untjim1995

Powerhouses Texas Southern and South Alabama both like him a lot, too...

This kid is just getting caught in the fishbowl that big time college football and major media creates. He has nothing to keep him grounded--not at home, not from Aggie fans, and not any obvious religious connection (like Tebow). But there is one thing that does seem to keep him in between the lines, so to speak. Its football. Guess what starts up real soon? Manziel is a special player and I think he will eventually pay a huge price for everything that will spin out of control in his life--but its not gonna be in college, barring any injury. Manziel is a special college player--he may not do anything in the NFL. But I think that he is college football's version of Joe Namath and the Aggies will continue to benefit from his swagger. Much like when Texas started beating Nebraska in the early years of the Big XII when the Huskers were among the best teams in the country, I have a feeling that the Aggies may be there with Alabama. If they win that game in College Station early in the season, I think they have a great chance of not only winning a national championship, but to also establish themselves as THE place to play in this part of the country, which is what OU, UT, and LSU have been able to do at different points over the last 15 years or so. These things go in cycles, and maybe Manziel will fall on his face this fall and The Aggies go back to being 6-6. But I highly doubt that. His therapy is the locker room and the football field. He will be the guy that drives the media crazy and rival fanbases even crazier--but I suspect that he will continue to be a great QB for the Aggies this year. I doubt he will get the Heisman again, though, if for no other reason than that the voters don't like his behavior.

If we don't beat their asses and Coach Mac isn't fired within 24 hours, the mass exodus of the fans that are still trying to cling on to some kind of hope for football success at UNT will be quick and long-lasting, I'm afraid. A program in its third year of existence, playing its first full year of major college football against a very strong OOC schedule and a CUSA schedule, shouldn't be even close to beating anyone that has played football for more than a decade. If they do, its not really gonna make me feel like UTSA has already made it--I believe they will, though, in the years to come--but it will make me think that the team that loses to them needs to think long and hard on whether football is something they need to compete in at the FBS level.

I think this was the best UNT team I;ve ever watched. We played OU closer that year than any of the other Texas teams that they played. That OU team was a machine--I still can't believe they fell apart at the end of their season, but two of the best coaches of alltime, Snyder at KSU and Saban at LSU (then), just flat out-coached Stoops. They realized that Jason White would make bad throws if he got hit hard. Before this came to light, though, many pundits thought that OU was on their way to being one of the greates teams of all-time in NCAA history. Here's something kind of funny about that season for us and OU. We lost to OU 37-3, then beat Baylor 52-14 the next week at Fouts. The Aggies then beat Baylor 77-14 a few weeks later in College Station. Then, later in the year, OUs schedule ended with home games with A&M and Baylor. They put on the biggest ass-whooping I have ever seen one AQ team put on another AQ team in that 77-0 demolition of A&M. The Aggies never came close to crossing midfield and only gained less than 75 yards total offense the whole game. If Stoops had wanted to be an absolute jackass more than he already he is, that game would have EASILY been 100+ to zero. It was 77-0 in the 3rd quarter. It was so bad that A&M would just turn the ball over against 4th and 5th string guys and bring it down to the 5 yard line, so Stoops oredered his 4th string QB to take a knee at the 5 yard line...on 1st down...with much of the 4th quarter still to go That obviously looked even worse than just scoring a TD, so Stoops then ordered his QB to ran a handoff to the FB who immediately dropped down to the fetal position as soon as he could. I've seen some non-AQS get beat that bad ( thinking mostly of us here) but I never thought I'd see the day that Texas A&M would get beat like that ever. Knowing that A&M had beaten Baylor 77-14, but then lost to OU 77-0, the obvious question for the next week was what would OU do to Baylor in Norman??? Fortunately for the Bears, OU didn't give anything in the game to even try much and still won very handily. After seeing OU obliterate Texas 65-13, A&M 77-0, Tech 56-25, and Baylor by a ton (cannot remember the exact score), I remember George Dunham saying on his talk show that North Texas was OUs toughest opponent in Texas. Of course, just 4 years later, OU would beat us 79-10 in Norman, so we went back to being the typical badybag opponent under Dodge. But, for one year, North Texas gained a small amount of attention for being pretty damn good by not getting murdered against OU like everyone else in the state, and then also just pummeling Baylor at home. Even the old SWC media types in this state had to take notice of the Mean Green!! It was a special time for most of us.

