untjim1995

So let them do it...I wish that the G5 wouldn't even try to cover this extra expense at all--just traditional scholarships only. Then the legalization of this corrupt monopoly can truly get publicized for all the issues that are about to follow...car dealerships giving cars away, Bob's Steak and Chophouse prices becoming the per diem for food, etc... Then the P5 media can have a field day eating up their own. The G5 needs to really band together and figure out what they want to be instead of just waiting until the P5s just officially pull away. Tell the P5s that we are willing to separate on two conditions only: the NCAA Tournaments and the College World Series don't get touched. Then, the G5/FCS should put together NFL-like spending limits for the programs (both in a floor and a ceiling) to keep this from getting way out of hand. Get a couple of networks to become your TV partners and give them full flexibility to determine games that get put on for the best slots. Make the conferences travel-friendly like the MWC and MAC already are--no more SBCUSAAC fiascos where people won't "lower" themselves to play in a conference with someone less than an hour or two away. If you don't like it, drop football (SMU)...And finally, setup a FCS playoff system to be played during December when the bowls influence keeps the P5s from playing until the last part of the month. Use this to your advantage to have college football to yourself--and then sell the hell out of the fact that this level of football is truly collegiate, not minor leagues for the NFL. You'll never compete with the P5s, but you can hope to instill in your own fanbase the pride of still being focused on student-athletes. And this isn't the Ivy League or FCS-level, either--you coordinate this to make sure that every commercial, every advertisement, every PR move hits you over the head continuously about this being full scholarship football for 85 kids. Show how those kids have used this to obtain degrees that are used today--if you want to use stories of the NFL kids that come from here, that's fine, but your truest advantage is giving kids a chance to play football for a full scholarship and how that scholarship is being used to help kids get a degree from college. What we (the G5) are doing right now is not sustainable, not a good mdoel to build on, and just fools the fans of certain programs into believing something that isn't true (looking at you UH). There are about 4-6 G5 schools who have a shot to move up the foodchain--and not one of them is in this state or region. UConn, Cincy, Boise State, UCF, USF, and Memphis are the only schools that can hope and pray the ACC or Big 12 expands and holds in its existence for decades to follow. To me, there's a better chance of the Big 12 imploding, leaving behind schools to the G5 (I'm looking at you Baylor and TCU) than they are to survive long-term. You have three valuable commodities in that conference (Texas, OU, and KU), along with four schools that are going to have options (Tech, OSU, KSU, and WVU), and three that are SOL (BU, TCU, and ISU). But no matter what happens, there are no more than 4 schools of that G5 group I listed that have any chance of moving up, of which UH, SMU, and other AAC teams not named UConn or Cincy aren't any of them. So, from there, geography plays the first role in determining your new conferences, not media markets or the "interests" of nearby schools being in the same conference (I'm looking at you SMU, La Tech, and UTEP)...To me, that is the only sustainable long-term plan you can have if you are on the outside looking in--but until the MWC, AAC, and CUSA commissioners stop fooling themselves into believing we can do the same things that the P5s are doing, then youre gonna continue to see this eventual train wreck keep moving straight toward the bridge that no longer has any tracks left for the G5 locomotive...

I actually think Herbstreit is very good at his job. And I don't blame him one bit for being a P5 apologist--they pay his checks. ESPN buys college football content for advertisers to buy time on--they pay top dollar for those P5 slots and ESPN provides lots of coverage for their moneymakers. If ESPN or any other network wants to help install equallity on the college football landscape for all of FBS, then they will change their tune on what the message is.

I really wouldn't care if the biggest 32 programs split off, as well, but politics is what keeps the next 32 or so schools connected to them. But still, split off already. Become NFL farm teams. Play in your mega conferences and stick with your 4 team playoff. The P5 media doesn't give a lick about any G5 program, even Boise...they know that they are a nice little story, but that's it. 95+% of their attention and coverage is on the P5s, of which about 85% is spent on the top 32 programs, year-in and year-out. We have already gotten used to being left behind. Very few bowl games even let the G5s play a P5 anymore--and the few that do will soon get shifted away from those matchups (Liberty Bowl comes to mind.) I just wish it would get done already. There will still be TV networks that will cover G5 football and basketball. There will still be alumni of those schools that will watch their teams play. It would be more fair, plus you have a chance to win an actual national championship, which no G5 school will ever get to do again, nor will most P5 schools either, but the money they have chosen to take has more than bought off that reality.

only to the other team...

