untjim1995

Mississippi State didn't start the season off as a top ten team, like Baylor was. Also, playing Alabama, Auburn, LSU, A&M, Arkansas, and Ole Miss is way more stout than playing this year's Big XII. MSU could afford a weaker OOC schedule when you play in the best division in the country.

It's too bad the head coach feels about 180 degrees differently about DW as the starting QB here. He will never start another game here, barring an injury to McNulty. I wish it was different, but he is done here, I'm afraid.

I told you that McNulty will be sold as being the next Derek Thompson--a senior QB that has struggled along the way , but he will be a true leader just like DT. Just wait--it's already happening with the lone beat writer for this team already blogging about no new QBs in 2015. The bigger question should be from Vito to Mac, why would any QB in this state come here to run this offense when they throw the ball 50 times a night in the spread offense they run in HS? Somehow, I doubt that question will ever get asked.

Ive never been a big believer in experience. I am big believer in development. As we are seeing with the entire team, an experienced OL doesn't make the offense any better since its leader is a bunch of non-developed QBs. On the defense, the developed talent is just not there. We just have to hope that the developed talent shows up next year from the disaster that this year has offered. We don't have any choice here--we have to give Mac the time to fix his staff issues, give these guys more time to get stronger and smarter, and pray it gets better. Because if it doesn't, we are not just gonna have a losing season this year--its gonna be every year until Mac leaves, which won't be until 2017 at the earliest. If we know anything around here, it is that we aren't buying out any contract for more than a year with the kind of salary McCarney draws here. No way the BOR will pay over a million dollars to buy anyone out. And, frankly, if we did that, we would probably hire someone like Chico to be the coach, an unknown assistant that wouldn't cost much. We know that recipe doesn't work here at all...

Kansas will always be P5 because of their basketball program and because they are the main school of the state that has AAU membership. The P5 schools that will eventually get dropped would be your small private schools--Wake Forest, Baylor, TCU, Vandy, and maybe a school like Northwestern, although I doubt that the B1G will let go of the Chicago market team that they like playing every year. Duke will always be P5 becuase of their hoops tradition as a national power, as well. Those other four are looking down the barrel of a gun, especially Baylor and TCU. Those two are basically stuck when the Big XII breaks up.

Baylor's OOC is terrible--they are getting what they deserve by scheduling SMU, NW State, and Buffalo. TCU beat Minnesota, K-State lost a close game to Auburn, and OU beat Tennessee. Hell, West Virginia lost a close game to Bama and Okie Lite played FSU tough in their opener. Playing the sisters of the poor in OOC never helps you gain ground when you are competing for top bowl slots or now, playoff slots. It never helped Tech when leach was there, it never helped K-State back when Snyder only played non-AQ schools in OOC, and it killed Auburn when they had a perfect record in 2004, but couldn't jump OU or USC in the polls becuase they played someone in OOC. As far as the SEC, I hate them as much as anyone, but I also understand that Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss,and Miss State are all probably as good as anyone else in the country. Those top SEC West teams (including LSU at home) or just better than most others out there right now, The rest of the SEC gets credited with being associated with those 4 right now, but that's how it usually goes in these things. Any of those teams are undefeated in the Big Ten, Big 12, and maybe the ACC right now. Florida State hasn't shown me one reason to believe they would beat one of those SEC power teams on a neutral field. Nor have Oregon, Michigan State, Notre Dame, TCU, or K-State. Mississippi State has been, to this point, the best team I've watched this season. Auburn has the best road win this season in the country, even if you argue that K-State gave it to them. They still won in Manhattan on a Thursday night on ESPN. And Bama appears to have gotten their wheels back on as they prepare for home games against Miss State and Auburn, along with a road game at LSU. I'd be willing to bet that when it is all said and done, though, the committee is going to spread this playoff to 4 conferences, not three, if just to keep everyone as happy as possible. If I was guessing right now, I'd take FSU, Alabama, Michigan State, and Oregon as the Final Four. As I have thought all along, the Big XII is probably the lone man out, at this point, unless KSU wins out and Auburn does as well. Baylor had to go undefeaeted to get in, which didn't happen. And OU was ranked high enough to start that they could've suffered a loss and still gotten into the playoff because of their name, but with two losses now, they are done. I suspect that KSU will lose at TCU or Baylor, though, so they will be out no matter what. And I suspect that TCU will lose at West Virginia to knock them out. And Baylor can win out, but that OOC schedule just dooms them. This is UNT Football related because we have gotten big paychecks from some of these teams mentioned above in the last 20 years...

