untjim1995

I still think the extension was warranted and necessary for a few reasons. One, as bad as we have been here, and as horrible as recruiting has been, imagine what it would look like around here if we had just wont he HoD Bowl after his thrid year of a 5 year contract, and still didn't extend him. Every other coach we recruit against would be saying that they don't care about winning up there, that they wouldn't even reward the current coach with even one year extra for winning a bowl game. Two, he would be going into his make or break season of the contract, the 4th year of 5, where he would either have to get extended or get fired, since no one is going to say yes to coming here with a coach going into his last year of his contract, full well knowing that he is probably looking to go somewhere else or he is gonna get fired. What we have to hope for here is that Coach Mac finds his positivity again and that he can again get people to llok differently at North Texas Football. He has a few years to accomplish this. I don't think he is a guy who will accept this situation lightly. I expect big changes at OC and within the other positions on the staff. I do think he knows recruiting has to pick up--even if it means hitting the jucos hard, which isn't great, but it beats getting HS players that literally are not offered by any other FBS schools or by other SBCUSA schools only. It sucks right now for sure, but I am beginning to come to the realization that this is the only thing we can hope for--that Coach Mac gets back into full development mode again, gets rid of the OC who obviously cannot judge QB talent at all, and finds his positivity again to sell to the recruits and their families and HS coaches. If this doesn't happen, we are about to go back to 2005 and 2006 around here all over again, just for a few more years than DIckey got at the end of his tenure.

I'd bet that McNulty will start next year...Greer or WIlliams won't be here, but Mini Mac will be. And he'll be sold to everyone as the next Derek Thompson--a senior QB that will manage the offense. Just wait...

The truth hurts...

I agree with your last sentence. Texas is setting a floor here, but its a floor they know that the members of their conference can still pay. They know it will help them all in recruiting and in PR, both in the media and with legislators. The less fortunate P5 schools, in terms of budget, can still easily afford to pay $10k to each student just off of their conference TV money, much less any other stream of revenue they get. The Tech's of the world can pay $10k knowing that they get $25 million in revenues from TV, bowls, conference funding, etc... And there are way more Tech's of the world in the P5 than there are teams like Texas. Texas knows this all to well--they aren't going to rile up the P5 ranks against them.

TCU had to be taken because of who left and they were easy to get--plus the BIg XII north schools wanted another Texas team to replace A&M for recruiting. A DFW team was better for them than anyone in Houston. TCU and WVU were able to get into the league with very little issue, plus they accepted graded payouts over thier first few years int he league, instead of full payouts. The SEC isn't taking a private school in DFW. Or in Texas--it doesn't add one cent to their cable payout by getting another Texas team. I could see them going after OU and KU, but nothing in Texas. They want new TV markets that can be added for the SEC Network to get in-state rates. North Carolina and Virginia are the prizes here, since they aren't in those states--yet. The SEC is the alpha dog right now, and the B1G is next, only becuase of the CIC research money their schools get. Texas, Tech, and Baylor want absolutely nothing to do with being in a conference again with UH. They could barely handle taking TCU, but they were cheap, eager to join without a big penalty to pay, and they made the northern schools happy to get another opponent in the state of Texas. Hell, DeLoss Dodds didn't even know who TCUs AD, Chris del Conte, was when he showed up to visit with him about joining the conference, but he kissed Deloss' ring and they made it work. And, yes, as they always have done, Tech is just riding those Longhorn coattails to wherever they can follow them.

Are you satisfied with the direction of the basketball program after the first two seasons of being coached by Tony Benford? If so, why? If not, what would make you tell the AD and the BOR that you are ready for a change?

One--Dan McCarney

The best G5 school won't get into the college football playoff, but they will get a guaranteed slot in one of the non-playoff BCS Bowl games. Most likely, ECU will play the big XII champion in the Fiesta bowl, just as UCF did last year against Baylor. The playoff will feature, if things hold the way I think they will, FSU, Michigan State, Oregon, and the SEC champ.

Exactly. So what P5 conference is going to take one of those two? No one. They don't offer any other league anything they cannot get closer to home... It sucks to get slotted, doesn't it SWC also-rans?!!

Rice is gonna score a lot--Ill bet in the 60s. We won't score that much...

Norm is saying what I said yesterday in my post. SMU will never be in a power conference again. Pay Mack Brown (or anyone else) whatever you want. It won't change anything for SMU. They are too small. They don't offer anything of major advantages that conferences look for. Even TCU, which got into the Big XII because of necessity, will get left behind, most likely with the Big XII's GOR expires. But even if the big XII doesn't die off, they ain't taking freaking SMU. They already have that market covered. Hell, if they won't take UH, then SMU has no chance. And UH isn't moving up to the Big XII, either. Again, it sounds awesome to pay that kind of money for a coach--maybe it pays off like Larry Brown has for the basketball program. but football and basketball within the NCAA are about as comparable as apples and oranges.

