untjim1995

Last year, I said that if we didn't have a winner in place within the next 5 years, that I was gonna call it quits. After all, in the 23 seasons previous to 2013 as a fan, I had seen all of three good years of winning FBS football, 2002-2004, when we played the newbies and dregs of I-A football at the time in the old SBC. Other than that, it had been 20 years of mostly pathetic football at a university that clearly shows that they have zero interest in being a winner. But then, out of nowhere, 2013's magical season occurs. We go 9-4 in CUSA, win the HoD Bowl convincingly in front of 40k Mean Green fans, and extend Mac for turning things around. The slate was clean, again. They did what I asked of them, which was to just act like a program that cared about winning football and rewarding those who made it happen. But it is stuff like this--poor scheduling of OOC opponents, having an "alternative" home game at someone else's stadium 45 minutes away (when traffic isn't bad, I might add), keeping the student fee way below the state-mandated level that traditional powerhouses like Lamar, Texas State, and UTSA fully take advantage of, and then the worst of all, the building of a great new stadium only to watch teams come here that toilet-bowl Fouts could still host quite easily today--it all just beats me down. I drew my line in the sand as a fan last year and watched the program do what I asked. I have now given 25 years to this place as a student, alum, and fan. I've been rewarded with exactly 5 winning seasons, 4 of which are at the FBS level since 1995. I'm just amazed at the patience (or masochism) of those who graduated in the deacdes before I did in 1995 and still actually care about this place. Most years, I feel like I do right now--like I have completely wasted my time and money. But because of last year's great renaissance season, I feel compelled to keep moving forward, against my better judgement, to see where we go from here. Hell, I'm even at the point of being fine with just being in a pseudo-i-aa setup again, just to see if we can compete for championships in football. That's how much I want to see us win. But there is absolutely nothing from the university's BOR, chancellor, or administration that makes me believe they even care about winning football at all, much less care about it more than I do. And, to me, watching a school go from a toilet bowl of a stadium to a great one in Apogee, from playing in the SBC 1.0 to the SBC 2.0, and from hiring a HS coach to one who actually has been a good head coach in the past, as greatly improved as that is, you still cannot tell me you are about winning football if you schedule 5 games (or less) at home and that you make it clear that buyouts aren't anything to even consider until there is no more than 1 year left on a contract (this is more on hoops than it is on football right now, but the Dodge fiasco stays in my mind here). Its just that we know that if 2015 and 2016 look like 2014 has, that there is zero doubt that McCarney will coach in 2017, just because it would cost to buy him out. Trust me, by the way, I don't want any of this to even have to be debated--I hope and actually believe Mac will get this turned around by 2016, if not sooner. But even he knows that he has until 2017 to turn this around--hell, he could always announce he wants to retire in 2018 and the school would keep him until the end of that contract just to save money. When cost is what you care about the most, quality always suffers--it really doesn't matter if its a house, education, car, food, etc..--if you promote cost as your best attribute, you attract cheapskates, both in customers and in employees. To me, that's the biggest issue we have today, athletically speaking. We view the entire athletic department as a cost, not in terms of revenue.

Real quick--name the other FBS school in America that could end up having 4 home games on a 12 game schedule in 2015? Not that we will, but if we do, that would have to put as in rare air as far as being the only FBS program to have 4 home games...Al Hurley and Craig Helwig would have loved that kind of foresight for UNT Football!!

So MVSU is where Craig Helwig decided to start again as an athletic director...

UNT90 told us this would happen, that we would only have 5 home games next year, and it will be a FCS game, most likely. But with that said, can you only imagine how many season tickets are gonna get sold for next year's home schedule? I cannot wait to hear about the increase in season ticket holders that the AD will have to handle for 2015!! As a bonus, you get the opportunity to also add a neutral-site gaem in Dallas against SMU, too!!

You won't have to worry about Means and mistakes next year. He will get mop up time at the most, just like McNulty got lst year behind DT all year long.

Greer and DW will transfer out. Their days at UNT will be over as soon as the final exams are finished, if not sooner. Greer could probably get a starting job at a bad FCS program right now, one that needs an infusion of new blood at that position, say a NIcholls State-type team. Dajon is the real question mark. Ic ould see him transferring somewhere like Texas State, where he would be a great fit for Franchione's QB-option offense. Or he, too, could go the FCS route, so as to not lose a year for transferring to another FBS team. McNulty will start in 2015, with Means as the main backup. McNulty is Mac's guy--its beyond obvious at this point. He has stuck with him as the starter for the last half of the season, knowing full well that he is getting great bus-driving experience. Next year, its gonna be shoved down our throats that Minimac is ready to be the next DT, in print or on broadcasts.

