untjim1995

Why would Texas want a team in market they already own? They already committed that stupidity with TCU, but that was forced on them by the northern Big XII schools who needed an extra game in Texas for recruiting purposes, but chose Ft. Worth for proximity to the schools in Oklahoma and Kansas, plus they actually have won at a much bigger level than UH has ever done in its entire history. UT won't help UH at all with this one and yall have no pull in Austin to over come that UT, Baylor, and Tech alliance. None. Your P5 hope comes from two possibilities--the Pac-12 wants Texas markets and decides that Ut is too big of a prima donna to wait on for its GOR to expire, so they ask you guys. The other is that the ACC does the same thing. As probable as you want to believe that is, and the possibility exists, I personally don't see it happening. I think the ACC would add Cincy or UConn well ahead of you guys and the pac-12 will gladly wait out until they can get Texas and some others from the Big XII in ten years. Look, I think UH is a quality program--as good as the G5 can offer, actually. I think that UCF, USF, Memphis, Cincy, UConn, Navy and ECU are all very solid programs to get to be aligned in a conference with. Even the private schools in Temple, Tulsa, Tulane, and SMU have good name recognition, as well. Its a great G5 grouping, to be honest with you. But I just believe that the P5s will become a P4 in about ten years, if not much sooner. Those of us left behind will have to figure out the realities of not having P5 games to pay help fund the budget, as well as reduced TV contracts. That's why I believe that geographically tighter conferences will become necessary. Maybe I'm just wrong and the AAC, CUSA, and SBC will be able to be far-flung conferences still, but its hard for me to see that being a reality.

Here's my thoughts on the pros/cons between our situation and UTSA's, stadium-wise. Ours is new and fresh, so that helps with the fanbase--Fouts was literally the worst stadium in FBS and it wasn't close. ULM's place is a dump and it was still nicer than Fouts. Its also close by the campus, so its easy to get to for students who often don't have cars for long drives. And when you are located in a college-oriented town, having a facility in town usually helps you get the local citizens more involved in the program. The UTSA situation, though, is different in that its a big-city school, so a lot of kids already commute to get there for classes. Not that UNT doesn't have that, too, but it has dramatically changed in the last 20 years, with more poeple living near campus in Denton than ever before. You guys have people who know where the Alamodome is beuuase they live in SA and it s near downtown, so its easy to get public transportation to get there, if necessary. It is cavernous, so when you play a team that nobody really cares about, it can feel like really big in there. But the other thing about that is that its size is alluring to big schools to schedule a game in San Antonio, both for their fanbase and for recruiting purposes. We will never, ever have that advantage in Denton, since many people love the idea of spending a weekend in SA. It will all come down to winning, as it usually does. If UTSA wins, they'll draw well, just like UH did at the Astrodome back in the day and USF has done in Tampa. That's who UTSA reminds me of the most, USF. A brand new program, in a big city, surrounded by a recruiting hotbed, with a local media that wants to help them. If you can win in a situation like that, you can go up fast. But, unlike USF back then, UTSA won't have a Power League to help them get ranked high. That's how the closed ranks of the P5 killed the hopes of the big programs in the AAC and MWC. I think only Boise State might be able to be the exception to that rule going forward, but maybe some of the top end MWC and AAC teams could get consideration to move up into a top 5 ranking like USF once did.

We will beat them. It may be close, like under a TD, but we will beat them. Our gameplan in the early season heat will physically wear them down, not to mention the motivation factor that Mac will hit on as we prepare for the game. Mac knows how much this game matters to UNT fans--he learned it last year and we pounded them. I do expect a close game, something like a 30-24 win. I don't see us clobbering them again, although its possible, as I think they are going to be just awful this year. If we lose this game, only Portland State will be the other team we should expect to beat this year. A 1-11 year wouldn't cost Mac his job, but it would give us coaching staff changes in a major way. But the real hit will be in fan support for the following season, which would just be depressing for a coach entered what would be his sixth year at the school. Again, though, its not gonna happen--we will beat SMU this year. We may only win another 2-3 games this season, but we will beat them.

1.) McNulty 2.) Not with McNulty as QB 3.)2016 and 2017 will benefit greatly from this season's development and experience that will be available for a lot of players, particularly on defense and on the OL

We gotta win, or else he's wasting his breath...