I think it will be somewhere in the 64 to 72 range, that will give 4 conferences 16-18 teams each. If 16 is the number, then the realities of that would mean there are 4 spots available in the Pac, 2 seats available in the B1G, and 2 seats available in the SEC. Its my belief that the ACC is much stronger as an overall league than the Big XII, so they have 2 spots left. That's 10 spots that are available--you could say that makes the Big XII a perfect fit to fill them correct? Not really at all. Notre Dame has their quirky deal with the ACC, which may be BYU's way of doing the same thing out West with the Pac. The PAC won't offer any small private religious-oriented schools into their league, so schools like BYU, Baylor, and TCU are out for conference membership. I still think the Texoma 4 go out west, eventually. WVU goes to the ACC, KU goes to the B1G with UConn. The SEC then goes after a couple of ACC teams (Va Tech and NC State) to get to 16, which leads the ACC to invite in Cincy and UCF or USF to get to 16. The rest of the Big XII gets relegated downward, except for K-State, who somehow finds a place in the p5 world somewhere. And Baylor sues everyone. Then joins the new SWC with the rest of the G5s around here...

Just let them go...they aren't inviting anyone else to the P5 party and they will probably knock out some of their current members down the road when conferences get even more realigned. We missed the boat--hell we didn't even try to get to the dock until very recently and we got a place on a raft. It's just what we decided at the highest levels of how we wanted to fund the entire program. It stinks for all of us who dreamed of playing against the big state schools in the Big XII and the Sec and others, but our leaders and our location made it to where our competition was the SLC, the Big West, the SBC, and now CUSA. We just couldn't beat TCU and SMU for conference placement and we got slotted below them both. It's too bad--I think we could have competed against those schools If we had been given a chance. But no one wanted to give us that chance and our leaders refused to aim higher for A longtime with the program's direction. It's all coming home to roost now.

They could pay him $10 million and they still aren't getting any P5 invite. They can think they are TCU or Baylor, but they blew their chance

Yeah, great Texas HS QBs in spread offenses are just gonna line up to come here with the awesome offensive gameplan!!

Do us a favor--go visit orangebloods.com, texags.com, landthieves.com, killerfrogs.com, or baylorfans.com and see how we compare, then come back and tell us what you think about little ol' gmg.com

Well, we kinda new this was coming. Texas and the rest of the Criminal 5 will get their money from the networks and bowls and conferences so this is a nice pre-emptive strike against anyone complaining about the players. Plus, they, as the richest AD in America, just set the floor on this. They know they can pay more, but they also know that others may not be able to pay more than this. Its probably why they chose this figure, knowing that the Tech's and Iowa State's of the world can still pay it while they play in a P5 league. Our new stadium was always going to be needed, even if we end up being classified at the G5 level and it becomes a quasi-FCS type of classification. Fouts wasn't going to be able to withstand 5 more years of use because of the amount of power that had to be brought in just to get it up and running for a gameday. But that said, I wouldn't want to be the Chacnellor, President, or BOR at this place and have to answer the angry Dentonites who were admaantly opposed to this stadium and its costs. They are going to demand heads roll for $78 million being spent on a football stadium that is housing a team that isn't playing at the highest level, that Fouts could have easily handled this. Its completely wrong, but I know its coming. The DRC is going to have a field day with this, just watch... There is no way we can afford to even pay half of that figure. Maybe not even a quarter of it. It is what it is--as I have said before, I just want those Criminal 5 teams to go away and just play each other. Let the G5 teams and the better FCS teams play real college football for scholarships only. If no one watches us because of this, then we will have to assess what to do next, but one thing is for sure. We will have a lot more company in this state in a new i-aa than we had back in the 90s. UH, SMU, UTEP, UTSA, Texas State, Rice and us will be in the same boat going forward. Right now, the G5 schools, including the service academies, total 63. The FCS probably has about another 30 teams or so that could compete at this level pretty easily, like NDSU, SHSU, Montana, Eastern Washington, Youngstown State, etc.. That is probably where this thing goes from here. The fun part will be seeing if schools like SMU and Tulane will keep playing football or just give it up. Or will schools like Baylor and TCU, should they get the P5 boot when the Big XII finally dies off, just try to BYU it and go independent?