I cannot see anyway possible that Dajon Williams is a UNT student after this season. He will never play here again. Whatever he did to get in Mac's doghouse off the field, he didn't do anything to keep him out of the doghouse going forward on the field. I just think Mac thinks the kid is immature and isn't a leader and isn't willing to give him a break. If DW stuck around for another 3 years and didn't cause any problems, he MIGHT get a chance to start again under Coach Mac. But I'm sure DW and his parents are already talking to FCS schools to transfer to immediately to play or to some other school that thinks they could turn him into something after a transfer year takes away a year of eligibility. I would be just astounded to see him decide to stay here. This offense has zero translation to his skill set, in my opinion.

This is just like a late November game at Fouts during the losing Dickey years again, although I'll take Apogee and McCarney every day of the week over the other two. If we have been good, a game in November has gotten decent attendance, like NMSU in 2002 or UTEP last year, if the weather is good. If not, all bets are off (see UTSA last year). When we are meh, though, or just awful, we get crowds that look like Saturday. I think about NMSU in 2000, WKU in 2007, and MUTS in 2011--all four of those games combined probably couldn't get to you to 10,000 butts in seats. I've been watching UNT Football since 1990. Its been a Groundhog Day experience for the most part in those 25 football seasons--we have had 5 winning seasons in 1994, 2002-2004, and 2013. The other 20 seasons have been spread out like this, pending the next game which will probably be a loss at UTSA---4 seasons with 5 wins, 5 seasons with 4 wins (assuming UTSA wins this weekend), 4 seasons with 3 wins, 6 seasons with 2 wins, and 1 with 1 win. Winning four conference championships in a row didn't change anything once we started losing again in 2005. Winning a bowl game in your backyard with a great PR coach hasn't changed anything, either, once the losing begins again. The general fan isn't going to give 4-5 hours of time to a local team that is losing and playing a team that no one cares about in November. There are too may other games on tv that are appealing to the college football fan to battle poor weather or losing teams playing at home. And UNT students and alumni are, by and large, just general fans--they don't have any rooting interest in UNT unless they are winning or playing someone that they care to go watch in November (see K-State in 2010). Since 1990, the average UNT fan has seen 5 i-aa seasons and 20 1-A (FBS) seasons. They have seen us go to 5 bowl games, win 2 of them, and in OOC play when playing teams people usually care about, we have beaten Oregon State, Texas Tech twice, Baylor, and SMU twice. That's 6 wins against teams people have heard of and care about around DFW, 4 of which occurred in Denton. What we need, we cannot get, which is a home game against a big P5 school, in a year that we are also actually good. From 2002-2004 and in 2013, we beat NIcholls State (2002), Baylor (2003), Idaho and Ball State (2013). Baylor was an awesome game, but they were just amazingly terrible. Imagine if we had played a team like Baylor or Tech at Apogee last season when we were good, just how much buzz that would've created? Scheduling is tough in general because it is so far out that games get booked, but when you schedule Texas Southern, Idaho, Nicholls State, and Incarnate Word, you create zero buzz for your fanbase you are supposed to be trying to appeal to. Instead, even winning those games doens't help you draw a fly for a home game in November against a SBCUSA opponent when the weather isn't usually great. Call them excuses, but that's what you get with apathy...

That was always CUSAs built-in excuse to tell UNT why they weren't getting in and UTEP was. The real reason was simply because SMU was already here and they backed La Tech for membership, not the big state university up the road in the same market. If we were already building Apogee in 2002 back then, the officals at CUSA would've still come up with an excuse--that it wasn't ready, that we were still not attractive enough because UTEP had a nice market to themselves, etc... Don't ever fall for that stadium excuse back then. CUSA 2.0 never wanted us back then. They had SMU for a DFW presence. And SMU was never going to share this market with us.

so far, we've done exactly what I thought we would do--beat three nobodies at home, lose to the one decent team we have played. With this 3-1 start we should end up at 6-2 after we finish off our home OOC (loss to Creighton),plus 4 losses on the road against Arkansas, Oklahoma State, SFA, and Texas Tech, which will get us at 6-6 before CUSA play. The 6 wins would be at home against Arkansas-Monticello, Nicholls State, Delaware State, Mississippi Valley State, Langston, and Prairie View A&M. If we can find 9 wins in CUSA play and one in the CUSA tournament, that gets us a 15-15 record, which would be .500 and match last season's .500 record. That should be enough for the monied alums on this board and around the university to give RV the OK to extend him out a few years. Just watch...RV is gonna take care of his hire, here. I have no doubt about this at all.

