untjim1995

I think that this isn't the year that a coaching change occurs, unless we only win 2 games or less, so Mac should be able to continue to build toward the future. Whether we agree that is right or completely wrong, isn't really the point because it is what it is. That said, I do believe that another guy should be under center instead of DT. He's your backup to ensure that if you need someone ready in case of injury or ineffectiveness, but you have to prepare for the future. Its very possible that the 2nd half of the season will look a lot better for UNT's future, than the first half, just because of the QB situation. If We get to 5 wins with someone else as QB at the end of the year, I'll bet 2014 will be a very good season for the Mean Green. If we win 5 or less with DT as our main QB all year long, then I think 2014 will be a crapshoot, which is not exactly how Mac wants to go into his make-or-break year on his contract.

I agree with Vito completely on his prediction.I see us at 5-7, too. I think that we will see improvement and that QB play will be the key to whether we are excited about 2014 or if 2014 will be Coach Mac's last hurrah at UNT. To me, 2013 is about two things--continued development of depth and experience on the defensive line and, most importantly, to have a solid idea of who your QB will be for the next few years. What worries me about Berglund is that McCarney never tells us that he is competing at a level that turns his head, but instead tells us that every other QB looks better. If this is all about motivating the young man, you have to wonder if he will ever be able to realize his potential, since McCarney has basically praised everyone else that plays QB in the spring and thru summer camp, so far.

I think this is Mac's way of lighting a fire under the other three. DT cannot be complacent, Berglund needs to show more than flashese of potential, and McNulty needs to be more than just a guy who wouldn't even hit the depth chart at most other schools.

Go on record and show us those wins, pal. I see you guys losing to both Okie schools, Texas, and at least two more conference games, which I'll venture will be at Tech and at Kansas State. LSU will froggy style you hard at Jerry World. That shows me 6-6 before your bowl game. The MWC says hello and to remember that Rose Bowl!! Oh wait, is that clinging on to the past?

You are really setting a high bar with that first sentence. Congratulations on being able to have a QB on your team that is better than a team with a combined record of 22-73 in the last 8 years combined. A fan of a school that was in the SWC and is now in the AAC is scoreboarding a school with much less resources and pedigree, that has played the last 35 years in the SLC as a 1-aa school, the Big West, or the Sun Belt, along with a few years as an independent where schools like yours refused to allow us the chance to play in a league with you. What a great guy you are--I bet UH loves you representing them on another teams's fan site that you don't play anytime soon. Most of us wouldn't ever dream of going to NEw Mexico State's fan site and scoreboarding them about their program being bad. They wouldn't need our reminders--plus, it comes off as extreme douche to do it. I suspect that you've never posted on texags.com or shaggybevo.com, though, about how great the Coogs are. Funny how that works when you aren't even close to being either of those programs. Come to think of it, I doubt you ever post at killerfrogs.com or raiderpower.com, either. It sucks to be left behind, doesn't it. Maybe the future will work out for you to get into Division 4, but as time goes by and the verbal outrage form the Big Money Schools and their media buddies talk about pulling away from the rest of us (UH included), the more I realize that UH won't have a place at that table, either. Which is very ironic... Since you basically won't be any better off than UNT once it happens. Enjoy that for a second--I know I am.

From an old Manager's view, Fouts was the ultimate dump. You had to get the blocking pads out of the West Side closet that literally swarmed with Crickets every August. I mean, you fought crickets all the way through that closet--everyday until the insecticide began to work. Then, they died and stunk for a few more weeks, as you swept out the dead ones that often stacked up to the middle of your legs. The rooms underneath Fouts were about the equivalent of going to a meeting in a bathroom that might have been cleaned at some point in the previous 6 months. Plus, the fans that were brought down there to try and keep it cooler and get the air moving didn't really help much. Every August that rolls around, I thank my lucky stars that I used my scholarship wisely enough to not EVER have to be outside working during this heat again. Those 5 football seasons were very good at providing perspective for the rest of your life--sometimes, you end up in tough places, where success is just plain harder than at other places, but if you just fight through the adversity, the road ahead often clears up. When I get down about my job, I think about the days that started at 6am at Fouts, involved two full practices, took about 4-5 hours to finish laundry after practices ended for 100 guys and 15-20 coaches, all while fixing helmets, shoulder pads, cleats, etc...It was not unusual to spend the night at the "cage" because you got done with laundry at around 3am and had to be back there ready to go by 6am. I'm sure most people are thrilled that the students of today have a better campus life than we had it when we went to school in Denton. But, for me, the folks I will always be happiest for are the football players and coaches and trainers and managers, who must feel like they went from the streets of Mumbai to the Taj Mahal in the course of just a few years. And I'm not even exaggerating--it was really that bad at Fouts.

