untjim1995

My expectations for North texas are always based on the REALISTIC situation we are in. That was how I looked at it back in 2003 and how I look at it 2013. As a fan, my expectations for UNT are based on these criteria: 1.) Our talent--both players and coaches. 2.) The teams we are playing and where we play them Right now, I see a QB that is not very reliable and a DLine that is paper thin. I see a coaching staff that doesn't trust their QB to throw the ball. I do see playmakers in Chancellor and Jimmerson, as well as a talented OL. I also improved talent on defense at LB and in the secondary. Lastly, I see a schedule that has a good mix of teams that we SHOULD be way ahead of (Idaho, UTSA), teams we are capable of beating anywhere, whether its small or big (Ohio, Ball State, MUTS, Rice, UTEP, La Tech, USM, Tulane), a team that looks like a stretch to beat right now (Tulsa), and a game that pays for salaries and non-revenue sports (Georgia). If we win the two we ought to win, and add in 2-3 games of the middle ten games as wins, that gets me to 4-5 wins this year. What I WANT is to take my boys to the games in Denton and have fun with them. I dream of us going 12-0 and going to the CUSA championship--but I also want to win the lottery, too, so its all relative when we look at expectations.

I posted about this earlier this year, but if you go back to the days since ALL of college football became integrated (early 70s), North Texas (State) has had two stretches of good-to-great teams as a FBS (I-A) member: the mid-70s under Fry (great) and the early 00s under Dickey (good). I think I found that we had about 4 winning years under Fry and 3 winning years under Dickey. Otherwise, its been a disaster as a FBS member and it has been irrelevant as a FCS member over that timeframe. Wanting 7 wins this year doesn't make you a bad fan--its just that us getting to 7 wins is a stretch. Most publications have us ranked in the bottom 20 FBS teams. Yes, we play a lot of other bottom 20 type teams, too, but to go from 4 wins to 7 wins with our DL being that thin and our QB being nothing better than mediocre at best, doesn't help you get to 7 wins very easily. My prediction is 4-8, with a 6-6 opportunity. You could be right to expect 7 wins, but I'm not there yet, not with this team and its many questions. Coach Mac knows that a 7-5 year gets him an extension, as does a 6-6 year. But I just don't see us getting that kind of jump this season. I suspect that if we see any improvement, it will be to get back to 5 wins. Just to make sure no one misunderstands my post, I don't find it as acceptable, I find it most likely to happen.

I see us winning this 27-17. We score late to take the lead and finish off the Potatoes. I suspect we will see a crowd of about 23k.

Its not a hockey site?

This may very well be the most obvious sentence ever uttered on this website in the history of posting... Larry Brown got SMU Tim Jankovich for their future coach, an increased interest in SMU hoops from both a media and fanbase standpoint, and now they have some great talent coming in. We got Tony Benford for AT LEAST 3 more years, lost any interest that we had slowly built up over a decade, lost our most talented player in the school's history, and have seen a lot of players leave the team. Its not a tough question to answer.

Count me as one that just thinks this is awful. We hear people bitch all the time about the lack of recognizable teams we play on our schedules. UTA, is at least a team people in the Metroplex know about. Now, you've given SMU and TCU an easy excuse to continue to ignore playing us in basketball, plus it will be an even easier excuse for them to use to cancel any series that we are scheduled to play in the future (see SMU football series). All we are gonna hear is that we did the same thing to UTA, so why is that any worse than us not wanting to play you guys anymore in _____? There are other games on the schedule to change around--this wasn't one of them. It was the one game we played every year that involved another local college team. Giving that up is very short-sighted.

That costs a lot of money that TCU had lots of--we don't.

