untjim1995

This is what i mean by "just care"...look, just once, at the idea of opportunity costs instead of known costs.

Ben, here's the issue about just winning. Since 1970, as a FBS/Division 1-A program, we have had two stretches where we had a winning program. The Fry Years from 1975-1978 and the Dickey Years in the SBC from 2002-2004. You got to watch a very rare UNT winning season in 2013. That's it... 8 winning seasons... in 33 years. Even if you include 1-aa, we made the playoffs in that level four times in 12 years, only to lose each time in the first round--because the unviersity wouldn't offer to play a home playoff game when it was offered. We had to go to play at Nevada, Marshall, ULM (which was a powerhouse back then in 1-aa as Northeast Louisiana), and Boise State. Just win--hell, I'd take "just care" at this point.

I agree here. RV is merely a symptom of the illness. Unless/until the BOR advocates making winning in revenue athletics a primary goal, the AD here is just going to be doing their bidding. The problem is, though, that it makes people like us, guys who like football and basketball, have to make a decision. We either follow and help fund the program because they are ours or we leave. For most of us gmg.com, its obvious we have chosen the former, but the other 98% of UNT alumni rather clearly chose the latter, whether its because they just don't care about UNT sports, they don't feel like the university itself cares about UNT sports beyond just having a program, or they just feel like following a front-runner P5 giant as a t-shirt fan. You can easily argue that we never even gave those fans a chance to care about UNT sports, too, and I won't argue that point, either. That's the only choice you get with UNT athletics. And I get it--the alumni for decades here had a community college experience, commuting from the DFW area and going back home after classes were done or leaving Denton on the weekends if you lived here. All we cared about was cheap tuition. Today's UNT studentexperience is very different from most of ours, which is a good thing, in terms of cultivating students into fans with school pride, so that gives the program some hope going forward. But the leadership's views, alumni view, and the local citizenry's views of UNT sports will always provide a hurdle to this newer generation until they can gain control thru funding and attendance, assuming they want to be different from the other generations that have walked thru Denton in the decades before today.

The problem is that the alumni and local citizenry don't give two $hits about the program--and never have. That's how you get an AD that gets to stay on the job forever. Winning doesn't matter here, obviously, or he would've been gone after the Todd Dodge debacle. You're only hope is for the recent alumni and current student body to grow up and continue their follwoing of the program, which they have certainly shown more attendance support than any other alumni/student group in our history. The problem with that is that it will take 20-30 years for those alumni to be at a financial place to support this thing fully. By that point, who even knows if football is allowed to be played for health reasons and at what level we will be playing at in the college football universe. But if everything was to hold constant, that the G5 remains like it currently does and the P5s reamin like they are, we could turn this thing into something really solid as a winning program because of the recent support from the younger alums and current student body. I just don't think there's a prayer that it will stay as is, even in the next 5 years. What we did in 2011 should have really been done in 1981. Instead, we went the exact opposite direction, causing the 2011 improvements to just really be "too little, too late" for a stay at the top levels of college football. The i-aa fiasco just appears to be too much to overcome--we lost too many generations of alumni and fans to other schools by playing at a level that was really looked down upon by the media and local fans for 12 years. Even by the time we got back up to I-A in 1995, we just did the bare mnimum by adding 10k alumnium end zone seats to a terrible stadium, playing in conferences that were far-flung that no one cares about around here, and scheduled bodybag games over and over to pay for it, which allowed all of those potential fans from the 80s and 90s to feel even better about their decision to just follow Texas, OU, A&M, LSU, etc...

Yeah, I bet you don't--but then again, we've always assumed you were a woman anyways..#cougargirlpower

This. He got tailgating opened up and saw us get in CUSA. The BOR saw us (meaning they were forced) get a new stadium and have paid out more for a coach than ever in our history. In their minds, the job is done--its just time to coast, as long as we stay in budget.

What we do know is that a GOR hasn't been tested yet, fully. All of the conferences that have one haven't had it completely challenged yet since the other schools hit the road. I suspect that the real test of it will be in about 4-5 years, when the GOR is getting closer to expiration in the big XII. Read soonerfans.com or orangebloods.com and you see absolutely no one claiming they love the current Big XII, but you'll see plenty of posts that say they want out if they cannot get other P5s to come join them--not G5s. I suspect Boren knows that the SEC may still be interested, but the B1G does, too, and they could get the best of all worlds if they can get Kansas to go with them, allowing them to still have old Big 8 rivals in NU and KU, keep OSU and Texas as OOC, then add in games with the rest of the B1G, which gets two more states to grab the cable fees from their B1G Network. The Big XII is dead-man walking--and Baylor, TCU, and a few others are set to be in a lot of trouble if things don't work out.

This year it should just read #hitmorethan3

Is that like in a post-apocalyptic place in the future?