Can I choose neither? Meager got put into a tough spot, as Byerly flunked out, but he had one good game in his entirety at UNT, and we still lost (at SMU in 2007). Phillips was slow, in my opinion, both in foot speed and in his throwing motion. Wilson was our best QB on a Dickey roster, not named Scott Hall or Andrew Smith--and I'm not sure he wouldn't have been better if Dickey knew how to use his offensive skills besides handing off for draws on 3rd and 10 to get the game over faster. I know that McNulty and Greer aren't better than the first two listed, but they might be about equal. We have no idea if Smith can play at this level, but we do know he probably won't be the starter at the beginning of the season here. Can I pick Giovanni Vizza? I know he didn't get here until 2007, in Dodge's first year, but I would love to see what he could do in an offense that had an actual FBS line, instead of the 3A line we rolled out in his freshman year that just beat the kid into quitting. Of course, in this offense of Mac's/Chico's, he'd probably only get to throw bubble screens and 3-yard outs to the flat, in between handoffs. The McDickney offensive gameplan works great against under-sized and lower-talented teams on the schedule, like SMU and Portland State. Otherwise, teh only way you are gonna beat anyone else is if the defense/special teams makes plays. To me, that's the bigger question for 2015. If its good, we might get to 5 wins this year. If its not, we may not win 3 games this year.

I disagree...nobody has heard of most of those FCS (i-aa) schools, nor do they care about them. What the G5s schools have going for them is that they have fanbases that follow them at a much greater level and have a full allotment of scholarships. Of course no one nationally wants to watch McNeese State play Portland State--nobody cares about them. But a game between Fresno State and Northern Illinois gets eyeballs, especially if its a big game in a hypothetical playoff scenario, since people have actually heard of both schools and know that they have decent followings and success on the field.

This is exactly right. Nothing will change in how we get consumed as a non-Power level of football. We don't get any decent coverage from the P5 media anyway--they admitted as much just a few years ago, when they said in a survey that non-P5 teams get less than 5% of their attention. What I want is for the G5s to work on geographical conferences, letting the costs of being realigned within divisions help for a regionalized media coverage standpoint, as well as fan travel. This is going ont he full assummption that the P5s fully split away and we cannot whore ourselves out to them for our budgets anymore. Let OOC scheduling be each year, like the NFL does in cross-divisional play, where the first place CUSA team from the previous season plays automatically other teams in certain slots in the other G5 conferences, i.e., CUSA winner plays the top MAC team, the second place team from the AAC, the thrid place team from the MWC, and the 4th place team from the SBC, then your divisional opponents in a confernece that is tighter, location-wise, unlike today in the SBCUSAAC...

From this point forward, I wish Sun Belt membership on Arkansas State forever...it sounds like its your favorite grouping anyway. Enjoy Georgia State, Georgia Southern, Appy State, Texas State, South Alabama, Troy, Idaho, NMSU, and ULM. When we take ULL into CUSA and yall replace them with Lamar or Nicholls State, you should feel great!! No bull, for sure!! We will continue to enjoy playing teams in Texas that Texans care about and have actually heard of for most of our divisional games, with a few Eastern SBCUSA teams mixed in. Again, I'm glad you guys like it and yall seem to fit in real nice in the SBC, from a competitive standpoint. But if SMU doesn't follow their dreams to the AQ Big East that is now G5 AAC, we are staring at being in the SBC while UTSA jumps right over us to replace UH in CUSA. If that had happened, with Tulane and Tulsa staying back in CUSA, as well, with the WAC probably still being a league and having Texas State, NMSU, and La Tech, that would've kept us in the SBC as the only Texas school still. That scenario would have been a nightmare for us. Its damn near impossible to get people to come out to watch any of the SBC teams, ones from our days in the league, as well as those that got stuck there today. It will still be an impossible sales job to get most folks to think about coming out to Apogee for future CUSA home games against Charlotte and ODU, both of whom just scream SBC and should have never been invited into the league. But, thankfully, we will only play two teams from the east at home every other year. We get good crowds for the Western CUSA schools--I can only imagine what it will be like if we actually had a sustained winner and hosted Rice, UTSA, UTEP, La Tech, or USM in a big game late in the season. Two years ago, we got around 25k for a November home game against UTEP. I still think ULL and UAB will trade conference spots, eventually, but even if they don't, our league still sits higher on the totem pole, from a respect factor. That place might be higher by about 6 inches, but its higher. The SBC will always be on the bottom of the media's lists of conference rankings. Whether yall ar followed by us or the MAC, it doesn't change the fact that we got to move upward. Thank God for SMU and the AAC--they gave us the opening to finally move up. And its turned into the absolute best conference setup in our history, in my opnion.

Doing great in academics is something to be proud of, for sure, and Mac does deserve credit here. But we all know that isn't what will help him keep his job after his 4th year of his current contract expires. It will then be a matter of affordability and performance combined together. The academic success just keeps us from having a black eye in PR, so it doesn't hurt us...