He's gonna be our starter in 2015, barring injury...

This is absolutely what it was like to watch a Dickey coached offense when he didn't have a great defense. Just give up on third down because it chewed up a minute plus to run a draw on 3rd and 10 and then punt. You'll never convince normal college football fans that this offense is good for a program from a marketing standpoint, it only works fine if you have a great defense and a solid special teams. Dodge's spread offense drive us crazy, because he couldn't make it work inside the 20, but he had no defense at all to help that offense. But the good that it did was get people out to the game to be entertained somewhat. For the umpteenth time, at UNT, it's gotta be boring-ass offense or full-throttle kick-ass offense, with no middle ground at all. It's so frustrating. It's the same mentality of let's get in the SWC, but if not, then let's destroy the program by not trying anymore. So biporal...

I don't see how he won't be the starter next year. McCarney obviously prefers him as his QB. Don't know why, but is obvious that Minimac is his guy. And 2015 should be a 3 win team with him as your starting QB.

On tv, it looks like there about 200 people there as we get ready to Go to the 4th quarter

Remeber, not only does he have a job, it got EXTENDED recently by the BOR after all of this happened. This isn't on Rick Perry, its on the BOR at UNT...

Ben Gooding, this is a perfect example of why I told you that you would join the ranks of the beaten down UNT alum as time goes on...we have almost no fanbase, yet the ones that we do have love that it is small and they can rub elbows with RV and the BOR. That circle of fans thinks that you or anyone else who complains is a terrible fan, that a real UNT fan should just enjoy playing Florida International at home in November in the rain in SBCUSA play for the right to finish 4-8 or 3-9. They think its just great that we got SMU scheduled for the next decade, that playing Texas Southern, NIcholls State, and Incarnate Word is just fine for OOC games at a brand new stadium. Basically, eveything this school does regarding funding, advertising, and hiring for the athletic department is literally 30 years behind the times. All of the improvements we have seen in the last five years should have been done in 1981, not 2011. Getting a home-and-home with SMU today is a tad different from getting a home-and-home with SMU in 1981. SO, that 's why we are where we are athletically speaking. 30 years ago, when we should've doing what we are doing now, we were apparently trying to kill the program. Today, knowing all that we know about the current landscape of college football, paying $78 million to build a stadium that frankly doesn't bring in any crowd or team that decrepit Fouts could've handled is eventually going to catch up to the administration and BOR. And it will glorious when it does--because the irony of them never funding athletics more than a few crumbs for decades to please the clear majority of people who are anti-athletics at the university will probably get someone fired for actually having to oversee Apogee being built on the backs of the student body who voted for it. And, speaking of 30 years ago, the NCAA forced us and others like us to choose between 1-aa or nothing at all in 1982. Again, how ironic, that 30+ years later, that same equivalent, the P5s splitting off, is upon us again. If we had done something right when we should have in 1982 to get things back in order, maybe, just maybe, we are not in this situation. Maybe we actually built a winner at the i-a level while the SWC fell apart from their cheating scandals. Maybe North Texas would've looked a bit more impressive to other conferences back then, as well as within the last decade. But it would've cost money--and that dear gmg.com posters--is the turd in the punchbowl to this place. We ain't paying a dime more than we have to as far as athletics goes--never have, never will. So when you hear windbag alums griping about who has the biggest package in their pants and how its a clownshow around here amongst you peasants, know that they have the BOR's ears and the AD's heart. And that's how a 37k enrollment school, with hundreds of thousands of alumni within an area that millions reside in, cannot draw more than 20k regualrly to its football games.