This. If he has offers from Okie State and Tech, among others who may get involved still, I'd just advise everyone to be cautiously optimistic here. Maybe its the Battered Mean Green Syndrome I suffer from, but I am not counting my chickens just yet...

The Tech game was the worst--because Tech matters in this state. more than anyone not named Texas or A&M.We would've beaten them for the 4th time in a row in Lubbuttocks...just so North Texas to find a way to lose that one. The game you mentioned about the spike was actually in 1992--we were playing NW State at Fouts in an early season confernce game on Homecoming, so we actually had our one game a year that got over 10k in attendance. We are losing in that game 31-28, but we are driving for a score to win the game. Maher completes a pass that is in bounds and short of the first down deep in their territory and Parker screams to Mitch to down the ball--on third down--with about 20 seconds to go, IIRC. He does what he is told, then they decide to kick a FG to tie it rather than try for the first down/TD to win. Then, in almost amazingly stupid fashion that truly proved he was a HS coach in waaaaayyyy over his head, Parker calls for an osides kick with about 15 seconds left, which NW State recovers. They complete a pass and call TO to set up a 50+ yard FG, which their kicker absolutely drills down the middle with room to spare at the buzzer.

So let's say the G5 said to the P5, thanks for the opportunity to get a BCS Bowl slot against your worst team, but we are gonna create our own system to reward the best teams in our leagues. Instead of bowl games for the top 8 teams in our 5 leagues, while you all are practicing for your one bowl game, we are going to create a playoff system that involves our 5 league champions, plus the three best non-champions, and put together a fun three weeks that will end in December. This year, ECU, Marshall, Toledo, Colorado State, and Georgia Southern are all in line to be in the playoff as champions of their leagues, with ULL, Boise State, UCF, La Tech, and NIU all still in the running for the remianing three spots. The top 4 champions, based on rankings of our own committee, will host quarterfinal games in the second weekend of December. The semifinals will be held the third week in December in Las Vegas and in Orlando. The championship will be played on December 28th in San Antonio. While you P5 guys are preparing your 6-6 teams to play in the Sun Bowl in a game that doesn't matter to anyone in the country beyond your own fans at the end of December, we will have already finished our season, except for the championship game, which will be great because we were able to create a great system that gets college football interest from fans and media that don't have anything to cover during that time beyond practice. And, oh by the way, for those teams behind our 8 teams in the playoff, they are still bowl eligible still, so they can play in bowl games in Albuquerque, San Diego, Hawaii, Tampa Bay, etc...

Marshall has a solid reputation as a winning program at this G5 level. They love football in the small, college town known as Huntington, West Virginia. They send kids to the NFL, as well. And the G5 programs they are competing against for area-wide recruits are mainly MAC schools, whom they left behind years ago. To me, that is apples to oranges between us and them.

McCarney is a smart and positive man. But losing gets the best of us and we all say things we shouldn't say in moments when we are upset, whether its at home or at work. The losing has just gotten to him, that's it. I fully believe that he felt that we would be much better than we are, that he would have a QB on the roster that wouldn't be the backup at Denton High right now. But that hasn't happened, the defense has been dominated, and the OL has massively underachieved--all of which he is ultimately responsible for and it is just killing him that the team has regressed so much, especially when the program apperaed to be turning around after the HoD Bowl win. In his frustration, he said soemthing he wishes he could take back and is trying to move away from. Its just that losing exacerbates those comments, no matter how flippant they may or may not be. I believe in Mac--he deserved the extension he got. He deserves the chance to get this thing turned around--and even if he didn't deserve it, his contract status now makes it prohibitive to do anything it. But he also deserves the criticism he is getting right now because that statement is atrocious, both in timing and, especially, in tone. If he is complaining about what was left from the Dodge era, he shouldn't be complaining anymore about that since it has been 4 years since he has been gone and his recruits were the ones Mac built into a winner. But, worse, if he is insinuating that this is the hardest place to recruit to, then his comments are Dickey-esque, which is unacceptable to make in light of the facilities and pay improvements. Yes, this place has major hurdles to overcome--and he may not be able to do what he figured he could get done here because of the instituiional issues that he has had nothing to do with in creating and sustaining here, but the negativity killed Dickey with the little fanbase we had then and if it festers within McCarney and keeps coming out in his postgame comments, he will lose the bigger fanbase that exists today than we ever had under Dickey. But I don't think Mac will do that--because I do think the real personlaity he has is very positive and he is a smart, experienced head coach. He won't let this happen again, at least I think that right now.

