untjim1995

I don't think you are being looked at as a bad guy at all. If you have followed UNT Athletics for 44 years--you are a masochist. If you think anything is ever gonna change in the way we view winning at athletics versus funding athletics, you're not using your full capacity of your brain. You should go ahead and accept this truth: Dan McCarney will still be coaching here in 2014, 2015, and 2016, for sure, with the 90% chance he will still be here in 2017, which will probably lead to him retiring in 2018, the last year of his contract.

This should really help you to feel better, Bob. You have someone on this site that agrees with you!! Also, nice use of the class warfare arguemnt by throwing out their monthly figures and comparing to those of us that don't make that kinda money, even though are desk jobs are CLEARLY more valuable than a football coach and athletic director!! BY any chance, did you use to go by the username, UNT_Playmaker?

And you haven't even counted the increased costs to get from Dekalb, Illinois to all the CUSA outposts. Yes, the MAC has a team in Massachusetts and Buffalo, but the majority of their travel is between Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Its basically the SWC of modern times...just without the winning tradition or name recognition or the cheating scandals!!

I wouldn't count on the Fox deal with CUSA increasing at all. I just hope it remians the same. We love CUSA because it is better than the old SBC was, but the networks know its just SBC 2.0 and that he teams that are still here (USM, Rice, UAB, Marshall, and UTEP) are here because they have no alternative choice. They'd have jumped on an AAC invite in a heartbeat if they could get one. I lke ULL because they fit the footprint for travel, fill in an area we don't have a team (Southern Louisiana), and they have built up a nice G5 program. We want travel costs to stay low and replacing UAB with them would be a good trade, in my opinion.

I'm assuming that the 80 part of your username is the year you graduated here. If that's correct, what have you seen since 1980 that makes you feel like winning matters here like it does at "peer" institutions? The SWC schools don't allow themselves to be considered our peers, not even fellow CUSA-mate, Rice, who is a small private school with outstanding academics and a nationally ranked college baseball program. We like music, arts, and education in Denton. That's what the BOR takes care of first and foremost. And its hard to argue that they aren't doing a great job at taking care of those colleges, since those areas are the strongpoint of the univerity's overall reputation. Its just different from what our buddies at the other fomer SWC schools and current CUSA schools put their importance on as the window to their schools. Around the water coolers, those guys like to talk about their teams, not their fine arts. It just exacerbates the differences between UNT and the other schools around us, "peers" or not...

Why would Northern Illinois leave the MAC for CUSA?

This is the problem--the BOR, who should be trying to do what is best for the university, allows us to extend Lee Jackson as chancellor, even with all of the issues that he has overseen. He should've been fired, or at least allowed to finish out a current contract, but instead the BOR rewarded him with an extension. Why? Because he is an academic leader focused on keeping UNT a "value". RV has surpassed the hurdle of being the best athletic director ever at UNT, a hurdle that is about as high as a curb. Meanwhile, he has hired the worst coach ever in football, women's hoops, and possibly mens hoops in the last decade. Anywhere else in America, the AD gets fired for losing hires in one or two of those of those revenue sports, much less all three. But here in "Value" Land, where staying in budget and not causing any waves publically are teh rules to follow, that same AD doesn't just get to keep his job, it gets extended!! When Todd Dodge and Vic Trilli post some of the worst three-year records that any coach in NCAA history can post, everywhere else they would get fired before they even fininshed that 3rd year--not here, though!! Let's give them a 4th year to reward them for trying hard and see if they have figured it all out!! And we get rewarded with a 3-9 football season and a 4-24 basketball record for making a great "value" call. This is why I'm telling you that a near .500 record this season will get Tony Benford an extension as the head basketball coach. Its so clear to me, its not even funny...

Hell, we haven't achieved much on a state-wide level or even a local level...

Who in their right mind would accept a three year deal to coach college football, especially at the G5 level? This Clark guy cannot be surprised that his school is trying to drop football when they only offered him a 3 year contract. If I were Banowsky, ULL's phone would be ringing right now with a contingent offer to join CUSA.

Why would he resign? What financial reason would compel him to do something that dumb? He isn't stupid... We can complain about his scheduling and the hires that are terrible, but RV does what the BOR asks hime to do. He doesn't complain in public, he runs a tight budget, and he doesn't cause any PR problems. That's why he keeps getting extensions here. You'd be better off hoping that BOR members would resign and get replaced by folks who care about revenue sports than to hope RV resigns. Trust me, I think he should be fired, too, but this is where the BOR would just go out and hire someone else who follows those three simple tenets, but probably isn't as savvy at dealing with the fans as RV has been. Think Craig Helwig...that's what you'll get. To expect anything better is not to know or understand how athletics works at this university.

