untjim1995

+100000000

If we win, Benford should be fired...if the game gets called for unforeseen reasons, Benford should be fired.

They will gladly do it if it means staying in a P5 league. Tech knows their place--and its not a bad place at all. You get big teams to come to your place every year, you recruit the 3* that aren't getting recrutited heavily by Texas, A&M, OU, etc..which means you can still beat a lot of teams because of Texas HS talent, and of course, you get to keep that ca$h, playa...Tech is UTs lapdog. They are gonna do almost anything they can do make sure that UT doesn't leave them alone to die on the West Texas Prairie. Tech does have some Austin pull in the legislature, too, so that will help UT with the state and they will need someone to vote hand-in-hand with them for conference stuff, which Tech almost always does. One thing TCU showed us in their halcyon MWC days was that you could win the Rose Bowl and finish #2 in a final poll and it still wouldn't pay you anything close to what a P5 conference cellar-dwellar would get for doing nothing more than rolling over for the bhig dogs in your conference. Its the single biggest thing TCU ever accomplished in the last 50 years of their existence. It wasn't winning going to a BCS bowl game or even winning the Rose Bowl over Wisconsin--it was using it all to miraculously get into the Big XII when the conference had some upheaval and lost Texas A&M. TCU is the biggest winner in all of the realignment stuff, not even close. A small private school who sits in the middle of a saturated tv market somehow got invited to the Big Boys table because the non-Texas schools wanted another Texas stop to replace A&M and wanted it in DFW, not in Houston. UH would have been so much better than TCU (hell, they would've been way better than Baylor back in 1994, but they didn't have the legislative pull Baylor had), but TCU got that spot. And almost every single Frog fan you meet will tell you that they would rather lose in the Big XII than go back to the MWC--that tells you all you need to know.

I don't see us in the AAC with SMU there, so it would take them giving up football for that to occur. Most likely, when UConn leaves, they will replace them with them with the best market available for them that has a decent team and support. To me, without any doubt whatseover, that is UTSA. SMU, UH, Tulane, and Tulsa will all be in favor of them, and I imagine that the other southern schools would like them, too, except for ECU. The good news to me, at least on that front, is that you have the easiest replacement for them in Texas State, so not much changes there for CUSA if this all comes down. If Cincy or Memphis leaves, that is when I can see MUTS replacing them. And if they lose one of UCF/USF, then they will replace them with one of the F_Us. It won't be Marshall, Southern Miss, Western Kentucky, or Louisiana Tech--they offer no market for TV. It won't be Rice or UNT since we are duplicates in their markets already covered with SMU and UH there. UTEP, UAB, ODU, and Charlotte are longshots, at best, for many different reasons to ever move up to the AAC if someone left. The other strong possibility for down the road is that the Big XII implodes, which I do think will happen. Its my belief that when that happens, Baylor, TCU, and Iowa State are gonna be looking at G5 status when that happens. I think WVU and KSU could be, too, but I think they will find a home, somewhere in the P5. When it happens, the Big XII will go the way of the Big East, I mean the AAC. The leftovers will keep the name and start issuing invites to the best of the AAC, MWC, CUSA, and even the MAC. Again, though, its all about reorganizing the deck chairs on the same little boat--some of them may think they should be on the suite level and that others should be steerage, but the sooner that they all realize that the G5 needs to be like the FCS is right now and have everyone pull the same rope, the ship won't sink--hell the voyage could still be very enjoyable. But we gotta get some of these old passengers, who think the Large Luxury SWC Cruise Ship they used to enjoy is coming back to pick them up someday, to realize that they are stuck on the same tugboat that we are all on. Hey SWC royalty, the thing failed because of you--you don't offer enough because you are too small for big time football, no matter how much $$$ you have. Sure, you used to own that liner, but your money is no good anymore. You're the widow of the rich guy who died and left his fortune to his girlfirend, Barbie...you can either come to grips with it or you can keep fighting, but that is gonna drain you of even more resources that you don't have.