I don't see 2 wins on the schedule for them, and that is being as generous as I can possibly be. Tulane and New Mexico--that's it. I doubt they will win both of those, so I figure they will get 1 at best. That must be some serious drugs that poster is taking.

I've posted a lot on this subject over the last few years. It wasn't hard to see what was about to come to fruition. The Power 5 conferences and Notre Dame control a lot--add BYU in there, too, if you want. They have the networks under control, they have huge stadiums to fill, and they have the control of the legislatures in their states and in DC. Add in additional media control and then throw in there this "stipend", and you get the "Division 4" now in play, since these schools also control a little entity known as the NCAA. There is literally nothing you can do about it as an outsider, unless you can somehow convince a conference to invite you in (see TCU). I used to think that I wouldn't want to be the Chancellor or BOR member who supported Apogee gettting built only to see us get dropped out of the top level of college football again. I figured that the Denia residents, old nestors, and other non-athletic types that hang out in Denton would just make their lives miserable for putting so many $$$ into that new stadium. But I now think that won't be too much of an issue. The reality is that Fouts was so decrepit that we had to play somewhere else to even have a football program anymore. Apogee, in my opinioin, saved the university from dropping the program. Even if you drop down to the new FCS level, the stadium still had to get built. The capcaity of Apogee is lower than I wanted, but it makes me think that the university knew that expanding it would be easy if it was necessary, but 30k would be just fine for our needs. The next 3-5 years will tell us a whole lot. Who we get to play in OOC games, who will still play football at a lower level, and who we will have as future conference mates, those are all questions that will get answered within that timeframe. Who knows, maybe those SMU games will actually be conference games!! Never say never...

I tend to agree with you wardly. I think the level of talent that has made its way here is just not up to par with even most SBC schools. The recruiting rankings show this. Development and coaching can make recruiting rankings useless, though, so you have to hope and pray that Coach Mac does here what he did at Iowa State. Those Dickey teams were more talented than their SBC brethren, built on the one stealth class that brought in some solid talent. I'm still amazed Dickey pulled that off, sice we were in the middle of absolutely sucking, and he himself wasn't a guy that exuded personality. But he got that talent here and he coached it well enough to know that beating SBC teams was all he needed to do to keep the folks happy around here. For that, he deserves the accolades he received. His approach to OOC games and his interactions with the fanbase/medai seemed very poor to me, but there are some who don't feel that way about him, which is fine, too. DIckey just will never represent a high bar for me to want our head coach to match. I think the big things for this season are to see continued development from a strength and development stanpoint, especially on the defensive line and at QB. I believe DT will start the season as the #1 QB, but I think Berglund will be playing by the middle of the season. He is the future and Mac knows that his only chance to have anything built successfully here is to have BB turn into something great. Otherwise, Coach Mac's tenure here will be over after the 2014 season wihtout a solid QB in place. Then, although CUSA is supposedly a steup in conference affiliation and competition, the schedule this year and probably next year is made up of a lot of schools that are beatable--very beatable in some case. We have to win at least 5 games this season to let everyone know that we are improving as a program. In 2014, Coach Mac knows that we have to win 7+ games or his tenure here is over. BB is who he will groom to be ready to finish stonger in 2013 and be ready for a successul 2014, which would get him an extension.

I posted a comment about La Tech's future, IMO, for this fiasco a week or so ago. It is eerily similar to what happened to North Texas in the 70s. We would lose our great head coach who got us ranked and the program never recovered. La Tech just lost a great coach in Sonny Dykes to Cal--after he gets his team ranked during the season, only to be rewarded with no bowl game. Now, they've lost their AD, too. I'm sure their posters will act like Skip Holtz is a fine replacement, but he is no Sonny Dykes. He will be their Jerry Moore... I'm not bullish on La Tech for the future. I am bullish on Southern Miss, UTSA, MUTS, and WKU over the next 5-10 years. We will see. I want to bullish on UNT, but I know the history and see the recruiting and just hope that Coach Mac's experience at developing talent and strength on the lines will come to fruition here in Denton very soon. If so, then I think the next 5-10 years will turn out to be very good. If not, I think we will continue to flounder.

