOC games in hoops versus football. Basketball is always easier to schedule a decent name or two to play a series with than it is in football, at least in these parts. Unless you are KU, UK, UNC, Duke, Indiana, or UCLA, football rules the roost. We have been fairly fortunate in my lifetime as a UNT fan, back to 1990, to have seen these teams play here in Denton: Indiana, Texas, Texas A&M, LSU, Alabama, Colorado, Baylor, TCU, SMU, Oklahoma State, Creighton, Wyoming, Texas Tech, Tulsa, and UH. And they have all been enjoyable and make the games against Tarleton State, Wayland Baptist, Langston, Jackson State, Prairie View A&M, Houston Baptist, and Northwood understandable, considering we have gotten to see those other teams. Its not like in football where we have seen our only home OOC game in two separate years be FCS teams only or get told that SMU and Army are "premier" opponents. That would be like telling us that our premier home games at the Super Pit would be UTA and Air Force...

This...

How many times and ways have heard this said to us over the years...

I completely agree...That way, both groups have to pony up to help the situation. I'll say it until I'm blue in the face, but hosting FCS games right now does absolutely nothing to help the program. We play a team that isn't going to bring anyone to the game, the competition doesn't help you with any FBS opponent, and frankly, the game is only helpful for teams with difficult conference schedules. Granted, our CUSA schedule isn't easy to us right now, but to the rest of the college football world, playing a game against a lot of CUSA teams is not looked at as being tough competition, as Marshall saw last year. We don't have to bring in a P5 team, but there are plenty of MWC, AAC, and MAC teams to schedule a series with, not including BYU, yet we have gotten Texas Southern, South Alabama, Idaho, Nicholls State, Portland State, Incarnate Word, Lamar, and Abilene Christian as OOC games scheduled at Apogee, to match up with our "premier" matchups with SMU and Army. Fouts, in its current condition, would host all of those teams today very easily. If I were a student or recent alum that voted for Apogee or now pay the fee for it, I'd be so mad that we built this great new stadium to play WORSE competition than when we played games at the old toilet bowl across the highway. Since Apogee has been built, Texas State has played Texas Tech at their place, UTSA has played Oklahoma State, Arizona, and New Mexico at their place, and UTEP has played Oklahoma at their place. If the AD here is so short-sighted that he won't schedule better, then its supposed to be the jobs of the administration and BOR above him to correct it.

Because we don't want to get it done. RV prefers whore games at colossal P5 giants to pay for the department. They are easy to schedule and he knows that those money games are going to eventually end when the P5s decide to stop scheduling G5s anymore. The BOR is fine with that approach because it keeps us in budget, which is all that matters. RV will be here until he wants to retire or dies. And I have absolutely no doubt that the athletic complex will be called the Rick Villareal Athletic Offices, which will be perfect to look over the Darrell Dickey Practice Fields. It is just how it works around here, year after year, decade after decade...

This is whereMac's reputation as a developer of linemen really helps u. We might not get any QBs that want to come here, but linemen know Mac specializes in this area.

It wouldn't change a thing in their eyes if there was a mass exodus. Look at hoops--we went from averaging crowds that are double or triple the size we get now--and yet nothing was done about it because it would cost too much. Known costs are always the first hurdle for the BOR and administration. Everything else follows. Think about it--they literally are just fine with keeping Benford for a 4th year at half the attendance of the year before he got here because it would knowingly cost $325k per year that they had to buy out. Opportunity costs don't even matter...and the same will be true of McCarney, too, if he loses big time in the next two seasons. We won't buyout an extra $650k for anything more than one year. Its just not what we do. Vic Trilli, Todd Dodge, and Tony Benford are all proof of this.

Sadly, that game was up against Alabama at A&M that day, which got a ton of attention from theyear before when the Aggies beat them and it was their only loss on the way to another Bama title. The heat kept some diehards from coming that day, but that other game also caught a lot of casual fans who watched that game on TV, too.

Sadly, we knew it wasn't an actual quote... Vito says that because he knows its true. Smith has to prove himself to be better than McNulty on the field in practice, in an offense he has never run before, while McNulty knows it like the back of his hand. McNulty will start at SMU and at home against Rice, at a bare minimum, probably even against Iowa and USM, too. If he loses the starter's job, it will be against Portland State, which is in early October.

Until we run an offense that Texas HS kids want to play in that are taller than 6'0", we are going to have to go the JUCO route for QBs. Its just that simple.We run an offense that Woody Hayes would have run in the 60's and 70's. The high majority of Texas HS kids play in spread offenses. Their coaches think its more fun for the kids--they think Mac's offense is boring. Obviously, by the results we have seen since Mac got here, so do the HS QBs from this state. Mac's starters have been Derek Thompson, who was already here, MiniMac, who he got from Iowa because he knows his dad, Greer, who came from the juco ranks and cannot play at this level, and Dajon, who was run off for multipple reasons and didn't have another FBS offer, IIRC. And if Damarcus Smith cannot come in here and win this job against this bunch this year, that will be just pathetic. And then we will start all over again trying to find another JUCO QB to come here and hope to take the reins of the busdriver offense, this time with a different OC, since Chico will probably be gone after this season ends.

That is very possible. I truly believe he'd have gotten an extension last year if he could've finished .500 or better, but even that small hurdle proved to be way higher than it should've been.

I think RV will use the Dodge approach this year with Beenford. Once it becomes clear that there is no chance of having a winning season, including winning every game in the CUSA Tournament, he will be toast and Rob Evans will take over. I still think Rob Evans woulkd be a logical choice to be the head coach here next year and beyond, with his track record and experience. This means RV will hire an assistant that blows him away in an interview.

In all seriousness, FCS games against FBS teams shouldn't even be allowed because of the scholarshp differential alone. This is a good thing for the big Ten to do. There are plenty of MAC, SBC, and CUSA schools to get a bought game from. The Big Ten's revenuees are huge--they know that playing a FCS opponent won't help their bottom line to get intot he playoff system anymore. So pay a few hundred grand more to play Idaho than Idaho State and you don't get crushed for it in the media if it comes down to matchignup with another school in a different conference. I've never minded playing P5 money games--we obviously have to have them, just like most G5 schools. But except for when we play Iowa, all of our money games have been against southern powerhouses for the last 10 years. LSU, UT, OU, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas A&M. We have basically learned that northern and western P5s are more beatable than the southern schools, plus playing games later in the year for OOC has also helped the G5 team to be more competitive. If we had a better team this year, the Tennessee game would actually fall at the best time it could for us--late in the season instead of opening the year as the Christians being fed to the lions. I just think RV needs to call more Pac schools, B1G schools, and northern schools in the ACC and SEC. Colorado, Kansas, Mizzou, Kentucky, UNC, NC State, UVa, Maryland, and Rutgers are all teams I'd be glad to play as a one time bodybag opponent.

Well, a schedule of 5 home games with Portland State, Western Kentucky, Rice, Texas-El Paso, Texas-San Antonio really does sell itself...//RV