For letting them score on the last play of the game...#shouldvebeenashutout

Yes--CUSA is a dream-come-true for UNT, even without Tulsa or Tulane. SMU did us a huge favor by moving onto the AAC to chase their P5 dream that basically blew up before it could even get launched. Otherwise, we are in the Sun Belt still, albeit with a fellow Texas school in Texas State, probably. USM can--rightfully--look down at the fact that Memphis, UH, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa, UCF, and ECU have moved on, just as Cincinnati, Louisville, USF, and TCU did in years past, even when they were better at football than many of those schools. But to us, playing in a division with three other Texas schools, including an old SWC team in Rice, as well as Louisiana Tech and Southern Miss, is way better than anything we have ever had in a conference setup, in my opinion, since the 60s in the MVC. We have moved up the FBS landscape, even if its just a rung above where we were and there are still many other recognizable regional teams above us in the AAC. To me, you can sell yourself and others on coming out to Apogee or the Super Pit to watch those schools come to town, since people actually know who they are in the Metroplex. That could never when we were in the SBC. Granted, the eastern division of CUSA is basically our old Sun Belt and worse, but playing a few of those teams in a year is MUCH better than playing them all every season. I'll take a couple of games each year with teams in this group (FIU, FAU, WKU, MUTS, ODU, Charlotte, and Marshall) over playing annual games against FIU, FAU, WKU, MUTS, South Alabama, Troy, ULM, ULL, and Arkansas State. Our conference schedule this year is golden, by far the best we have ever played: Rice, UTSA, UTEP, and WKU at home, with games at Marshall, MUTS, La Tech, and Southern Miss. If it weren't for the awful OOC scheduling here, this could have been a dream schedule when you add a game at SMU and a bodybag game at Iowa in the early season. The additional bodybag game at Tennessee and the bought game with Portland State, as well as a stupid bye in the first week of the season, are the things that really kill the overall schedule. Otherwise, if we had an AD who could schedule OOC better, this would be a terrific slate for the upcoming season. Instead, because of the ridiculous scheduling of the AD, we are facing a schedule that is more daunting than it ever should have been. We could have easily been celebrating the greatest schedule we have ever been given to follow the team, but those three weekends are just brutally stupid. It will cause a year that could have been a 6-6 type seson to turn into a 3-4 win season instead.

You are exactly right. Our 2013 team probably could've beaten them, since we gave Georgia a game for 3+ quarters. 2013's team was probably our best team since the Fry era, both from a size standpoint and roster talent. 2003 would be close, too, but I'd take McCarney over Dickey in the coaching battle.

I think it is pretty well known that the SWC's public schools were fine with North Texas State joining, but SMU led the charge that we would turn into another UH if we got in, since we were really good and Rice watched their city totally abandon them for good when UH got admitted to the SWC. Rice, TCU, and Baylor followed their lead and it never had a chance. Literally, that decision pretty much killed our program, even still to this day. After this, we saw Fry leave, we saw our program fall back to mediocrity fast, saw the university decide to keep our program at i-aa for 12 years, continued playing football in a toilet until 2011, hired two high school coaches to be our head coach, and barely funded a program that was forced to whore itself out for decades just to cover the bills. For SMU, think in terms of what the Texas Four did to you guys by dissolving the SWC, which permanently planted you outside the big yacht on a small fishing boat. All you have left is your memories of being SWC members, of which the pre-death oenalty years are looked at as just bought by eyes outside of your fanbase. And knowing how tough funding is at this level of play, your president decides that we can either help get another big Texas school that we sort of share a market with to get into our conference or we can decide instead to back an attempt for a school in podunk Louisiana to join our conference, knowing full well that it won't help with TV or attendance. CUSA decides that UTEP would be better than La Tech, so you couldn't even help them, either, but your non-support for us was again very telling. You only play us when its good for you--you need the attendance right now and you need the opportunity at beating a team to help you in recruiting. As soon as either or both of those descriptions go away, you guys will cut the series off--because that is what you do. You use your money to buy you out of hard situations--always have, always will. It just kills me that my university allows you to have that kind of influence on us. I'd much rather be playing Texas State or UH than you guys for longer series--at least they are both like us. But as long as we are scheduled to play, I'll root like hell that we continue to beat your ass. And I am rather certain that another win is coming our way again this September against your weak-ass team that is still one of the absolute dregs of FBS football.

All i want from this game is to have no injuries and for the check to clear...we have no business playing Tennessee or any other southern P5 powerhouse right now, except for funding--which is business, I guess...

The more I think about it, the more I think Vic Trilli would make a terrific AD at a big time school. He is passionate, sweet, and funny. Plus, he can motivate people to donate. As long as he doesn't have to coach, he would be a very strong AD somewhere. It wouldn't surpirse me to see hime move up the foodchain in college ADs across the region in the coming years.