I have no problem with it--he's showing his constituency that he backs up the guy who almost all of their fans believe is the victim of a witch hunt and is being unfairly followed by a media that would love to get a big catch--especially if it helps get the school (UT) that most of these "journalists" either graduated from in this state and are employed by a certain network that just happens to own the content of said university to reach their "rightful" place at the top of the foodchain in Texas. Having this all break in August when its been known about for the months before just screams Texas/Bama influence to me... I have no dog in this hunt--I think both Texas and A&M have way too much influence in this state. So do Tech and Baylor, too. But this is all dumb. If you ask me, how the hell Major Applewhite got to keep his job after screwing a female athletic trainer while his wife was pregnant is a LOT worse than Johnny Football siging autographs in the same way that Jadeveon Clowney and Teddy Bridgewater have. And that got covered up until Texas' black female track coach gets fired for basically having an affair with a female student and she sued and it all came out. In this state, as I have learned over the years, the media is full of UT writers and the legislature is full of UT lawyers and judges. They will do whatever it takes to take care of their Longhorns, even if its when their team is not as good as OU or A&M, which is certainly the case right now.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to see the AQ cartel take the NCAA Tournament away--that would kill the basketball tournament's love with the country and it would literally kill the NCAA, who gets 90+% of its revenue from the TV money that the tournament brings. It may still happen, but I just can't wrap my arms around a tournament that does not have Cinderella in it. On a side note, this is actually why I love college basketball more than College football, because everyone has a chance in college hoops. I think you are dead-on about ESPN and their influence. I will say this, ESPN is losing their ass on that LHN, but it does keep the Big XII together. because Texas is gone without that network, which gives ESPN a lot of airtime. Sure, they could fill up the space with other conferences, but the Pac-16 is pretty much a Fox conference, which would give Fox a major foothold in this state, should Texas, Tech, OU, and OSU move westward. I do think that that the Big XII will eventually die and ESPN and Fox will be the parties that tell each conference who to take. I see that working well for Texas, Tech, OU, OSU, KU, and probably K-State and WVU. But Baylor, TCU, and Iowa State are gonna be in trouble. When that happens, it will definitely be interesting to see how that will affect us, SMU, UH, UTSA, Texas State, UTEP, Tulane, La Tech, ULL, Arky State, Rice, and Tulsa. How cool would it be to have a conference with 14 teams within the four states for travel AND included those old SWC heavyweights? I know, those 5 will never have that, since they themselves barely get along with each other. But its still cool to think about--you would have a presence in DFW, Waco, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Houston, New Orleans, Lafayette, Shreveport, Little Rock, and Tulsa. Surely an entity like FSSW would have a major interest in a conference like this?

If you'll remember, our recruiting budget was ranked in the bottom 5, if I remember correctly, by USA Today earlier this year. ULM spends more on recruiting than we do. You can't catch anything if you don't even have the equipment to fish...you can wait for dead fish to wash up, but if you don't give the fisherman money to buy decent rods and lures, that's pretty much all youre gonna catch.

You can rest assured that we will never become one of those schools--nor will most other schools in the country. A&M is protecting their investment--an investment that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from his Heisman season.

I've spent a lot of time harping on the probable schism of college football. Even though this pertains to college basketball, the point remains that America really loves the underdog story. Maybe someone will recognize this within the BCS cartel... http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/86870/study-everybody-loves-a-cinderella

I posted back In January that, with DT as QB, I'd see us at 4-8, with wins over Idaho, UTSA, UTEP, and at Tulane. That still stands. Very bummed that I bought into the Berglund hope. Looks like the guy just can't play, at least right now. Maybe with time, he'll show us something, but it looks like we are seeing how he ended up falling so far down the chain from his HS days in Colorado. 4-8 this year will not get McCarney fired--I repeat, it won't get McCarney fired. His buyout is just way more than the university would be willing to pay. But 2014 will be the hottest of hotseats around here. I'd suspect that we would see a huge change on the coaching staff, with Chico and others probably being gone before next season. I want Coach Mac to win here so bad--he is everything that this university should want in a head coach. But he knows, just as well as we do, that this will be about his W/L record in his 4th year. If its another losing sesaon, he'll get fired, either when its obvious we can't have a winning season or after its over. I think Coach Mac will stay here and get an extension if he does one of these two things: win 5+ games in 2013 or win 6+ games in 2014. He gets fired if he wins 2 or less this year or under 6 in 2014. It looks pretty obvious at this point.

Your schtick is just terrible...

Under. I'm going with 4-5 wins.

I agree with this post a lot, concerning Dickey's view after that one great recruiting class really panned out on the field. He thought for sure that someone else was going to come calling because of the SBC success. The problem was that no one outside of the 15k that showed up to Fouts in that era really thought much of the SBC wins in that timeframe. Otherwise, he'd have been a head coach somewhere else. But no one even came callilng publicly to talk to Darrell Dickey. His personality and his offense wouldn't sell tickets anywhere else. I do think that we got really bad and that opened the door for the other SBC teams to take advantage of our drop off. But Troy did raise up their standards big time. Arkansas State got much better under Steve Roberts. And, of course, MUTS got much better under Rick Stockstill. The program in the SBC, and now CUSA, that resembles our rise and fall is FIU, where Mario Cristobal brought them up from the ashes to win a bowl game and become a winning program, but he eventually lost a power battle with his AD and got fired. It won't surprise me to see FIU really fail for the next few years with their new coach. Those type of removals usually don't end well for the university. We just have to hope Coach Mac can continue to get his lines to get stronger and develop into something positive. That will help everyone, no matter who is at QB, RB, WR, LB, or DB. If we can see that improvement, I think we can compete for a CUSA championship in the upcoming years. If not, we will just start over --again--with a new regime and hope that we can eventually get competitive with the other conference schools within the next 3 years.