I look at their OOC schedules and think, they balanced out their games with a FCS team or lower-level SBC team with games against a bunch of P5 schools and BYU. And, yes, I'd consider a game at JerryWorld, in the same county as their campus, as a home game. But we have to remember that TCU had several advantages over us at that time when they were a non-AQ team. First, they were damn good, as in ranked a lot of the time, meaning that having them on the schedule helped your team a lot, win or lose. Secondly, fans of other schools didn't mind their schools scheduling them, unlike what we have dealt with most of the old SWC teams over the decades. Third, we played in an absolute toilet of a stadium, so many teams weren't even willing to consider playing at Fouts, unlike at Amon Carter. All of the above was supposed to be solved by Apogee being built. The SMU and Army series are fine, but they shouldn't be treated as your top home game in OOC. But here, they are, almost because they have to be. The P5 giant ass-kicking and paycheck game causes this. Again, I understand if that is just a financial issue we have to deal with. But I'd rather us do what we are doing in 2015 and play two road games at a P5 giant than to host Nicholls State or Incarnate Word here. What should be absolutely unacceptable is to have another 2012 type schedule, where you play only one OOC home game and its Texas Southern. I'll take a five game home schedule against FBS teams than a 6 game schedule that includes a FCS school that won't bring 25 people to Apogee. Only Grambling, SFA, and SHSU should be considered for this type of game here, in my opinion. But the one thing that is becoming more clear to me is that I am in the minority on this issue on gmg.com.

A football program still costs a lot of money and you only have 1000 millionaire and about 5000 fans, eventually, the money will stop. At SMU, their pride, as well, may not be able to handle a permanent reduction below the top end of college football. Right now, they are convinced that they are either still near it or will get included somehow. I'm just not sure that their new alums are gonna feel about SMU Football the way the 60,70, and 80 year old monied alum of SMU feels about spending that money on a i-aa program. I guess we will see...

DId the NCAA force us to STAY at i-aa for 12 freaking years? Did they make us not even try something as crazy as putting 10k of aluminum seats on the pig that was Fouts Field for 12 years? Everything else you write about is dead-on, but that decision above is one we clearly chose to accept without an ounce of fight...

I tell you what--I'll take this situation that your alma mater is in and I will never talk to anyone from the AD ever again, nor will I even complain when I have to pay $100 bucks for an end zone seat at Apogee for a home game against a P5 team we are in a conference with. Ill try not to celebrate those championships too much, since I won't get to ever talk to the ADs people ever again, knowing full well that we will have joined the ranks of fans at Texas, OU, LSU, etc...that don't know their ADs at all unless they are millionaires and give substantially to their program. I'll go ahead and try this new scenario you've described, you know, just to see if I like it or not...

There is so much truth in this post, that a mere +1 won't do it justice. We did this to ourselves. When the SWC turned us away by basically telling us not to waste our time, we could've shown some pride and fought ahrd to keep improving. Stay as an independent like Tulsa did. Join the WAC and get partenred up with UTEP. Or even better, go to the old Big Eight and offer them all a game in the DFW Metroplex every year. Or we could just basically give up. We overdosed on stupidity in athletics in 1982 and didn't get off the stuff until 1994. We are healthier than we have ever been since 1982, but we aren't healthy. The "stuff" just did too much damage to us. We are the old hippie that drinks lemonade and eats salad today because the body just cannot function on anything hard anymore. Where I think RV has some blame is on both the scheduling front and the folks he has hired to run the revenue sports. Those misses and missed opportunities have caused us to be looked at just being the musics and arts school that has a football and basketball team for some reason. Ironically, the worst decsion we made or didn't fight was the i-aa fiasco, but it could certainly end up being the best thing for us from a competitive standpoint. We have a similar budget to the SBCUSAAC teams we will be matched up with in the new i-aa. Instead of playing in a conference with teams in Louisiana and Texas that no one had heard because they were so small, now you will be matched up with teams that people have heard of, assuming they even still keep playing at this level (see SMU and Tulane).

Nobody thinks we should even think about being in the same budget as Texas, Texas A&M, or Texas Tech. But is it too much to ask us to take advantage of the exact same fee that powerhouses like Texas State and Texas-San Antonio get to legally charge? I don't give a damn about the P5 budgets. We decided decades ago that we can't and won't try to compete with them athletically. We never will. But the other two Texas twins are probably going to be our peers athletically for a long time to come. We should be able to charge the same state-allowed athletics fee that they do.