I hate it, too, but 95% of Texas high schools run some version of the spread these days. It protects the QB and the kids love it because it is fun to play in that offense. Now, imagine how those QBs feel when they get recruited by UNT, where our offensive gameplan is from a 1975 playbook. Not only do those QBs want to play in an offense they know and are used to playing some version of from their HS days, they know that they are gonna handoff the ball here or throw lots of slants or bubble screens here, very little downfield--where INTERCEPTIONS and INCOMPLETIONS happen!! With this offense, we are gonna have to pray we find a Scott Hall type of leader, a guy who can play a busdriver role fairly well. Thompson wasn't as good as Hall, and McNulty isn't as good as Thompson. Beyond this, the QBs you are gonna see coming here aren't going to be big-time passers--other schools are going to use the Dickey offense that we run against us if we even talk to a decent passer. But if you find the right guy, Hall was certainly that guy for sure, to run this style of offense, you can have one gritty QB that is just a great leader of your whole team--and he doesn't make bad mistakes so the running game and a dominating defense can win games for you. We saw that in the 2001-2004 run, as well as in 2013. But if the QB is not a bus driver, but instead freelances and takes chances, guys like Dickey and McCarney aren't gonna put up with them. As we realized in 2005-2006 and last year, if the defense isn't there, this type of offense cannot win much for you. It only wins if the defense is stout and the special teams is solid.

I agree with your paragraph completely--but I think McNulty will win that job because he will drive Mac's bus better than anyone else, due to having Mac's trust. He tried everyone else on the roster to be the bus driver for his offense last year, but finally settled on Minimac for the final 7 games of the season, then told everyone at the end of the season that McNulty was gonna be the leader int he clubhouse for being the starter in 2015. McNulty is who McCarney wants as his QB--responsible, nice, understanding, etc...he's basically the exact opposite of Greer and DW.

If we were playing FCS ball right now, would we be comparable in success to what Sam Houston has done recently?

McNulty will start here--he is DMac's guy. He trust MiniMac, loves his busdriver mentality, and most importantly, doesn't have any trust in anyone else on the roster to run his offense. There is absolutely no question that Dajon Williams had the most potential to grow into a great QB, but his inabilities to grasp the responsibiltiy was a mortal sin in Mac's eyes. That really is too bad, because if there was ever a season that we as fans could've handled losing out but seeing DW gain valuable experience, this past year was it. Instead, we got Derek Thompson 2.0, which by the way, will be the big promotion of McNulty as we move into the spring, summer, and fall--"He is just like Derek, who, of course, was the HoD Bowl MVP, as a Senior..." , which just ignores the reality that Derek Thompson 1.0 was better than version 2.0 ever has been or will be. The original version had an awesome defense and awesome special teams to work with, which version 2.0 doesn't have, but needs even more than 1.0 did. This juco QB will be Minimac's backup--he will get groomed for next season's bus driver du jour. Dajon Williams will transfer to a FCS school if he wants to play football still. Greer will transfer to a Division 2 or 3 school or just finish up his degree and move on, knowing he will never get consideration for this job again. The others are competing to become Mac's Bus Driver in 2017--assuming that the new juco QB can play in Mac's system. We will win 3-4 games next year (Portland State + 2 or 3 wins over CUSA teams and SMU). We literally could go 1-11, but Mac is here for two years after this, bare minimum. This upcoming season, for fans, just needs to be about seeing the lines get experience and strength, as well as to see a running back emerge as the main guy (J. Wilson looks the part right now). To me, the absolute earliest that we can hope to get back to .500 or better is 2016 at the earliest. It took Mac two years to build up Dodge's team into a winner, so I suspect it will take at least that much to build this thing back up into a winner again, especially with Version 2.0 as the QB this season. In all honesty, progress for me will be to get to 4 wins, two of which would be over freaking UTSA and UTEP here. Right now, we are literally giving kids we should try to compete for in recruiting every reason to go to UTSA, Texas State, UTEP, etc...when we cannot beat the two Texas public CUSA teams (Texas State uses that against us, too, even though they are in the SBC). So beating UTEP and UTSA would be proof we are at least progressing in the right direction. SMU will be horrible, as well, so we should be able to compete with them, even if its in Dallas as our "alternative" home game. Really, if SMU beats us early in the season, with what little talent they have on their roster right now, I would argue that we may not win more than 2 games all year--that's a very real possibility. To me, Portland State and SMU represent our two most likely wins next year.

Like their faculty when they found out that their healthcare costs are rising just like everyone else's? Sorry--that was Eagles Nest level BS...I will ban myself.

If I read that list correctly, we are the 382nd largest endowment in North America...with a top 30 enrollment and an existence of 125 years now. If any statistic just screams "diploma mill", it is this one. Its just stunning how much of a disconnect there has been between our alumni and the university that they got their degree from. To me, its almost as if the university just has to focus on graduates of the last 20 years to see if they can turn them into major donors in the coming decades. If you graduated from here before 1995, its almost as if you graduated from one of the largest community colleges in the world. I still cannot believe that a university of the size it has been for so long has such an amazingly low endowment. You almost have to try to keep it that low--like any effort at all could've bumped the thing up substantially over the last 50 years. Only in Denton...