There has to be a middle ground between coach-speak and the reality of what the coach is trying to say about the program. I think Dan McCarney is a fine football coach, someone who you would be glad to have as your head coach, just because of his PR ability. He uses coach-speak alot--but I believe that he also tells the truth. Again, if a guy like Dan McCarney, who for three years has been nothing but motivational, positive, and inspiring when talking to the public about the future here at UNT with the football program, all of a sudden becomes a Darrell Dickey clone, you have to ask yourself why that has happened. To me, the reasons are varied--some of them are completely on Mac or his staff, some are completely on the school and its apathetic history. His offense is boring. It has zero appeal to a decent throwing QB or one who can make plays with their feet. He wants a busdriver. Plus, for his offense to work, he has to have a strong line--which is supposed to be his strength and was supposed to be a strength this year. But an OL is kinda like a bullpen in baseball--previous results are not indicative of future results because they are a year-to-year proposition. His defenses are hard-hitters if they get decent pressure from the front seven, but that again goes to development. Like it or not, this is the reality of our situation. Zero stars, 1-stars, 2-stars, and a few 3-stars are your recruits. They have to be built up and developed. We don't get the luxury of reloading here. Why? Because recruits aren't jumping up and down to come here. All they have ever known about UNT, if anything, is that we aren't in a P5 league or the AAC. They are then told about the losing, the apathy, and the fact that we are still thought of as a "commuter" school. What we know is that a new stadium, a new experienced head coach, a more recognized conference affiliation, and a bowl win in our backyard still isn't enough for us to avoid the beating of having seasons with 3-4 wins. I think its a reality that next year isn't going to be much better here than this season. We are gonna have to aim for 2016 at the earliest for the development to be enough to get back to a bowl game. We either have a QB who obviously cannot play FBS football as the starter next year (McNulty) or we have a new QB having to learn how to be a busdriver. That alone won't get us to .500, unless the defensive front seven is just awesome, which I don't think we will be at that level by next season. 2016 would be the year to look at as a potential winning season--assuming we have a QB that can play FBS football and isn't learning on the job. If McNulty starts all of next year, as I suspect he will, then it may very well be 2017 before we have a chance to get back to being a bowl team, since you would have a brand new QB learning the busdriver role that Mac demands. A decent defense next year, with subpar QB play, or vice versa, gets you 3-5 wins with our schedule. One bought win, plus 2-4 wins over SMU and CUSA foes, gets you to that figure. If you have a solid busdriver in place and a defense that has been developed into a strong unit, both physically and mentally, with a typical CUSA schedule, 2016 would be my bet to get back to 7-9 wins again, but that's also hoping against hope that McNulty isn't the starter again next year. I'd rather us have a true freshman at QB who plays in HS right now than McNulty or Greer. I'm just praying that a new OC who can actually judge QB talent will see something in Means and he will be our starter next year. If he cannot play and we go with McNulty all year with no defensive improvement, we won't win 3 games next year. The only reason we have won 3 games this year is because we had SMU, who is having their worst season ever and we bought a win over a terrible FCS school.

Mario Cristobal turned down Pitt after coaching FIU to a bowl win, raising a program up from the ashes. He was rewarded for that loyalty to FIU and turning down a hefty raise by getting fired two years later.

Ron Mendoza? Too soon, I know...its only been 7 years since our DC would coach here for a year and then become a position coach at a 4A high school.

There is no way that McNulty isn't the starter next year. We will be sold hard that "McNulty is a lot like Derek Thompson was at this stage of his career. You know, Derek? The guy who led us to 9 wins and was MVP of the HoD Bowl in front of 40,000 fans at the Cotton Bowl on New Years Day? JUst like Thompson, McNulty is very smart, he knows the playbook, and he won't turn the ball over. " This is as easy to see happening as to hear RV telling us that SMU is a really just a 6th home game because of all of the UNT alumni and fanbase situated within an hour of SMUs campus. I think you will see the following in 2015--Dajon will be playing at an FCS somewhere, Greer will either do that, too, or will be sitting on the bench, Means will be your backup (since he is just too damn young to be trusted with this offense), and McNulty will be your starter. I don't how anyone can look at Dan McCarney's time here and think anything else. There is no way he isn't the starter here next year. He started DT over Berglund, when the ceiling for Berglund was supposed to be the sky (he was a bust). He now starts McNulty over Dajon because DW lost any faith Mac ever had in him after that UAB debacle. I've posted this several times, but it was as clear as day to me that DW would never start another football game here--and he hasn't. He should've never been benched, period, but he has burned the birdge with McCarney so bad that he won't even get a sniff again, ever. 2015 is dependent on two things and they are what you should always expect out of our team when we have a decent team--we run the ball well and we defend well. If we go back to next year still not being able to stop anyone or put pressure on the QB, we win maybe 4 games. If we cannot even try to give the other teams' defenses a reason to not put 9 people in the box, we will win about 3 games. This year is our 2005 redux season--we went 2-9 after a solid year, with poor QB play and a defense that had lost all of its playmakers and replaced them with parts that never became anything special. The following season, in 2006, we went 3-9, including what felt like a 75-OT win that would have been better off being a tie to put everyone out of their misery. If McNulty is your QB, the defense isn't anything better, and the special teams don't set us apart from the other teams, I don't see us doing anything but going 3-9 next season, at best. The real question is if this year is the bottoming out season, if next year is the bottoming out, or if we go full-bore into a Dickey-and-Dodge-esque dive again. One thing is certain, though--McCarney will be here for all of it, no matter what.

