untjim1995

It tells me that we will extend Benford at this first chance we can reasonably do so--but that high hurdle right now is .500 this year or finishing above .500 next year by 4 games or more.

I don't believe OU gives in-state tuition rates to Texas kids anymore, but I believe OSU and Arkansas both do. I think this is great that UNT is doing this. Again, there may not be a ton of kids from Oklahoma that will come here, but it at least gives them an option that is less than 3-4 hours away. Its a great way to open up your university to another group of prospective students.

See, to me, you encapsulated everything about UNT Athletics that is wrong, its not even funny. The BOR hires people with these attitudes towards athletics. If Gretchen Bataille said "no football coach will make more than me", that should have been made public so that everyone knows what we are dealing with here. I'd love to say she should be fired for such small-time thinking, but the BOR would only do that is she said something like that about the College of Music, which would never happen...Anyway, I understand Rawlins view on alcohol not being sold at games since you ahve underage kids there, but if the rest of the schools in your area are doing it, then you kind of have to make a decision to move forward with it, just from the revenue standpoint. My point here is that RV isn't the problem--he just does the bidding of a BOR that doesn't want athletics to ever be a primary window to the university. Bringing this up in public is the right thing to do--its the only way to get attention to the problem or to find out if anything will be done about it. Its my belief that nothing will be done about it because the UNT Community by a large majority doesn't want college athletics at the school to ever be anything bigger than it is. It doesn't fit with being a liberal arts university that loves promoting its "value" to the rest of the country. RV just does their bidding--nothing more, nothing less. To me, I don't know how you can even argue that point. He keeps us in budget, he never complains about funding, and he gets extensions when the revenue sports are rolling out losing season after losing season. The problem isn't RV--its who keeps him on staff. It doesn't hurt the school or the program for the few fans we have here to open up about the problems here. The losing and playing teams nobody cares about has far outdone any criticisms that posters on this site make. Hell, it doesn't take a mind reader to see that we have absolutely sucked for the better part of 20 years since moving up to I-A in 1995, which doesn't even count the absolute debacle of i-aa for 12 freaking years that hangs on us still with Texas HS coaches and parents. What we know is that since Hayden Fry left Denton in 1978, the BOR and administration has severly underfunded the program and have maintained staying in the budget as the only goal of the athletic department. Not one college football coach since Jerry Sloan got hired by Texas Tech in 1981 has been hired away from us--not one. Bob Tyler, Corky Nelson, Dennis Parker, Matt Simon, Darrell Dickey, Todd Dodge, and now Dan McCarney are all coaches at UNT who have losing records here in their tenure here. Every coach we have had since 1982 was fired only at points it was deemed "affordable", not because of losing. I truly believe recruits and their families know this well before they step foot on campus to consider coming to play here, not because of posters on gmg.com. But that isn't because of RV or the putrid scheduling here--he's just a symptom of the main illness. The only chance this place ever has of changing is to have the BOR members and administraion change their attitudes toward college athletics--in other words, to almost do a 180 degree turn from the histroical (and current) view, which is, by a mile, the predominant desire of the UNT Community of students, alumni, faculty, and the citizens of Denton. We support the Mean Green because they are ours--otherwise, the rest of us on this website would have tucked tail and ran away like the other 97% of the UNT community.

This is another example of why so many alumni just don't care about UNT sports. Losing games doesn't matter here much at all--losing (known) dollars matter the most. Sam Houston State, SFA, and UTA...that is who is too high on the Texas College Hoops Totem Pole for us to pass up in basketball right now. But we can easily say that we aren't behind our CUSA Texas brethren, either, so deal with that Miners, RoadRunners, and Owls (ignore that none of them are rated, either, as well as the fact that UTSA and UTEP own us in every single revenue sport we play...)