I'm not sure how anyone missed this or hasn't replied, but AV, this is one of your best posts ever. The totem pole is just so damn high--and we are so damn low on it. AV's point is that we aren't ever going higher on that totem pole as a program unless the leadership here decides they want to do that. And that has been proven over the decades that it doesn't matter who the coach is--if they cannot get held accountable to a winning standard, by being rewarded for winning and fired for losing, instead of being held accountable to their contract's buyout costs, then our place on that totem pole, and the inherent issues that come with them (poor recruiting, dismal reputation with parents and HS coaches, apathy amongst the potential fanbase, etc..) will never change. The only time in the school's history that it ALMOST changed was in the 70s with Hayden Fry, but the administration crushed that into crumbs by not only discontinuing his success he had put into play within the program, but by pulverizing it down to nothing as an underfunded i-aa program for 12 freaking years. And even when we decided to try the I-A thing again, we just put lipstick on the sickest pig and sold it as a healthy animal. Obviously, by doing everything at the cheapest way possible, our place on that totem pole has been as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning. My other post on this site was about the parade of QBs we have had here since 1995--the only ones that have had any success here (basically, 2002-2004 and 2013) had amazing defenses, running backs, and special teams to lean on. We have never had a QB since we moved up to FBS in '95 that was a great throwing passer that turned that into great results in the win column. Maybe that has more to do with coaching--ahem, recruiting, as well--but with the spread offense basically being the choice of gameplan on 95% of Texas high schools, our system that we currently run not only has zero appeal to those QBs that currently run that offense, the pool of QBs we can feasibly expect to choose from that don't currently run the spread is very minimal. Maybe we can develop a QB to run it well, like DT ended up doing, but as with every other piece of the team at this school, development takes longer on projects and it means you have to have experienced talent to win here. Right now, we have no developed QB at all and the experienced players we do have are not as talented as we all figured they would be by now. And that is completely on McCarney and his staff. At this point, though, all we can do now is pray he is the man of character we believe he is and that he will bust his ass to fix this embarrassment, instead of bitching about this place being so hard to get talent to come play here. If not, welcome back to 2005--because we are about to endure a lot more losing again.

TO me, the best QBs we have seen play at UNT since moving up to FBS were Scott Hall and Derek Thompson in his senior year--because they both knew their role on the team and didn't force the ball into traffic that cost the team field position. Of course, they had a bad-ass defense to lean back on, too, as well as strong special teams. So, basically, since 1995, we have two effective bus drivers and...well, that's it. Vizza and Riley both had their moments here, but they were set up to fail by the offensive scheme. Vizza was probably the most talented QB we have had in that timeframe, but he just got the hell beat out of him because our line was putrid, which basically led him to quit. Riley knew that offense perfectly--but that offense at the college level was never going to make up for the fact that he was too small and fragile for FBS football. Andrew Smith could've been on the list above, in either category, but we will never know... The others, Jason Mills, Josh Gulley, Damon West, Jason Attaway, Richard Bridges, Daniel Meager, Matt Phillips, Woody Wilson, Nathan Tune, Josh Greer, Dajon Williams, and Andrew McNulty have had decent games or moments, but none of them made you feel like they were a solid FBS QB that could lead you to a winning record. Some of them were flashes in the pan, some were just not meant to FBS QBs, but none of them made you think we had THE guy at the position.

That has zero chance of happening, even if we go 0-12 next year. He will be here until 2017, unless he leaves on his own. No way we are buying out a $600k per year contract for two or three years. We wouldn't even buyout Todd Dodge's $300k contract for more than a year. Nor will we buyout Tony Benford's contract before he only has one year left, just as we did with Trilli.

I agree completely on your last part, but what have you seen out of Dan McCarney that makes you believe that MiniMac won't be the starting QB next year? If Means could play, he'd be playing right now, in my opinion. Maybe he improves in the spring and over the summer, but until he shows me anything different, MiniMac is gonna get the nod as the starter. McCarney trusts him more than he does all of the other QBs on the roster, combined. Its ridiculous, but that is clearly what is going on at this program right now.

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...