I think the thing that will be most interesting to me is just to see if Dajon can continue to improve as a FBS starting QB. Even if we lose, its just important to feel as if we have found someone who can play QB at a level that is better than your local Texas HS JV squad. A loss here doesn't hurt us too much, as long as we still see Dajon making progress. If he is terrible, then we still have to see what he can do against UAB. After that, if Dajon is bad, you'll see Greer and McNulty get a chance against Southern Miss at home. I still feel like a 7-8 win team is possible, but I also now believe that a 4 win season is possible, too.

So true...like saying that if Todd Dodge had led us to a win over Ohio at Fouts in the rain, then we would have officially turned the corner as a program in 2009--just a slight exaggeration.

The problem with the AAC football is that nobody cares about any of their football teams anymore than they do about any other G5 team out there. East Carolina is a really good team, but no outside of Eastern North Carolina cares. about Same with most of the others--they don't drive the needle with enough football fans in the country when they aren't playing someone that people care about. The ones that have options in the AAC for a move up to a P5 conference are UConn, Cincy, Memphis, UCF, and USF. UConn will eventually be in the ACC, its just a matter of when. Cincy would be attractive to the ACC or the Big XII, as well. The other three have to hope and pray that the Big XII keeps their current teams and then realizes they need to add some teams to get a conference championship. BYU, Memphis, UCF and USF would then be the main targets. Not UH, not SMU, not Tulsa, not Tulane, not ECU, not Temple, not Navy. Whichever teams don't get a chance to move up--and there's a really good chance that none of them do, except for UConn and Cincy--they will fully enjoy the same status that all of the other schools in CUSA, MWC, MAC, and SBC enjoy as we move forward. Those regional teams in the AAC that have perpetually looked down at schools like ours and La Tech are gonna have to realize that G5 Football in the future is going to have to be about regionalized conferences that are built like the MAC and the MWC are currently run. Closer travel, scheduling different nights to get better TV coverage, and not looking down on your conference mates...its a crazy idea, I know. But the first thing that needs to get figuredout is if the G5 private schools even want to continue playing at this level. Rice seems to want to, but I cannot figure out if Tulane, SMU, and Tulsa want to play at the G5 level in perpetuity or if they should just focus on basketball. After that, the other urban AAC public schools are gonna have to ask themselves who would be the best matches for them to be associated with as we move forward. I still think UNT, UH, UTEP, UTSA, and Texas State are gonna need to be in this together. Add in La Tech, NMSU, Rice, ULL, and any of the other private schools that want to keep playing football, like Tulsa. (I really think SMU and Tulane are gonna quit this at some point.) Its the only way to build something forward that can control travel costs for your teams, get more fans to travel to games, and help the home team to still get teams into town that fans have heard of, instead of us playing Western Kentucky, Texas State playing South Alabama, and UH playing Temple right now.

Take a school like Texas Tech. They go 7-5 most years because they feast on 3 cupcakes in OOC most seasons. This year, they scheduled fellow P5 Arkansas and quickly got pounded. If they cannot go back to scheduling cupcakes at home, but have to schedule series like this going forward, they are gonna be a losing team, which no doubt will hurt their attendance some. But they still will get huge games at home against teams that people want to watch and, even more importantly, they will continue to cash huge TV checks just for being in the Big XII as a P5 conference, somewhere in the neighborhoof of $20+million a year. Just like Baylor did and TCU appears to be headed, those schools are understanding that the most important part of playing college football these days is being in a P5 conference, period. For years, there was no bigger tick on the hound than Baylor was in the Big XII. Yet they got more bowl money and tv money for going 2-10 every year with pitiful attendance than 12-0 TCU would get in the MWC, even when they finished in the top 5 or top 10 and had better attendance than Baylor got while playing teams that weren't nearly as attractive. What I'm getting at is that I just don't think winning means as much at some of those lower or middle P5 programs as people want to believe it does. Just don't get left behind is the mantra at Washington State, Iowa State, Baylor, TCU, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, or Northwestern, just to name a few. I don't think a mandate to avoid FCS or G5 schools in the future is gonna change this, just because it is easier to suck blood off the hound than it is to go build something on your own that is self-sustaining. Now, at places that are the high-end, tradition filled programs, there is no doubt about what you are saying, as they will not accept losing seasons. But they also usually don't stay losers for very long...