We went 3-9 that year. I suspect that is pretty darn close to what we will see this year, 3-9 or 4-8. Beating SMU that year cost them a bowl berth, which still makes me laugh. SMU should really thank us, actually. A bowl berth under Phil Bennett probably would have earned him an extension...

Besides the sad truth that realignment is about money, TV markets is what moves the needle. Teams like Southern Miss, Marshall, Arkansas State, and Louisiana-Lafayette found out that being a winner at the G5 level won't ever move them upward because they don't come from big markets. Really, Louisiana Tech found out the same thing, as they moved from the WAC to CUSA, which was a great move for them financially, but lateral in terms of teams to be aligned with from their WAC days. Going forward, I think the P5s will close ranks and break away, either inside the NCAA or outside of the NCAA. WHen it is done, the G5s will realign and the TV market thing will still matter, but not nearly as much as it does now, since the G5s are doing all they can to get a decent TV contract. Southern Miss might as well have been dealt heavy NCAA sanctions, since they will probably never get to rebuild their reputation as a giant-killing program back to the point where it was when they were among the very best non-AQ powers. Their fans absolutely hate today's CUSA and they would die for and AAC invite, which won't happen because that league decided a long time ago to go after TV markets first--the same applies to Marshall, too.

He led us o that win over SMU by freelancing at QB and taking off on several long runs. He tried to do that in the next game at Tulsa and Dickey benched him for not staying in the offense, i.e., handoff the ball on 3rd and 26 to get the game over with sooner since we aren't playing a team from the Sun Belt. He was never heard from again...

Bill Snyder has made a living out of getting JUCO kids to come his way, with his program being a great fit for them even with only two years of eligibility. No reason that UNT and McCarney can't do the same.

I want the P5s to break away, in part, because of douches like Steve Patterson. Take your 60-70 schools and start your NFL and NBA minor leagues, without limits to how much you pay 18-22 year old kids. Go for it. Let your P5 media drool over your league and pay out the extraordinary money you already do to fallate them. Then leave the rest of us the hell alone to actually field amateur teams to represent our schools and our alumni. I'd have no problem at all in watching the G5s and the top FCS teams join forces to form a competitive level of play in football, basketball, and other sports. There's no way we can win a national championship in a major sport right now, but we could if our level of play was what I described above, with rosters full of teams of kids that are compensated by having a full ride for tuition, fees, books, and room and board. Our level gets about 2% of the national coverage that's available. I'd still take a FCS like playoff for football and implement a double-elimination basketball tournament like the College baseball playoff system currently runs. I think there would still be a market for this level of play, even if it was finally deemed officially lower than the P5s. We all would still go to Apogee to watch us play SMU in a football game or UTEP in a basketball game, even if we weren't at the highest level anymore.

If you mean this year, Ok. I'll believe that we will win more games in our 21st season as a FBS team, with a 5th year head coach, 5th year OC, and a QB who is a senior than a program that is basically a newbie to FBS football in its first year in CUSA. If you mean beyond this year, how could anyone have that faith? We are 64-107 in 20 FBS seasons. Since moving up to FBS in 1995, we have watched Boise State, Central Florida, South Florida, and UTSA zoom right by. Hell, the F_Us have had equal success or better since they moved up. Anyone who thinks Charlotte, Old Dominion, or Texas State won't win more than us in the upcoming years is very drunk on Mean Green Koolaid. I am at the point now where I just don't want Lamar, Incarnate Word, Sam Houston, SFA, or Abilene Christian to catch up to us--and I'm not certain that they won't in the decades to come.

I'm willing to bet that there is a buyout-friendly figure in this contract, at least to SMU's wallets. If Tulsa going off the schedule caused us to host Texas Southern, Nicholls State, Idaho, and Portland State as OOC games, imagine the destruction that SMU will cause if they drop out of this thing adter 4-5 years...hell, UNT-Dallas will probably get an even home-and-home series out of us, with the first game at Jaguar Field in front of a proud Lee Jackson and Royce West.

Those schools that would kill for our "resources" would love it because they put athletics--football, particularly--as their main advertising and promotion window. We use music and arts for that. ULM, La Tech, and ULL all do more with less than we do. But they love the attention that football brings to their university, particularly ULM, with its wins/close losses against Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, and Wake Forest. I'm sure they do wish they had Apogee, our location, and even half of our enrollment--they would use it to their advantage in athletics, not something else. The discontentment here comes from the fact that we view athletics as cost when we can pay more, but don't, then we lose and won't spend money to buyout the coaches. And funding the program at a half-hearted way, while those traditional and storied programs at UTSA and Texas State fund their athletic programs more than we do by taking advantage of a state law. If the BOR and admininstration doesn't try any harder than this, you can't be too surprised when the "family" follows their lead. Those other schools like football and athletics to be the primary window to the university. We don't.