And the slippery slope toward being the official minor league system for the NFL and NBA truly begins... http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/college-sports/headlines/20141021-texas-athletic-director-with-new-rules-longhorns-will-pay-each-player-10000.ece

I think culturally, the biggest problem hasn't been the apathy of the athletic department, its been the apathy of the administration, BOR, faculty, and Denton. The AD can only get done what those above him lets him do or build. Dallas Green's point about the student fee is the one that just floors me about this place. We aren't talking about Texas, Texas A&M, or Texas Tech charging a full athletics fee to it student body and trying to keep up with them and their P5 benefits. We are talking about Texas State, UTSA, and Lamar--an SLC school, an SBC school, and a fellow CUSA school. That, to me, is how you can say fully that the university isn't fully on board with athletics funding. The facilities and hiring of McCarney and his assistants has improved gigantically from where we were just a decade ago, though... I still believe in Coach Mac 100% as the leader of the program--he has more pride for himself and his job than most of us will ever have. And what he has accomplished here already is better than anything his past three predecessors have achieved, just by winning a bowl game within three years of being on the job. He deserved his extension and he deserves time. He will get the coaching situation on his staff fixed at the end of the season, I have no doubt. And I think we will develop into a good-to-great team again in the next few years. But his job would be a helluva lot easier if funding was better to get and keep better coaches on staff--and tha tis where that athletic fee would help greatly. Remember, not only are we not charging anywhere close to what others are charging, the actual fee is tied to Apogee being paid off, so it will sunset. In theory, we could possibly LOSE that athletic-only fee down the road, when others are charging the state-mandated full rate. I will say this again, but the only way you can truly show that athletics is going to be the true window to the university is not just by building new facilities and increasing salaries--both of which are necessary for any program, but the best way to make your current fans and even more, your potential fans, is to fire people when they aren't getting the job done, not when it is just "affordable". If being a teachers college and focusing on fine arts students has helped this apathy to stay here over all these decades, then there really isn't much you can expect from McCarney or anyone else in recruiting. You just have to realize that the current diehard fanbase of 5-10k isn't going to ever elevate too much beyond this point without a commitment to winning. We have a commitment to fielding a program and giving students a game-day experience--the question really is IF that mindset can even change here. It may just be that the true focus on the education of teachers, artists, and musicians may very well be how we continue to advertise the university for decades to come, just as it has for decades past.

You'll note my e-motto below my posts...no need for any royalties

I thought this, too, when I saw that game on last night. I felt sorry for both of those schools, in part, because they are both fairly solid G5 programs and would fit nicely in CUSA, but they will be in the SBC for awhile. Then I though about Texas State, who has basically become us in the SBC--the lone Texas school in a conference full of teams that almost nobody cares about at all. At that point, I thanked the Big East/AAC for taking SMU away and giving us that slot. If we had gotten stuck in the SBC with Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, Troy, New Mexico State, Idaho, Texas State, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, South Alabama, and Appalachian State, I don't know if we could have really even averaged 15k for annual attendance. As much as CUSA is SBC 2.0, it is still light years ahead of that collection just mentioned. Just by playing Rice, UTEP, UTSA, La Tech, Southern Miss, and UAB, we are in the best conference/division setup we have ever been in since the MVC days--if not better.

Ben Gooding thinks Andrew needs to improve on his posts...

It would have to be a brutal, under 10 wins kind of season for Benford to get fired--if that. He has two years left, bare minimum, to turn this around. Here's the scary thought--he has another mediocre season this year, then follows it up in 2016 with another .500 or close to it season. I know he'll have one year on his contract, but you will never see a coach go into his last year of a contract anymore--he'll either get fired or extended. Knowing what we know, I can easily see Benford getting an extension, unless he has a horrible season in the next two years. When you look at the schedule, getting to 10 wins shouldn't be too hard, so if he gets to 15 wins in his 4th year, I'd almost be certain that he will get a two-to-three year extension with that kind of "success" and with RV being his AD. Think about that ridiculousness...

Just remember who brought you that tailgating opportunity.../RV and the BOR

Well, only one had ever been a head coach before he got here at the college level, so I don't think so. Dodge did fairly well in his first full year of recruiting, but those kids he recruited from the rich, suburban schools all bailed out within two years. Maybe "ace" recruiters don't want to coach here in football? To be honest, I don't know who would be an ace recruiter that we could afford or that could actually do a better job of seliing this place than Coach Mac has done. All that he has done to help with freshmen orientation, alumni relations, media interviews, etc...had been nothing but inspirational and positive--until now. He obviously thought that there would be a nice payback for all of his PR moves and the hotbed of recruiting that is in this state. Now, it appears that even that positivity is being crushed by the reality of what the job entails. I will say this--if he leaves or retires anytime soon, we better not go the cheap way out and hire some unknown assistant. That way was so North texas, it wasn't even funny...and it go us nowhere. Basketball has proven the same thing, basically. That will piss me off more than anything else, to see us go cheap after we FINALLY went out and built some nice facilities and have increased coaches pay. We cannot go back to hiring inexperienced, cheap assistants from name-your-college to come here. And high school coaches better never have even an interview ever again...