Compared to what he sees every weekend in the Big XII, the SBC probably did feel that way. As far as the one beat writer, that is damn straight. f it weren't for Brett Vito, we'd have no one covering us in the Metroplex.

What a shocker--Froggy Style is awfully quiet about his supposed team and his prediction for how they will do. It doesn't seen like a tough question, unless you are afraid to go on record.

I think that it won't kill them at all. It will kill the rest of us, if we lose the NCAA Tournament. I'll gladly give up the Division 4 Model in football to keep the NCAA Tournament intact, as well as the College World Series. Its far easier for North Texas to compete with Texas in basketball than it ever will be in football, just because of the sheer fact that basketball needs 1-2 guys to make a huge difference.

bump--hey FroggyStyle, how is TCU gonna do this year?

No other AD in our history has had more athletic support from the UNT administration than RV--none. Think about that for a moment...then realize that UNT has gone 22-73 in football since our last bowl team. Yes, mens basketball became pretty good, with those two NCAA berths as 15 seeds under JJ, but that is not likely to be repeated anytime soon, based off the season we just saw with Benford as our head coach. Meanwhile, our girls still haven't had a winning season in a long time. This all happened with an administration that actually has looked as athletics as "not bad" as compared to previous ones that looked at athletics as "bad" or "we hate even having it". RV isn't the worst thing the university has endured...he is nothing more than a symbol of what the university continues to endure--that winning in revenue sports doesn't matter as much as the cost of those revenue sports.

If we keep losing in football and basketball, trust me, you'll leave well before RV leaves.

It just reiterates that you are the most supportive person toward UNT on this board, big fella. Nothing more, nothing less. EVERYONE knows that you bleed Mean Green--so much so that nothing ever seems bad, negative, wrong, etc...when it comes to UNT athletics. You are the perfect fan for the UNT BOR. I am not even kidding, either.

This is the most positive news coming out of the football program in a while. And I think its a great reflection of Coach McCarney's enthusiasm and experience in connecting with people. It takes a while to get Texas high school coaches on your side--they have lots of people coming their way from lots of schools in the state and out. But once you do, it can make a huge difference in your recruiting. A winning season this year under McCarney would be like a vitamin shot to our recruiting. If we fall back, though, I suspect that our recruits we have recently received verbals from will change their minds between now and signing day if we have another 4-8 season or worse this year.

You offer these guys if for no other reason than to tell everyone you are actually trying to recruit talent and then if something happens to him later that makes him unhappy at name-your-AQ-powerhouse, then maybe he remembers that and transfer to UNT to get a fresh start. It has happened a lot in football and basketball (see Tony Mitchell). I have no problem with Vito calling it what he did, but I have no problem at all with planting the seed in these recruits' minds that UNT wants them, too.

I'll gladly give him that credit--but its +1 for Johnny Jones, but the Tony Benford hire hasn't made anybody feel real good about his ability to choose coaches, especially after the Shanice Stephens hire and the Todd Dodge hire. If Rick Petersen does a good job here and McCarney does a good job here, then he will be break even, which is still amazing to be after all these years as the AD. No other AD would have even been given the chance to correct those ridiculous hires in the money sports because they were so bad--except here.

I wanted the school to hire Dodge, given the choices that we had on our limited budget back then. I thought he would be a slam dunk, too. But I didn't know that he would just make up a staff with HS coaches as coordinators and position coaches in thsoe first few seasons. Once it became clear, though, after year 3 that it wasn't going to get better, we should have cut bait. But I knew we wouldn't because RV told Richard Durrett of espndallas.com that Dodge was safe and would get the 4th year because "we don't have money to buy out two years of a contract". Those weren't my words--that was the AD who said that, no doubt reaffirming the BOR's thoughts. So we went ahead and gave Dodge a 4th season, which saw more epic failure and we fired him because it was then affordable to do so. By taking a "value" approach to that decision, it literally cost the football program probably another 2-3 years of being able to become a winner. But we did save money, though...

I would ask RV this simple question: How does it feel to know that you have a job for the remainder of your working life here at UNT and that the Athletic Offices will be named after him when he retires even though he has made the worst hires in school history in the three major sports?

This is gold...