Fair enough--if you are gonna act like ULM, then go full ULM. Play seven road games, two of which will be bodybag games, just so you can cover the budget. I mean, really, this season's schedule is not good not because we are playing at Iowa and Tennessee in the same season, but becuase our only home game in OOC is Portland State. If you replaced Portland State with Army, for example, it wouldn't feel as bad, just becuase you know that Apogee will be more full when the Cadets come to town instead of no one being there when Portland State comes to town, as well as the fact that the AD coffers will be filled to help cover the needs of the programs more comfortably. To be a school that cares about FBS athletics, you have to be able to do two things we don't do--at all: buyout bad contracts when its obvious things are not going to turn around and schedule teams to series that involve a home game and a road game for your school within the series. If the series doesn't involve you going to said team's place and their team coming to yours, it's not a very good series for you unless it meets a need. Here, the need is $$$, so the bodybag games get played. But the other need we have is butts in seats, of which the FCS schools we schedule don't help you with. So, int he end, play a bodybag game and a 2 for 1 series with somebody, which may make you have a five game schedule at home, but you get to give your fans the experience of watching your team compete with teams like those that have played UTSA in San Antonio. Instead, we get to experience teams we played when we were in the SLC as a 1-aa program in OOC play.

The thing about UTSA is that even if they have a five game home schedule at some point, their fans still got to watch OSU, UH, Arizona, UNM, CSU, KSU, and ASU come to town and play. Forget this year's abysmal OOC schedule for us with just 1 home game against Portland State. Even in the years we get two OOC games at Apogee, we get SMU, Army, and these powers: Nicholls State, Incarnate Word, Abilene Christian, Lamar, and Liberty. The company you keep tells a lot about who you are--we are a low-level FBS team, nothing more, nothing less. Count me in the group that would trade schedules with UTSA right now--I will GLADLY take five home games in a season if that means we play someone that people care about. If we need revenue from P5s as badly as it seems, I'd just assume us play 5 home games a year, with Army and SMU alternating, and then play a schedule like this year to help pay bills than to play at SEC Giant for a million bucks and give back 400k of it to host Abilene Christian, which is basically what we did as a 1-aa school--play at Texas or OU, just to pay for the entire AD, but we got to host ACU at Fouts...I realize I'm in the minority here, but a 6th home game against a FCS team isn't worth my time or money, especially when all the other home games are against against CUSA schools and SMU or Army. I refused to go watch Texas Southern, South Alabama, or Nicholls State, just as I will refuse to go watch us play Portland State, ACU, Incarnate Word, Lamar, or Liberty. If the AD is going to be that lazy, then I will continue to protest by not attending. As we saw last year, beating Nicholls State by 70 points means absolutely nothing to our team's performance against actual FBS teams on the schedule. I suspect that Portland State will serve in the exact same fashion this year, even if they are way better than Nicholls State, who would not have beaten any decent Texas HS team last year.

I'm having trouble hearing anything, after Iowa and Tennesee beat me to a pulp, like I was in the Roman Colosseum against Lions... Just pray the checks don't bounce and we don't get major injuries in these games--just like we do every F'ing year.

This is pretty much spot on. The Big XII is on life support. All it will take is one of the three big schools to leave to end it. OU is trying to say we need to get to 12, knowing full well that they won't, because of all the reasons mentioned. Then, once they get the SEC/B1G invite again, they will be gone. I truly think that OU/KU go north together and Texas goes independent, since Texas appears to want the LHN to work and no conference will take it. Texas could set up games with BYU and Notre Dame annually, add in annual games with OU, Tech, Baylor, and Rice, then schedule 6 other games a year, probably three against current P5s, add in a service academy, and two bought wins against low-level G5s and they have 12 on their schedule. The other Texas sports might join a souped up AAC, assuming they get the Texas leftovers in there with them. It might be the only way the LHN can ever be a money maker for ESPN, actually.

SMU W Rice L Iowa L USM L Portland State W WKU L Marshall L UTSA W LaTech L Tenn L MUTS L UTEP W I think we will win these 4. The UTSA game is a toss-up, as is UTEP, but since they are at home, I'll give us the wins. At best, I see us at 5-7, with a win at USM, as well. The other teams on the schedule are either way better than us or we are a bought win (Iowa and Tenn). At worst, I see us at 2-10, of which SMU is one of them. If we somehow lose that game, 1-11 is a very real possibility, along with the fact that about 1000 people will be at the last game of the season at home versus UTEP. But SMU is really, really bad--they may not win more than a game all year. If we cannot beat them, we cannot beat another FBS team on the schedule.