Exactly. They just need to try and be a great basketball school and get an invite to the Big East to join the other private, non-FBS football playing schools in a big-time league. That is what I'd recommend. It is ironic that the Big East would be there ultimate goal--again...if they could turn into a regular, nationally ranked program, they could easily carve out a niche in this area of the country where football is king by a mile and basketball is always second or third. They would easily surpass any of the Texas schools in interest, just by playing teams like Georgetown, Marquette, St. John's, etc...

The BOR is just fine with Lee Jackson--that's why he got extended. His role to them is to keep this place at a great "value" and to not do anything to hurt the Music, Arts, or Education Colleges within the university. Nothing else matters. The BOR rewards those who don't complain and do what they ask--keep costs down. If you want to argue this, then ask yourself how a guy could be in charge of a system that has been found to have taken $75 million dollars improperly and not get fired, not get fined, not even get his wrist slapped, but instead get an extension AFTER this has been made known to the public...then you can begin to understand why the premise above is the only one that makes sense. It is all about cost here--nothing more, nothing less. It always has been.

June Jones next job will be as head coach at Hawaii again, whenever Norm Chow quits or gets fired. He'll wait that out. And it will be perfect for him.

SMU just needs to give it up and save the money for hoops. They are too small and irrevelant in their own market and state to draw any decent support. Unless they have the perfect solution come forward, to allow the full paying of players as legitimate beyond just a few thousand dollars, they have no chance. They should just play with Trinity and McMurry and other small D-2 and D-3 teams. Doak Walker and Eric Dickerson aren't coming back...

I used to advocate calling teams like Okie Lite, Colorado, Mizzou, and Nebraska to see about getting a series going with them, especially since the last three don't play regularly in Texas like they used to. But then Nebraska--and the rest of the Big Ten--made scheduling non-P5 teams away from home a no-no, so they bought out a game against NIU in Chicago, but allowed NIU to stay on their schedule to travel to Lincoln for 4 games in 8 years. That told me a lot about what is happening in college football. The P5s aren't gonna play these games much longer at a G5 school. Even if they are scheduled, they will probably just buy them out on the premise that their conference is just making them do this. The AQ media will hail this move as better for strength of schedule for the P5s. Then, they will pass on playing G5s all together. This is the short-term way of paving the path for them to pull away from the G5 altogether. I will say this about RV and scheduling. I still think he could've gotten much better teams here to Denton in the early years of Apogee than we have gotten for OOC. UH, Indiana, and SMU are solid opponents to bring here. Army will be, too. Ball State was a good team, but they didn't resonate at all with the fans here in DFW, which is too bad, since they had a nice season. But the others have been utter dog crap--Texas Southern, South Alabama (yes they were still provisional even thoguh they were coming into the SBC), Idaho, and Nicholls State. When the P5 officially stops these G5 road games and then pulls away, RV will have the perfect excuse to say that we couldn't get anyone to come here because that was already in play before it was "officially" announced. And we will have several examples, as mentioned before on this site, to show that argument is false. But, the real problem for RV that is looming like a tornado is when those P5s won't play G5s at all, his main revenue sources to fund the AD are gonna be dry as a bone. How that gets handled after that may be when we see that dreaded athletics fee get increased out of necessity.

I'm surprised that no one commented on this. I realize its the journalist who put this tidbit in the story, but I have zero doubt that this analogy was given to him by Lee Jackson, since it is a comparable dollar level. I mean, if it weren't for the $78 million dollar stadium we built for football, we wouldn't even have a problem today, right Lee? Jackson and the BOR, who EXTENDED him after this has occurred, (not fired, not suspended, not slapped-on-the wrist---he got an f'ing EXTENSION!!!), you have embarrassed me to the point that I may not give another dime to anything non-athletic related at UNT until Jackson is gone. I don't care if other universities had this happen--they should fire their chancellors, too. This is a joke--and its on all of us, but especially the parents of future students who are gonna feel the pain for this repayment. All the while, the DRC and the NT Daily will rail on how "expensive" the athletic fee is on the student body wihtout any mention of this BS. That way, that pesky little athletic fee that powerhouses in Texas like Lamar, Texas State, and UTSA fully charge while we have it about 1/3 of theirs and will have it sunsetted, will never ever get increased. And that alone will keep Lee Jackson here--he will use that as a prime example of how under his "leadership" that he is personally working to keep the costs of coming to UNT as low as possible, so we can stay highly ranked in the College Values Poll. Barf.