I have no worries about SMU...none. They are in the same boat as us and they are stuck in it. They will never be in the P5--never.TCU took their place by basically doing waht any of the regional teams that were non-AQ at the time potentially could have done. See, when the Aggies left the Big XII, the Big XII had 9 schools, since West Virginia had just signed up. They needed at least ten, looked around at the landscape to see who was available and who had a winning pedigree that the majority of schools in the conference wanted to invite, but it wouldn't cost a lot to get. And that is how the Purple Little Engine That Could managed to get into the Big 12. That Rose bowl win was a hundred million dollar ticket to TCU--both in what he did and what it was about to do. The thing about TCU is that anyone else in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, and New Mexico could have done the same thing that TCU did--start winning big, beating ranked opponents when the opportunity presented itself, and earning AQ bowl berths by being highly ranked. No one did, though. (Utha did, so they got rewarded with an invite to the Pac-12). No other team in the eastern part of the MWC, CUSA, or SBC did that--not Houston, UTEP, Rice, SMU, UNT, Tulsa, Tulane, ULL, ULM, Arkansas State, UNM, NMSU, Colorado State, AFA, etc...nobody. TCU literally had no competition for that spot once the Big XII needed an extra member that the non-Texas schools wanted another opponent in this state. Today, it sounds nice to say that you could duplicate TCU's example--but that shipped has sailed out of the P5 harbor. The P5s increased autonomy, the dropping of the Big East, and the new rules for many conferences to schedule other P5 schools in OOC more often has made the divide between the G5 and the P5 almost Grand Canyon-esque in its vastness. Sure, there are still a few that could gain an invite becasue they win in the right sport, provide a new TV market for network fees that the conference wants, or they just fit culturally--UConn and Cincy come to mind very quickly as schools who fit this profile for the P5 conferences who might look to add someone else down the road. But that is it. No other P5 conference will take a small private school, not the SEC, not the Pac, not the B1G, and not the ACC (only BYU could possibly gain access to the Big 12, but that is it.) SMUs money is impre$$ive--always has been, always will be. But it doesn't ever open the door to the P5 high rise. And it won't--they are too small to move the needle. So are Rice, Tulane, and Tulsa. They are dominated in their own markets by the P5 schools. TCU just got lucky enough to find their way in the last remianing window that hadn't been locked in this area. The rest of us just have to deal with the elements of being outside. Even if SMU went 10-2 next year in football, they won't get more than 25k as an average at Ford Stadium. Same with Rice, same with Tulane, and same with Tulsa. Your larger public universities in the south are basically stuck because we play so near UT, Texas Tech, A&M, OU, OSU, Arkansas, LSU, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Gerogia, Florida, FSU, Clemson, South Carolina, UNC, Kentucky, etc...i.e, UCF, UH, UNT, UTSA, USF, ECU, USM, Memphis, La Tech, ULL, WKU, MUTS, F_U, and Arkansas State are all examples of public schools that nobody cares to invite up to the conference nearest them. And Cincinnati only is not on this list because of WVUs place in the Big XII and Louisville/Pitt being in the ACC as leagues that would consider adding them as a new market for travel reasons and for marketing reasons. If they weren't open, Cincy would easily be like NIU or CMU--big schools in B1G states that will never ever invite them to be in that league. But unitl most of the G5s realize this completely, you're gonna have people that think SMUs money and UH's size could get them into the Big 12 or that UCFs size could get them into the ACC/SEC along with USF, which just ignores how much TV markets play into this for P5 conferences. When reality does set in, though, for these G5 schools who have always felt that they belonged in the P5 because they used to be in the SWC or in the old Big East, its gonna be hilarious watching that reality hit them. Not a one of them will be any better off than we are right now. We will be fine playing lower division games against our SBCUSAAC brethren--anything above the old i-aa and SLC teams is a giant leap up from what we let our fans watch for over a decade. We get excited when a former private SWC team comes to town--but what are UH and SMU gonna think when they had dreams of playing Texas and Arkansas again as conference mates, but instead wake up to the reality that will come down the road, that their conference mates are Texas State and Arkansas State? For us, it will be no big deal, but for schools like SMU and Tulane, I really see them dropping football before ever playing a down as an official "left-behind-for-good" program. The UHs of the world will bitch loudly amongst themselves, but they will find comfort in playing in state schools like UTEP, UTSA, Texas State, and us, as well as Louisana Tech and ULala. And Cougar Queer, before you jump up and down about this and say you guys will just stop playing football if this happened, just remember that those schools I listed above have all beaten UH (except pitiful UNT) in the last decade or so.

They have one the largest enrollments in the country, have a very good record, and play teams people have heard of every week, yet they averaged 37,795, which included 45k for BYU. Here's your problem, no beachfront, lakefront, or oceanfront property, nor Fiesta Bowl win can fix--their conference home schedule this year was SMU, Tulane, Temple, and Tulsa. Nobody wants to see those teams play when they are bad--and those teams NEVER have any decent traveling group to help your attendance. Eventually, this realization will catch on. SMU may only bring a few hundred fans here for a game--how many do you think they bring to Orlando, especially when they are terrible? UNT fans want to see us beat SMU or Tulsa--UCF fans don't. But UCF fans might be more inclined to watch them beat FIU/FAU than they are Tulane or Temple. Regional conferences are just crazy that way, huh? Imagine that--a Texas team like UNT might actually care about beating SMU or UH more than we do about beating Middle Tennessee or Western Kentucky...and maybe, just maybe, Marshall fans care alot more about beating WKU and MUTS than they do about beating SMU or Tulane, since they actually know ppeople who went to those schools and can travel to watch them play in a number above 100... One day, folks, one day...the G5s may get dragged by their teeth to this realization, but eventually regionalized FCS-like conference are going to come back in vogue for this level of college football.