Here's the thing about these fees for athletics--the free market will dictate if that is going to hold or if they will have to do something different. If ODU sees a massive transfer of students out, then they will have to changetheir policy. BUt if they don't, then that's on the students. ODU is looking at this the way I think a lot of schools do--if we win in football or basketball, the amount of money that comes in through alumni donations will be huge. I really have no problem with their tact--its the polar opposite of ours, but their university is placing a huge amount of investment on the student body to make this a national window into their school. Time will tell if it will work or if the student body will leave them behind. Of course, the VA legislature is full of Cavs and Hokies, so this might be a nice way to weaken a good size football school in a fairly large state before it gets any traction.

What could possibly be the reasons for this? I mean, really, how bad would you have to be to get this kind of description? Its not like Ramon Flanigan or Darrell Dickey are recruiting here anymore to tell you how bad you are or how bad the school is becuase you work there EVERYDAY... Sometimes I wonder if North Texas comes up in this stuff because they are always pestering thsee coaches as to why their kids keep running away from us or won't consider us--if that is the case, the only thing left to do is to win just to show these HS coaches that we really are different than before. If its for any other reason (not visbile enough, not friendly enough, etc..), from a fan's point of view, there's just nothing else we can do but just wait until it all goes up in flames (again) at the affordable time in the future.

Its hard for me to imagine that the entire staff is full of poor recruiters. I think that the recruiting game in this area of the country is so competitive, its really hard to convince these coaches and the parents that we are serious about football when the budget comes from p5 ass-kickings, that we are still thought of as the team that dropped down to i-aa and stayed down, and we have had all of 4 winning seasons since 1995. I do think that recruiting may not be the best attribute of the coaches on this staff--it appears that coaching/teaching are more in their lines of strength. What is great about this is that you can usually get a great team when you get a lot of seniors on your team. Obviously, though, you are having to coach up and build up players, so you are talking about years for that to take place. Just as it took two years of losing to build up the Dodge pieces into a 9-win, HoD Bowl Champion, I suspect that it will be similar now to what is most likely the earliest we will see a winner here again, in two more years. Next year, I am 100% certain that McNulty will be the QB. The defense will be bigger and more experienced, but aren't ready to be a dominant aspect of our team, yet. So, 2016 is what you have to look to as the most reasonable season to expect a winner again, in my opinion. The biggest roadblock to 2016, though, is that you won't have an experienced busdriver QB there, assuming McNulty starts all of 2015, which I think is very certain, as well. in 2016, you'd have a brand new QB, who probably won't get much trust from the coaches, just as we have seen in every QB we have had under Coach Mac. But with a veteran runner in Wilson, an Oline that will get rebuilt this upcoming season and should hopefully be ready to play better in 2016, and a defense that will have been rebuilt for two years, I suspect 2016 is when we can hope to get back to 6+ wins. Here is the good news for anyone who we are recruiting right now: I think the redshirt freshmen and true freshmen will get playing time a lot this season. This upcoming season will be completely about competition for playing time at every single position, save for kicker. Its why I realistically think 3-4 wins is reasonable. I think we will win the Portland State game and 2-3 others in CUSA games and SMU. La Tech, USM, UTSA, UTEP, and Rice all appear to be in better shape right now than we are, but we should be able to beat one of them. Depending on who we get from CUSA East, that is where I think we get the other 1-2 wins. If you see us getting back to 6+ wins, I'd love to know how--the QB play is bad, the defense is just small and learning to play, and the OL is starting over. That isn't a recipe for a winner, much less a bowl team...

She is smart enough to know that if she marries this guy, she'll be entitiled to half of whatever a dumb NFL team will foolishly pay this idiot

Exactly. SMU was the worst FBS team I have ever seen us play at home--even worse than some of those WKU teams that Dodge beat. Nicholls State was the worst football team I have ever seen us play...period. Beyond that, we beat F_Us, who are the most schizophrenic programs in the SBCUSA--you never know what you are getting with either of those two programs and barely lost (again) to UTSA. La Tech, USM, UAB, UTEP, Rice, Indiana, and Texas literally used us as a hydrant. We lost to those 7 teams by an average of 23 points. Not a one of those teams was a great team by any means--some may have been ok or even good, but just as many were not good to just bad, as well...