No way Texas, Tech, or Baylor will allow UH into the Big XII. That was proven when they moved TCU into the conference. Yes, TCU was on a high, but they are small and don't have great attendance. UH would've been a much better replacement for Texas A&M, both from a proximity standpoint, as well as being a large public school. Instead, they grabbed TCU--UH has proven over time that when they are able to compete at a high level, as they got to in the 70s and 80s with the SWC, they can be formidable. TCU had only proven that they could be formidable when they WEREN"T playing in a conference with former SWC public schools. That's why they are in the Big XII. And I would love ULL and Arkansas State in CUSA--I'd take them right now, too, if it meant never playing Charlotte, Old Dominion, or an F_U ever again.

He just got an extension from the BOR...

The more I think about it, the more ECU and UH remind me of each other. They are stuck in a state with several other P5 programs that have zero interest in giving them a chance to jump up with them. They are destined to be G5 with the rest of us, no matter what they think.

I'm also in this stage of life, with kids that are 9, 6, and 4. Its frustrating to have to miss games like I have had so far this year against teams I want to see us play (SMU and La Tech), but DVR saves the day at least for me since I can still see us play on TV. But this all illustrates the fact that the group of people who would have grown children right now, your graduates of the late 70s to the early 90s, should be your season ticket base and major part of the donating base. But we lost 95% of them with the i-aa fiasco. Its why I think the attendance and support will get much better in about 20 years, as the graduates of UNT from the mid-90s to today will be the ones that are more tied into the university than we have had for the previous 2 decades before.

Yeah, I bet UNC and NC State will really schedule ECU a lot over the next few decades in football.... ECU is just stuck, period. They have great support, a solid reputation, and a nice tradition of success--and they will always be a G5 program. They have no market to sell and their academics don't come close to measuring up to the P5 conferences. They are stuck--no North Carolina team will ever let them in the ACC, the SEC won't take them, nor will the Big Ten. They would be a good travel partenr for West Virginia in the Big XII, but so would Cincy, who has more benefits to a conference than ECU ever will. Heck, so do USF and UCF. So, as awesome as that billboard is to the ECU faithful, all it really does is reinforce why UNC, NC State, and Duke are better off not to ever play them anymore. Usually, I root hard for a G5 program against the big bad P5 teams, but I have no respect for ECU--they screwed our conference by mandating that CUSA add local powerhouses Charlotte and Old Dominion to give them more regional opponents, even though they hadn't played a down of FBS football, then bolted as soon as they possibly could to the AAC, leaving us with tow programs that were perfect fits for the SBC, not CUSA. Maybe I should hate Britton Banowsky for that, but ECU held him hostage with this stupidity.

Although FFR gave us several examples of coaches that were hired for less than five years, its fairly standard for a contract to be around that term. The five-year part isn't where I blame RV, nor is the $350k salary. It was hiring a guy who had never been a head coach before, was known as a "recruiter" (like Trilli was ), and was an alum of a big state P5 school in Texas. It was a lose-lose proposition to begin with. If he won big in that first year, there was zero doubt that he would ride Tony Mitchell into a job at his alma mater in Lubbock, with a huge contract we couldn't even come close to competing with ever. If he turned into a loser, which he did almost immediately, we are stuck for four years with a deadbeat that just kills off any progress we had slowly built up over the previous decade. RV said he was going after experienced head coaches for open vacancies. Then he hires a guy who has never been a head coach before--which is basically what we have done for for football and basketball hires for the last 4 decades. Other than Fry and now McCarney, our football coaches were either assistant coaches in college or head coaches at high schools. In hoops, after Blakely left, we hired HS coaches in Tommy Newman and Jimmie Gales, as well as college assistant coaches in Jankovich, Trilli, Johnny Jones, and Tony Benford. Jankovich and Johnny Jones turned into solid coaches, while Trilli and Benford were terrible hires. When you figure that you could have gotten a coach like Steve Shields from UALR, Bob Marlin at ULL/SHSU, or Danny Kaspar at SFA (a UNT alum), it just makes you shake your head that we chose a Marquette recruiter, instead....