I don't blame Boren for doing this to help OU eventually leave for other pastures, but the GOR is kryptonite for any of these schools. I suppose that if the entire conference got vaporized at once, maybe Ken Starr and Baylor could see everyone that leaves to other P4 leagues, but the networks are going to be the ones to really put the screws to a school that is under their GOR, if they choose. And as it looks now, the GORs are apparently very strong legally, enough to keep ACC schools and Big XII schools from challenging them. BTW, the SEC doesn't have a GOR for anyone--very telling about that fact. I still think the Texoma 4 go west, KU goes north, WVU goes east to the ACC, and that K-state lands somewhere in the P5. Iowa State, Baylor, and TCU end up in the MWC or AAC.

This. If UConn, Boise State, Cincy, USF, UCF, UNLV, and others like them cannot get invited up to the high-rise, the rest of us aren't either. Hell, there are some programs who think they are in the penthouse but don't realize they are really just standing in the elevator. Some of them think their relatives are gonna keep them up there, but they better pray that the rich uncle doesn't get greedy. Because if they do, schools like Tech, OSU, KSU, ISU, Baylor, and TCU could be in deep trouble. But it will be a glorious day when some of those schools get knocked down to our level--having to watch others feel the same treatment that SMU, UH, and Rice had to feel. Maybe the single worst set of decisions that Tech ever made involved firing Leach and then allowing TCU to get into the Big XII, killing off their recruiting advantage over the Frogs, all at the same time that Baylor gets really good again. Tech's ONLY hope is that they get to ride UT's coattails out west one day. Otherwise, its MWC or AAC for Tech. Same can be said for OSU and KSU--if the schools go west, they get to go, possibly. If KU goes north to the B1G and OU goes to the SEC, its MWC/AAC for OSU and KSU. ISU is destined to go there, no matter what.

I agree, especially on the last point. Frankly, I cannot understand how P5s schools cannot make money with baseball. It seems like it would be an easy sell. You only have a weekend series at home about every other week, as well as the odd in-week game. I think that sport has as much a chance as college basketball did of making a huge leap up in the sports conscience. Networks are starting to carry the games more often, the ESPN coverage of the regionals and super-regionals, as well as the CWS, is fantastic in my opinon, very similar to the great NCAA Tournament coverage they had back in the 80's. I still think that Title IX's biggest fault is allowing football to be considered as a component. Take football away from Title IX and set a floor, whether in % or $$$, that ensures appropriate funding for the womens programs and other non-revenue programs for the men. Then, if that was the case, you could easiily increase scholarships in baseball, softball, etc...as stating compliant with Title IX would be much easier.

Its a lotta work for a very little piece of...never mind

What people forget is that LT's record-seeting game against UTEP came a week after TCU beat us and our defense held him to just over 100 yards, which was really saying something. LT was amazing and his TCU teams were damn good. But we had a defense that could play. Unfortunately, our gameplan for that game involved running the ball about 95% of the game and the only time we scored was when we had a fake punt get us into FG territory. Otherwise, the UNT crowd chants of "THROW THE BALL" really showed our frustration with Dickey's offensive gameplan in games against non-SBC opponents, which was just get it over with as soon as possible so we don't lose by 60.

CBL--you like wings and that other stuff, too, right??

McCarney should be National Coach of the Year if this thing goes 8-4...There is not enough green kool-aid out there to make me believe that is even within the realm of possibility with McNulty as the QB and the schedule we face. Damarcus Smith ain't starting here, BG. You're getting your hopes up for something that isn't gonna happen. He might be the starter by October, but he isn't going to be in September.

If that was true, UH would have already replaced A&M in the Big 12 over tiny little TCU. If UT wanted them in, they'd be in. Instead, they let TCU in, since the northern schools clamored for them as an added team in the Metroplex where a lot of Sooners, Cowboys, Jayhawks, and Wildcats either live or can get to easier than getting to Houston.

2011--Houston was ranked as high as 7th that year. Congrats on getting fellow SWC private school Baylor to come to Dallas and giving their fanbase an easy game to travel to and watch an easy win. Kinda like yall do for TCU every year, as well as when A&M or Tech have come to town. I do think its really awesome that we replaced A&M and Tech on your schedule for OOC games against Texas public schools going forward. Its really a great opportunity for us to get some easy wins again, just like last year.

The schedule will mask any improvement we may see from the defense, while the OL will be get some great experience that should pay dividends in 2016 and 2017, when the schedule gets back to a more manageable one. The reason I look at 2017 is that we should have an experienced busdriver at QB with a decent OL and a better defense by then. That's when I think a 2013 season could happen again here. 2016 is the year I just want to see us get back to .500. This upcoming year is just about player development--sad, but the schedule is way too much for where we are as a program right now. I see us winning 3-4 this year, 5-6 next year, and 7+ in the year after. The ironic thing about this scenario is that 2017 is the 4th year of Mac's contract, meaning we either fish or cut bait with him after this. RV could easily extend him out another 3-5 years beyond 2018 if he gets a decent season again in 2017.