I wonder if Mac just didn't listen to anyone who gave him a "realistic" view of the expectations of the football program here or if he was misled into believing this was a USF/UCF starter kit just needing the right coach to take the bull by the horns. It is still so strange to me to see him go from uber positive for 3+ years to Darrell Dickey reincarnated--that is what has me rattled about him still. If he does become the 2.0 version od Dickey off the field (he already is on the field), I just wonder how many more fans are going to just turn around and go away, never to be heard from again. That, to me, is the biggest worry I have for the program right now. Coach Mac isn't going anywhere--he knows it, the admin knows it, the AD knows it, and the monied fans know it. That should be a positive, but the reality is that a negative coach really does burn bridges quickly--we saw Dickey's career go up in smoke as soon as we could afford (or chose to afford) to can him. If you know that the end of the 2017 season is the earliest point that a new coach could get in here, it makes it even more important that the current coach not bemoan and generally discredit this place.

Good stuff here--I tend to agree with TI Green on a lot of what he says, as well as SilverEagle, too. I think the answer is really a combo of both. We aren't high on the totem pole, have absolutely no reputation in the DFW area for being anything other than as a loser that gets bought for wins by the P5s, and we generally don't play anyone that the general fan wants to watch. But the coaches have found gems over the years and have seen them develop, just like the other G5 programs have done. What has surprised me the most is that McCarney--until halfway thru this miserable season--was a breath of fresh air when you heard him talk about the potential here at UNT. The recruiting hotbed, the facilities, the academics, etc...he was like a kid in the candy store, trying to figure out what he wanted, believeing that no matter what he wanted was going to be great. But then he went to go buy the candy, only to find it was already bought by someone else, that it wasn't for sale, or that the candy he thought he was buying turned out to not taste as good. And that finally has led him to blame the candy store, not himself for not choosing better. I really believe he thought this was going to much easier to sell than it has been. But the fact that his offense is dull as dishwater and we aren't winning just keeps us in the status quo with recruits and their parents and coaches. I don't know that we can ever really get out of this "groundhog day" loop we are in with Coach Mac at the helm, but it doesn't matter if we can or can't--he's gonna be here for at least 3 more season, if not more.

Its kind of interesting that no one really knows or cares if we could beat NDSU...my guess is that we couldn't.

It won't happen because the non P-5 need the cash--their ADs and administrators look at the P5s to pay their athletic budgets for the year. If that dries up, theya re going to actually ahve to get creative in how to fund their departments. The G5 and FCS top end programs would make for a fine division of football, but they are holding out as long as possible before the rug gets finally pulled out from underneath them financially from the P5s....

Speaking of UAB, here's a funny note. They just extended their basketball coach, Jerod Haase, out for two more years at $525k per season. Here's the kicker--in the contract, it explicitly says that he cannot make public any criticism of UAB school administrators. If we think UNT has no clue on how to run athletics, UAB is much worse than us...

I just look at the AP Top 25 poll and see three G5 schools in there, one of whom (Boise State) is closer to being a P5 school than anyone else out there. Then the bones get thrown to Marshall and Memphis for their nice seasons. I'm not certain on this, but I believe that Marshall is the first team that UNT has played in a conference with that finished ranked at the end of the season, at least as far back as I know of. I don't remember if Rice was ranked at the end of last year, but I'm assuming not since they got run over in their bowl game.

Could we beat NDSU right now or at anytime in the last 4 years? If we were FCS, how would we have done? Would we have any different crowds if we won big as a FCS program like Sam Houston has in the last few years?

How much of that was Dodge being thought of as an offensive guru than being a great recruiter, though?

I know that this recruiting season has been very tough (again) for us. Obviously, I hope we can get some decent recruits in before signing day, but my question goes back to what Brett Vito asked in the fall--why is it so hard to recruit here? I am very interested to hear the answers. Other than Todd Dodge's first few years here, as well as Dickey's one year wonder in stealth recruiting, we genrally suck at the recuriting game. I figure its because Texas HS coaches and parents have only known UNT Football as a loser for so long that they don't take our school's staff(s) seriously--if they do commit here, its often only to wait for another school up the college football ladder to also offer. UNT offers a college town, just outside of DFW, with a pretty good academic standard and a lot of degree options, as well as some of the best facilities in G5 football. Is this all on McCarney and his staff now, since he has the facilities and a better conference to recruit to that the previous coaches never had? Is it on the university's leadership, who haven't done much to help change the perception of UNT Football? Or is it on Denton for not being that interested in UNT Sports historically and just being too close to home for DFW recruits, who often want to go further away for their college experience? I get the old SWC teams getting the best of us these days (still) in recruiting, but its the SBCUSA teams that I don't get. It just seems like it doesn't matter if we have an offensive-minded coach or a defensive-minded coach, our recruiting almost always is terrible compared to the other G5 schools.

So 2014 key contributor list of freshmen was led by a kicker (great kid, but never a good sign if he is the best impact palyer from your class) and the 5th best was a juco QB that couldn't keep the job after 3 games? No wonder we sucked so bad this year...