He's not really a lunchpail guy, even though he has some similarities of lunchpail guys...

I have a hard time understanding how anyone can compare our situation to TCUs rise from being kicked out of the SWC and SMUs rise from the death penalty and Kansas State's rise from the worst program in the history of major college football. We never have had the following, conference affiliation, or money that those schools had, have, or will have in the upcoming decades. It doesn't mean we have to close up shop here in football, but I think it creates perception that we can duplicate what those schools did. Here are the differences: K-State: Before Snyder, they were hideous. Their football team was absolutely bottom of the barrel. But they had two huge things going for them while they sucked at football. They were in the Big Eight, so they got automatic crowds and ticket revenue, as well as other shared revenues, from being assocaiated with Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Mizzou, Okie State, and Iowa State. Obviously, some of those schools were football powers, while a lot of the others were baksetball powers, which led to KSUs other huge advantage. They were generally very good at basketball. They had a money sport that people followed closely and attended their games. None of those advantages have ever been shared by UNT. The only conference we played in the entire decade of the 80s included powerhouses like Sam Houston State and Stephen F Austin. Our hoops team has had more downs than ups, but they have never had a decent following. SMU: We all know they cheated and got what they deserved. After the Death Penalty, SMUs administration basically ran their propgram into the ground so as to avoid any semblance of cheating. And they did a great job of that, because they basically sucked for twenty years. But for all of that, they always played in a conference with the biggest of players in this state until the SWC fell apart and then at least played in regional conferences that allowed them to play schools that were more their size, from enrollment to atheltic budget. And when they banded together, SMUs alums paid a nice little sum of their own cash to get the hottest coach on the market in June Jones. Plus, as June Jones has shown, even if SMU doesn't appeal to many people outside of Highland Park, their name and tradition still carry an immense amounf of weight in the media and in college football. Heck, even a 30 for 30 special on their perennial and audacious cheating still turned into a puff piece on how far they have come back under Jones. The DFW media openly talk about wanting SMU to be a big deal again. Absolutely no DFW media, even the DRC beat writer, talk that way about us. I hate SMU more than anyone, but I also understand their major advantages over us. TCU: Same as SMU but without the death penalty. Very smart in the way they involved Ft. Worth to become the hometown team. Found conferences that they could win in and become a power, which got them a seat at the AQ table. They have their own dedicated media, plus they have lots of cash. Denton has never even come close to backing UNT the way Ft. Worth takes care of its little private school on University and Berry. The town is painted purple when football season rolls around, Sure, we see green around Denton, but there is a lot more resentment of athletics in music and arts loving Denton than there ever will be of support. Even when we have had a winning program in the 70s and in the early 00s, we were thrilled to have a season attendance average of 15k. I have always thought that the two programs we most resemble are San Jose State and San Diego State. We are a big public school that sits on the outside of the major conference schools and pro teams in our own backyard. Copy what they have done successfully and it can hold here. But if you hold back money to the program in your budget, only to have the BOR agree to hold continued talks on increasing the budget back up for athletics at a later date, it won't matter who you try to emulate. You cannot be a winner in college football if you won't spend the money to hire and fire personnel when you need to, not when its financially acceptable. When we turn that page, we will be ready to move forward big time in athletics, especially football and basketball.

TI Green is spot-on here about this being Chico's last year if we fail again on offense. McCarney only loses his job if we win 2 or less games, and even that isn't guaranteed. I suspect that 3+ wins will be enough for Coach Mac to reach his hot seat year of Year 4 out of his 5-yaer contract, just like Todd Dodge did. The buyout is much more affordable at that point and that has been proven that is what matters most to the AD and BOR. Brock Bergulnd is either a huge under-achiever or needs A LOT of motivation. Maybe that is why the regime looks at this season as a true motivation year without him playing, since it appears he hasn't gotten it done in practice or scrimmages. I still suspect that he will get snaps at QB during games at some point in his UNT career, unless he is just a real bust, which seems more probable as the days go by. McCarney's tenure is completely dependent on 2014 if we don't win enough this year to get an extension. I'm sure he looks at it as if DT may give him the best chance now to get to 5 wins, which I suspect will be enough to get him an extension here, whether that is sad or not is not the point here. If it appears that halfway thru this season that getting to 5+ wins is not going to happen with DT as QB, then I suspect that someone else will start getting snaps during games, if for no other reason than to get him prepared for 2014, since that is the real make-it-or-break-it season. The real rub for Coach Mac is that 2014 is not going to be anyeasier than 2013, as far as the schedule goes. We open at UT (certain loss), then play SMU in Denton (50/50 at best right now), and then play at Indiana (50/50 again at best). Add in CUSA games and whoever we play in our last OOC game in 2014 and getting to 6+ wins doesn't seem terribly easy if CUSA teams continue to improve. Right now, losing Tulsa will help, but losing Tulane will hurt, so its a wash as far as conference strength is concerned. If 6+ wins is what it will take to keep Coach Mac as head coach in 2014, its not going to be a walk-in-the park to get there. And if he cannot get to 6 wins in 2014, I'd assume he would get fired, meaning we have to start over again and we get to watch RV pick another coach, which at that point should make just about everyone cringe if Mac is a bust here. That would mean RV would have hired Todd Dodge and Dan McCarney in football, Shanice Stephens in womens hoops, and Tony Benford in mens hoops--and RV would still have another four years on his tenure to make other hires in other sports because of his recent extension. That is what worries me the most as I look toward the future.