Hey mods--my mistake--wrong board...please move over to the basketball board.

I should have used the word should instead of would for you, but the point remains that by not doing what we should have, it cost us a lot of strong support. And I don't blame you or anyone else for feeling the same way I do--that we pissed this whole thing away and there isn't anyone who has to pay the price for it.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/eye-on-college-basketball/24722941/houston-commits-itself-to-building-impressive-25-million-practice-facility

I felt so bad for Tasty earlier this year when he was convinced that Benford would get fired. It was just obvious that there wasn't a chance we would buy him out with three years left on the contract. When it came down that Benford would be staying, as we knew he would, poor Tasty's zest for all things UNT basketball went down the drain. One of, if not the biggest, UNT basketball fans we have ever seen on this board, now cannot even be bothered to come up to watch a game unless there is literally nothing above breathing left for him to do on a weekend.

I lived through those Trill years--I even liked him. He was the Todd Dodge of basketball coaches in an incredibly eerie fashion. Both had strong UT ties, both were extremely upbeat and positive, and both could talk a great game to fans. But your below average YMCA coach could draw up x's and o's better than Trilli could. Dodge, in college anyway, was about the same. The thing with Trilli was that he didn't take over a great program, but it wasn't bad either. Then, he got with Helwig and said we have to make a schedule that can garner attention from the local media and fanbase, so we scratched out every game against Jackson State or West Texas State and we replaced it with an unbelievable road schedule--one that RV would think was too ridiculous. Basically, John Wooden himself couldn't have built this thing up against the schedule Trilli ran up against. Benford is a special kind of loser, though. The talent he took over here was the best the school has ever offered. His x's and o's strategy of innovating the hockey-line-change into a basketball game hasn't exactly caught on yet. His teams look like they couldn't hit the ocean from a ship, plus their defense is just awful, whether in half-court or full-court. Of course, its hard to be very good when you are coming out of the game after 45 seconds, too...Benford and Trilli, to me, are very different in coaching style, but they are also the same in that they are both losers. If Trilli got the schedules that Benford has had so far, its my belief that Trilli's record would look a lot more like Benford's has. It's not supposed to be difficult for UNT to beat Northwood or Ouachita Baptist or Alabama-Huntsville (ouch), but we weren't ever going to be able to beat a schedule of road games like Trilli got as the coach here. @Iowa, @ Alabama, @NC State, @Okie State, @UAB, @TCU (they made the NCAAs this year), @Oklahoma, and @ Georgia Tech in year 1, with a home against a Texas team that was NCAA bound, as well. Year 2, @ Texas A&M, @TCU, @Iowa State, @Tulsa, @Maryland, @ Arkansas, and a home loss against Texas Tech. Year 3, @Okie State, @ Texas Tech, @Baylor, @TCU, and @Wyoming (NCAA bound), with a home win over A&M. Year 4, @ Tulsa, @ Texas A&M, @ Missouri State, @Arkansas, @Oklahoma, and @ Alabama, plus a home loss against Baylor. After three years, Vic Trilli, against a true Murderer's Row of a schedule, had a record of 16-63. He had lost almost all of his highly recruited players. He had two years left on his contract. And we said, lets keep him!! He rewarded us by winning 4 games against these juggernauts (Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Texas A&M--Kingsville, Hardin Simmons (D-2), and Florida International). Unfortunately, he lost the other 24 games, with exactly one loss--to ULaLa (by 4)--by less than 10 points. All of this is to illustrate that if a coach cannot do anything in the first three years of a contract, it ain't gonna magically change in Year 4 when a buyout becomes more manageable to your bottom line (see Dodge, Todd, and Trilli, Vic as prime examples that the university has dealt with in the last 20 years).