This is exactly why I believe he should be fired--I can't believe he got an extension with the hires of Shanice Stephens, Todd Dodge, and Tony Benford on his record. Even if Coach Mac gets fired and Benford fall completely on his face (again) and eventually gets fired when his buyout is afforable, RV will be blameless in this. Don't know how or why, but he will be. The athletic offices will be the Rick Villareal Athletic Offices when he retires. Just wait and see...

I don't think McCarney will be a head coach anywhere else again--his age and his health aren't on his side in my opinion. If he were to leave, it would be because he had an awesome year in the one of the next two seasons and some AQ team paid him to be their short-term guy to get their program turned around soon. Seriously, about the only place that would come to mind for that to happen is Kansas. And Im not sure anyone wants that job. I think he is either our coach until he retires or he gets fired before the end of 2014.

I agree with your point on McCarney's job to build a winner, but RV's tenure as the AD here shows quite clearly that the exact opposite is true. Winning at your money sports hasn't mattered one bit to this university when it has come to measuring RV's worth as our AD. Otherwise, he would have been gone a loooonnnngggg time ago.

Its actually very fun--I used to take my little boys out to practices at Fouts. They like watching the guys scrimmage and practice. It is fun to do, especially if you like to see the inner workings of how the team prepares. Its not a big deal that they closed practices to me, but I certainly enjoyed them when I got to go with my sons. Of course, that was also about once a year on a Saturday in August, too.

Here's the difference though. UH and TCU were given royal treatment by being in the SWC--they talked down to us because its always been in their best interest to keep us down. All of those SWC schools, except for Arkansas, Texas, and A&M had a vested interest in keeping us down--plus they had the advantage of knowing that our university's leaders agreed with them. UTSA, on the other hand, has never even had a day where its been hard for their program. Sorry, but starting as a brand new program in San Antonio, which by sheer location then opens up doors to your university that wouldn't even open for us, all because of our location that we have to share with other college teams and pro teams, is just a tough pill to swallow. I don't blame UTSA for this, I blame UNT for this. But it doesn't take away from the fact that UTSA is like the trust fund kid that did nothing to deserve his riches, who didn't even have to try in school or in his job. Meanwhile, at UNT, we are like the poor kid who managed to get a degree and earn our first job, only to see that job go away for a decade, forcing us to have to find part-time work or work full time at a job that was well beneath our qualification. Only when another trust fund kid decided to leave his job (SMU) did we get a promotion--only to see your pimpled-ass there in the same department, not knowing how to do your job, but expecting to get the same treatment. Guess what? Most people don't treat that lazy ass very respectfully until they prove they deserve it. And, oh, by the way, we are very much aware that you could very easily get another promotion over us just because of the born advantages that you have over us. And, yes, it will suck greatly if it happens.

There is actually a need at Texas to do this right now--its because their fanbase is feeling very nervous right now. They have had three seasons that are not up to their standards--theirs, not ours. Their fanbase is tired of getting prison-raped by OU in the Cotton Bowl every October. Now, they get their little brothers to the east in College Station who left home and literally became a big success in the SEC overnight, so much so that recruiting is overwhelmingly going in the Aggies favor right now. Their fans are increasingly becoming angry and dissatisfied with the direction of the program. Opening up a few practices for them is probably a nice way to make nice with the thousands of fans that want to see a practice in Austin. Texas needs to do this right now because they are on the precipice of falling backwards even more. It isn't hard to see an 80s level fall back from the Longhorns if things don't get better soon. Thats going to be a lot of t-shirts to win back again. At North Texas, you, me, and about 50 other people that aren't parents, siblings, or friends of current players would like to watch a practice. Sure, I wish we had more that wanted that, but I am giving McCarney the benefit of the doubt that he knows what is best for his team. Would I like to see an open practice or two? Absolutely. But Texas is doing this because they are LOSING t-shirt fans at a fast rate right now, which costs money. Here at UNT, we don't have t-shirt fans. Hell, we barely have fans, as compared to our size. Its watermelons to plums when looking at these two schools. One wants football to be their window to their great research university. They have a legacy to try and keep. the other university has proven for decades that they feel that football only takes away from music, arts, and academia, which they feel provide a great "value" to the population. I think I hear you now--and I tend to agree on wanting some practices open for the fans--but I don't think we are missing anything big because we don't open them up. We just don't have enough fans to push the needle here. Otherwise, when Dickey was our head coach and we opened up practices to everyone, we would have seen attendance jump greatly, especially when we were winning the SBC in a dominant fashion. Instead, when Dodge took over, and now with McCarney, we have seen attendance increase, even if it is not where we want it to be or thought it would be when Apogee was built.