Or just play G5s only, period. You cannot tell me that a 4 game OOC of teams from the MWC, AAC, MAC, SBC, the service academies and BYU wouldn't be able to generate decent fan interest. I'm sorry, but if the only way you can pay for an entire athletic department is by playing a bodybag game every year when you have over 36k in enrollment, hundreds of thousands of alumni, and being located in the middle of a metro area of millions of people, then FBS football probably isn't really your thing to keep doing. I get that ULM or South Alabama have to play 3 OOC games on the road at multiple P5 conferences to pay for their budgets--they are smaller schools in small population areas. But if Marshall can schedule in OOC like they just did, we certainly could, too. The 2 for 0 Iowa series still is just ridiculous to me. As we were preparing for the stealth campaign to finally get voted on to fund Apogee, Iowa was specifically menioned as the type of team we could try and get a home-and-home series with--then we get it passed and immediately sign a 2 for 0 series with them. Then we find out that Apogee being built gets us series with SMU and Army--two teams we had recently played in series at decrepit, toilet-bowl Fouts. The BOR only cares about one thing concerning athletics here and one thing only--staying within budget. Nothing more, nothing less--and it has been that way forever.

His stretch goal this year is 18 wins--that gets him .500 and an extension by RV. His current goal this year is just to breathe, then he will coach next year. Buyout is not UNT-acceptable, as we all know. Next year, his goal will be to finish above .500 by more than 4 games--that gets him an extension. Otherwise, he will be gone. No way a guy goes to coach in his last year of his contract anymore.

The Aggies just signed John Chavis as their DC for $1.7 million for three years. At UNT, HC Dan McCarney makes $725,000 in base salary and guaranteed incentives for 4 more years. The have nots are in the CUSA, SBC, and MAC. The ones that are somewhere in between sit in the MWC and the AAC, but the P5 status is a giant chasm that even the MWC and AAC cannot leap over. .

RV knows of only one sure way to get enough revenue in to pay the bills and stay within the budget that the BOR demands he do without complaining--play road games at name-your-power P5 school to get a "known" check. This school has never --and will never--deal in opportunity revenues for athletics because those are (gasp!!) unknown. You cannot be at the top of the "Value" Poll trying to run an athletic department any other way, UNT90. Plus, that kind of approach would totally piss off 95% of the citizens in the town you are located in and 95% of your alums, faculty, students, and administration. At UNT and Denton, we like fine arts, eduaction, and low costs. Its as simple as that--always has been, always will be. Getting San Diego State in a series is impossible when you play P5 powerhouse on the road, a coveted series against big time program and huge rival, SMU, a coveted series with traditional powerhouse, Army, and a home game against great programs that fans just clamor to see play, such as Texas Southern, Idaho, Nicholls State, and Portland State. Only rich programs like South Alabama can get home-an-home series with teams like SDSU and Memphis because they have chosen "flexible" scheduling over being a value-oriented athletic department. They'll see...schools like that will never succeed with an approach like South Alabama is taking (except for UCF, USF, UTSA, etc...). I guarantee you that USA will never be anywhere near the top 10 on the vaunted "Value" Rankings!!

This post should not help either RV or Benford feel very good about where we are sitting right now...you cannot lose the boo$ter$...but it sure makes those of on us gmg.com feel a bit better that pressure may be getting hotter from the monied alums. Now, we just need the BOR to follow thru if this thing goes south even faster than it already has.

We always lose kids that want to go up the foochain in college football. Texas HS kids and parents and coaches grew up watching the teams now in the SEC and Big XII play week in and week out--those were their teams. Meanwhile, since 1983, we were playing Nicholls State, McNeese State, Northwestern Louisiana, Northeast Louisiana (ULM now), Southwest Texas State, Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston State, New Mexico State, Idaho, Nevada, Utah State, Boise State (before anyone knew who they were), Arkansas State, Louisana-Lafayette, Middle Tennessee, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Western Kentucky, Troy, and South Alabama as conference mates until 2 years ago. Nobody can be surprised when big time AQ schools or current AAC or MWC schools take our commits--its our place ont he ladder until we do something about it for a decent amount of time (iow, not just one year). One thing that very few realize is how fortuante we are, though, to get transfers from AQ schools where these recruits get sold on the glitz and glamor of playing in a huge stadium or great league, but then find themselves buried on the depth chart. It sounds awesome to go to Oklahoma...until Oklahoma only uses you as a practice squad guy. To me, that's where we get more help from decent talent, since we cannot get highly regarded HS talent to come here to play usually, for all of the reasons we have talked about.