Glad it's settled, hope DT shows us some improvement, but I don't see this being good news. I'll change my prediction from 5-7 to 4-8.

Keep it up, UNT90. You are spot on about all of this. There is a huge difference in building new facilities to replace crumbling, decrepit, outdated ones and actually funding a program properly. Just because we have the new facilities that are a breath of fresh air to all of us, doesn't make the job complete. Funding an athletic department correctly involves facilities and personnel. Personnel should be fired or extended because of their W/L record or in the ADs case how the $$$ sports are doing. We don't do that here and never have. We fire people when it is cost effective. Extending RV after the last 8 years of football, the continued losing int he women's basketball program, and the absolute debacle of hiring Tony Benford with your most talented team of any sport in 35 years at the school only reinforces the view that the AD at UNT is to run his office the cheapest way possible for the BOR and administration. Only charging half the athletic fee that freaking UTSA and Texas State confirms it. Obviously, at bare minimum, 1/3rd of the BOR hates athletic spending, and I'm willing to bet that another 2 or 3 will eventually be swayed to follow their lead. Show us differently and we will post our support of this proof. Otherwise, its the same ol song and dance as far as I'm concerned about UNT athletic funding.

To piggyback on this, I remember when we played any SBC team in that 4-year run, especially at Fouts, and I would go into the game wondering if the opposing team would get to 17 points. Every once in a while, an SBC team could top 20 on us. The thing that just killed those teams wasn't just that our defense was so good, but it was that we ran so much time off the clock, that once we had a lead, they had to pass to catch up and those MG Defenses were especially stout at pass defense. That line just killed the QB and we have never had a secondary like we did in the 2002 and 2003 seasons. Man, those guys just killed you. To me, though, the game that ultimately made Dickey Ball so obviously boring was when we played FIU in 2006 at Fouts. We won by a field goal, something like 26-23 in 7 OTs. We literally had no offense at all and I remember thinking that this had to be the last year he would coach at UNT. That boring ass offense just wasn't going to connect with the typical college football fan. Even when we were good, we didn't really connect with those fans, since our gameplan was so basic. What I didn't realize was that replacing Dickey, which was still the right thing to do, would lead to the university having to hire a high school coach with high school coaches as assistants. Sadly, that led to the most catastrophic losing stretch the unviersity has ever seen, but ironically, it was typically watched in front of bigger crowds than the Dickey-coached teams because throwing the ball was more enjoyable to your typical fan that running the ball over and over, especially on 3rd and 15 every time. Of course, we could have used Dickey's running offense when we routinely had first and goal under Dodge and had no idea had to run the ball in the red zone. Only at North Texas could you go from one coach who ran an offense like he was always in the red zone to one who ran an offense as if he was always in between the 20s. So, yes, the point FFR made about defense is really the ultimate point--at North Texas, when our defense has been awesome, our team has usually been competitive at the least. We need to get back to that again, no matter who the coach is or what style offense we usually run.

We have no shot at beating Georgia. Ohio will be a tough one, but they arent a top 10 SEC team.

6-6 is doable, but it is a stretch goal right now. The QB situation is far from good and the DLine, both in ability and depth, is suspect. IF both exceed expectations, I think you will see 5-6 wins this year. If one of those two areas don't improive, I think 3-4 wins is what you'll see. And if both are bad this season, the dire 0-2 win season will be upon us. I still say 5-7. Wins over Idaho, UTSA, Tulane, UTEP, and MUTS.

You will never get a response to this...hell, she won't even tell us her predictions for her dear Frogs this upcoming year. She'll never answer this stuff. And there's not a chance she's ever heard of Wacker, Dry, Shofber, etc...she probably thinks that when TCU fans mention "Coach Fran" that this must be the old womens basketball coach. She's got two bags--one with pot, the other with nothin'...unifrtunately, we all get to deal with the nothin' bag, most likely after she uses up her bag full of grass.