I'll be the first to tell you that I'd take a 5 game home schedule right now if we get BYU, KU, K-State, Mizzou, Colorado, Utah, or another B1G team here instead of us playing 6 home games with one of them being a FCS school. No way I'll ever go watch Incarnate Word play us, just like I wouldn't go watch the Nicholls State game or the Texas Southern game. My time is more valuable with my family or friends than to watch a FBS/FCS game. I promise you all that way more people feel this way about UNT football than the diehards on here. For those that think this is the way K-State did it, you are missing one small bit of information--they had conference opponents to draw people out to their games, which made up for their OOC games against the Sisters of the Poor in Manhattan. When you had Nebraska, OU, Colorado, KU, Mizzou, Iowa State, and OSU every year to play in conference, you can take the hit on buying a few wins. When your conference mates are SBCUSA schools, you don't get that lucky. Your revenues aren't ever going to be anything special unless you whore yourself out to P5 giants, which we always do. I've always said that we should go after games with BYU, Okie State, Mizzou, Colorado, KSU, KU, and even Nebraska at Jerry World or the Cotton Bowl. Tech will never come here, nor will Baylor. Texas, OU, Arkansas, and A&M because of the JerryWorld games and the TCU/SMU SWC relationship. Won't ever happen. UH would be nice, too, to get a series with, but I'm not sure how open they are to that right now.

Marshall is playing a cream puff schedule and isn't even ranked by the committee that actually has sway in the college football world right now, the CFP Board. The Boise State model everyone talks about is not even one we could emulate, aside from playing weaklings, because they ALSO played a P5 team every year, usually beating them (see Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Geaorgia, Va Tech, etc...). Those wins got them the attention of the college football world. Marshall winning like they are this year isn't swaying anyone their way, especially if they do what I think they will in their big bowl game, which is fold up like a cheap tent like the last weak-ass non-AQ did with that kind of schedule (Hawaii under June Jones against Georgia in the SUgar Bowl).

What cracks me up is that we didn't get any announcement about this game from the university. Anytime we sign a contract to play anyone, it always gets announced. But not this one--its like it wasn't even worth the hassle to bring up to the public...

A couple of things--you forgot Texas State, who is having a nice season that should get them in a bowl, and Texas A&M was ranked at the beginning of the year, along with Baylor, as well as Texas and TCU in some polls. From where we all felt that they would be to where they are now and are headed, this is my list of exceeding versus failing in Texas: TCU--obvious UTEP--way better than anyone thought they'd be Texas State--solid year and headed to a bowl game Baylor--met the expectations of being top ten at the beginning of the year Texas A&M--met the expectations of being a top 25 team at the beginning of the year Rice--most thought they'd be a solid team again Texas--about where they should be, but they're Texas, so its probably considered disappointing Houston--lost to UTSA to start the season at home in their new stadium, lost at Tulane, but still having a decent year and will go bowling UTSA--started off nicely, but have fallen off the cliff since the calendar turned beyond September UNT--cannot beat anyone beyond the dregs of college football Texas Tech--gave Kliff Kingsbury a 7-year contract extension for $3.5 million per year, now getting pounded weekly by other P5 teams SMU--obvious

Well, it'd be nice if a coach in his third year as the HC wasn't struggling to get to OT against an NAIA school in an exhibition, but maybe that is just me...I know we were missing people, but that seems really sad to me.

and the fact that the Oline has severely disappointed us this year...

So far, since Apogee has been built, we have hosted or scheduled the following teams to play in Denton at a brand new stadium: Houston, Indiana, Texas Southern, Idaho, Ball State, SMU, Nicholls State, Army, and Incarnate Word. In the previous 3 years before Apogee, at decrepit-ass Fouts, we hosted Tulsa, Ohio, Army, Rice (back when weren't conference foes), and Kansas State. I love Apogee--but I continue to wonder how long its gonna be before people who hate athletics around here are going to ask why we spent $78 million dollars to build a facility to play opponents that Fouts hosted, especially when we are in the new i-aa again, after the P5 split away. Wouldn't it be ironic if Lee Jackson and the BOR got replaced because they allowed a huge expenditure to get made on a football stadium?

FIFY

That website just depresses me...as does playing Incarnate Word in anything. How does that game help you at all? Just as the Nicholls State game showed, these games do nothing for you, except give you a win and to see what it is like to be on the other side of a bought victory. Nobody wants to go watch these games, the results show you nothing about what your team will do against your regualr competition, and they don't even bring any fans with them to help you at the gate. If youre gonna play FCS teams, schedule SFA or SHSU, for goodness sake...they at least have alumni who will go watch their team play that numbers more than 20.