There is a lot of truth here in what forevereagle writes, not to mention its bleacher report, which immediately throws credibility aside. But, in reality, us being second to last on a recruiting budget wouldn't surprise anyone, especially in the way we run athletics here. Recruiting travel is one of the best ways to save money--both from a lodging standpoint and a travel standpoint. We save money better than almost everyone...its why we are a great "value". We don't win much, but that is not what the athletic department is asked to do by the BOR and administration. They are asked to stay within budget--and RV always does just that.

THe way I look at it is that you have taken the bigger and better profile SBC teams and meshed them with the small market CUSA schools who the AAC won't take. ULL certainly deserves to be in more than both of the F_Us--one would be fine, but having two is like having UTSA and Texas State in the same conference. For those that hated the Sun Belt Conference, we got a better situation than we had with them even if Tulsa and Tulane hoped up to the AAC ASAP. Just by virtue of playing UTEP, Rice, La Tech, and Southern Miss, we improved things greatly, not to mention UTSA...

SMU is a prime school to be made an example of--a program you've heard of, in a decent conference, and a history of cheating...this one gonna hurt, Ponies. Better hope that $$$ buys some lube from the NCAA, otherwise, Larry Brown is about to leave another school that will get sanctions again.

Yeah, we did ours more stealthily--by paying a recruiter to become a head coach for 4 years. The transformative "hockey-line" change that he used early on was particularly impressive in its ridiculousness...

First Ballot, then...amirite??? It better be, you MFers here on gmg.com

I demand Darrell Dickey get entered--he had 3 winning seasons here, people!! 3!! (out of 9)

I like this a lot. I wouldn't mind Texas State, but they won't get in with UTSA being in the conference already and the eastern CUSA schools would balk at another Texas school being in the league. But ULL is a perfect replacement to UAB (and Tulane for that matter). Arkansas State gets you some in-roads in Little Rock and Memphis. Georgia Southern would get you Savannah for a nice destination city. You get three good programs, too. This is a solid G5 conference--and works well until realignment forces schools to join conferences that are more travel-friendly.

Its a tough day when a great announcer leaves your team--I've always thought that George was a great play-by-play announcer and was a tremendous ambassador to UNT, especially athletics. He will be missed. I suspect that Sean Bass will get the first invitation to step up to take the job, one he deserves to take on.

Why would the question of how much the season ticket base has increased be a job-ender for a DRC sports writer? The DRC would be thrilled to get the answer--kinda surprised they haven't already.

I agree completely--but he cannot seem to get a QB that can actually throw the ball with any consistency. No one he has had as QB here has been good at throwing the ball on a consistent basis, including Derek Thompson. That, to me, says more about the level of QB we can realistically get here, which does go back to his power running offense being the primary motor of the offense. When 95% of Texas HS QBs play in a spread offense, you're offense doesn't look modern, even if it really is a better way to win at a school like ours, since you can develop linemen and the running game, which helps your defense and special teams, too.

So exactly where do you see UH going to "compete" with all those P5 schools you think you should be with? You guys needed the 40k new stadium for the same reason we needed the 30k new stadium--the former stadiums were decrepit. I You hired Tom Herman because the other guy was a deemed a failure after Sumlin left. Kudos to your university's leadership for canning him after three years--wish we did that as well. But Herman is no different thant anyone else you guys have hired since the post SWC breakup. UH is a step up job--just as almost every G5 school is. You are no different than the rest of us. You want to believe differently, but its very true. You will see that in time the P5s will fully separate and your AAC experience/experiment will be too costly to keep up with. Everyone can see that coming from a mile away--except for you...which surprises no one.

I do think its kinda funny that the UNC academic scandal was basically swept under the rug by the NCAA, who basically said that academics was not under their code of enforcement. Then, SMU (tiny little SMU) has a guy that got a free pass into SMU from the DISD and that sets the NCAA wolves off... Again, for the umpteenth time, Jerry Tarkanaian's wise words of the past ring true: "Kentucky has violated the NCAA rules, so Cleveland State is about to get hit with some serious sanctions..." Big college basketball power UNC gets nothing, while small private school SMU will probably get about 5 years of probation very soon. Jank will probably be available if we want him again in a season or two!! I do love the fact that SMU gets to see just how little their cash matters in the big picture of things.

Good find...SMU still cheating, UNT still cheap...as consistent as the sun setting in the west