In the DMN this morning, the article quoted Scott Davis as saying that Corky helped save the program, that "North Texas was looking at dropping football and he steered us through that timeframe when we went down to i-aa.". Has anyone else ever heard that we were considering dropping football in 1982? I just assumed the i-aa drop was forced on us and we gladly accepted because the costs would be lower. But did the administration and BOR want football to fail and go away in that i-aa fiasco? It makes sesnse to me if that was the thought of that timeframe and why they wouldn't even try to give the program any funding, but I had never heard that before...

I just think we need an offense where the QB can make plays with his arm as much as he can by just handing the ball off. When 95% of the QBs in this state play glorified flag football, going to an offense where Andrew McNulty is the starter because he drives the bus the way we want is gonna just keep you in the same boat we have been in since 1995, sans Giovanni Vizza. That said, the problem here is the defense is a sieve right now. If our OL blocked better, maybe we could control the clock more and keep the woeful defense off the field--no doubt that would help. But our defense cannot stop any team with a below average offense. They have to be "as-bad-as-offensive-football-can-ever-be" bad for us to win.

You'll learn...I thought those same things in the 90s and the early 00's. Here we are, in the heart of Texas, with just two little ol SWC private schools to compete with--we are about to become huge now the school has decided to move up to I-A!! Then, we kept scheduling Murderers Row every year in OOC for football, so no coach could win here. And we got laughed at as we talked about gaining admittance into a conference with anyone that DFW citizens care about. And the school paid bare bones to any coaching staff, even going as far as to hire a majotiy of high school coaches to be a staff since it was cheap.. And refused to buy out a contract when it has been abundantly clear for years that the guy cannot win here. I've been on your path before--young, optimistic, nothing but life ahead of you...then you turn the corner and UNT reality hits you right in the face. You realize all the taunts you got for being a UNT sports fan from all of the Longhorn fans, Aggie fans, Tech fans, OU fans, etc...(all of whom went to UNT, by the way) were the easiest words ever spoken by a college sports fan. You realize that you've basically walked around with a "Kick Me, I'm a Mean green Fan and very naive!!" sign on your ass and it has caused a lot of hurt over the years and decades. Then, one day, you won't know when it will happen, you'll realize that expecting a legitimate winner here, even at the G5 level of play, might be a bet you aren't willing to take. You'll watch the games and look for some opportunity to talk college football with your buddies at work or at church, but only when you aren't completely demoralized--so basically, you've enjoyed 2002-2004 and 2013 since we went up to I-A in 1995. Otherwise, you start getting used to comments like "You guys even care about football?", "You all should just go back to playing D-2 or whatever level SFA is at..."or my personal favorite, "Man, if you guys played us in jazz or in sculpting, you'd kick our ass..." That's when your expectations won't be quite so high...

What people at a lot of places ought to fear is the big P5 giant(s) in their state making the same thing happen to the G5s in their state. How hard it is to imagine a UT BOR member with major clout in Austin pulling Lee Jackson aside and telling him that he would have funding tomorrow for anything he wanted at UNT-Dallas if UNT-Denton would drop football back down to FCS or lower? Not that I know why they would care, but its the smae thought I have about Alabama caring about UAB, too.

I think the point about what the coaches realize when they get here and coach for a few years is really astute. We don't care about winning here--the fanbase nor the school demand it. We just don't. For a guy like McCarney, who obviously thought this was a USF program ready to be built up, he never realized in a hundred years that Texas HS coaches and parents have minimal interest (at best) in sending their kids up here to play. He never thought it would be so hard to build up a fanbase at a college in the South, much less in Texas. Whether he was oversold or he just didn't do enough due diligence on the job, it is rather apparent that this has just really hit him hard. We just gotta hope that the uber positive and motivational McCarney shows back up again. Its one thing to not get the Texas HS coaches and recruits to buy into your system, meaning you have to take the tact of developing the talent up from the bottom which takes a few years. But if you lose the few diehards we have around here by pulling out more Dickey-esque lines to the media and fans, he'll see what a hard job looks like--because we will have crowds like we will this week against FIU (really small) become the norm again in the years to come. At that point, all he'll have is a team full of Rudy's...no talent, no size, very little skill.