I tend to agree with you on UTSA, but UTEP has always brought good crowds to SMU and TCU, since a lot of their fans live here or have family and friends here. UTEP will be a good conference mate.

I'll always call it like I see it until UNT proves me wrong. We don't have enough going for us to change the fact that we are an outsider to those in the Big Five and will be permanently when this new Division 4 gets established. We can agree to disagree, but nothing will convince me this is not about to happen and that we will be left behind. I'll still go to games at Apogee, but I truly believe that a game Between UNT and UTSA in about 3 years will be as a lower level Conference game.

Its different this time. NEver have all 5 Power conferences had their commissioner's all come otu ont he same subject, along with the NCAA President. It used to just be media knuckleheads bringing this up because they are the bored ones at this time of the year, so you would get a quote here or there from a HFC or AD or Conference commissioner that spoke out about this. Not now--NIck Saban started this talk earlier this year. John Calipari followed suit. It hasn't slowed down one bit. This is the real deal, this time, PMG. I wish it wasn't, but it is...

I was listening to Tim Brando's College Football show this morning and he had the new La Tech AD on. Brando asked him about the Division 4 possibility and what he thought about it. His response was that he understands where they are coming from and that all he wants to focus on is how to make La Tech better as an athletic department. "That's all we can do because its really out of our control.", he said. He then said, "When I was at McNeese State, I will tell you that the FCS playoffs was the best thing, since it gave us a chance to win a championship, not just some bowl game. I think the same type of thing could be done here, too, if the separation occurs, to give us a chance to still win a championship" I think the writing is on the wall now. Its just a matter of when it gets setup and how it goes from there. For those of you who were around Denton back in the early 80s, what was it like before the i-aa fiasco got dropped on us? Were you prepared for waht was about to occur? Did it even register with you or were you thinking this might help the program to be competitive? I've always wondered how that announcement of the eventual separation was made and how it was received by North Texas fans and the community in Denton.

If we had even 1/3rd of UNTs alumni that wanted to watch UNT football instead of UT football, we would have a stadium that seats about 45k right now. I think we have about half of that 1/3rd figure that actually is interested in UNT football and even that might be too generous.

Everything you posted is spot-on, except for two points: 1.) We aren't gonna have a choice--neither will most programs that are non-AQ right now. The Big Five will either have the NCAA do it or they will do it on their own, but they will determine who will be able to split the revenue pie that will come from all of this. 2.) Our size is only a huge advantage if we look at enrollment, but those numbers of people who attend games, buy season tickets, and also donate anything to the school is woefully below those other peers with larege enrollments. The comparison to look at is endowment funds and also to look at attendance and ticket revenues from athletics. Those are your peers. Its a tough pill just because all of the recent progress at UNT with the football program is impressive enough, but it just came too late. Even with all of the improvements in facilities, coaching salaries, and conference affiliation, they all happened anywhere from a decade to three decades to late. I think if we had what we have today, even ten years earlier, we might just be able to make a case for ourselves. We probably would have already been in either the old CUSA or the MWC. If that was the case, we would have had a stronger chance to get included in a separation. As it is, it just doesn't appear that any current CUSA, SBC, or MAC school will get much support on this, either, just as probably half of the schools in the MWC or AAC won't. I hate the idea of never playing at the highest level of college football or basketball in the future, but there's really not much we can do about it now. If they separate, then we have to make the best of it. Back in 1982, we dropped down and played teams that no one heard of or cared about, while everyone else around us that most fans did know either still played at the top level (all SWC schools and UTEP) or they just quit (UTA and Lamar). Maybe it wouldn't be as bad this time around, especially if you had more regionally recognizable opponents in your conference. Its nowhere close to what anyone wants, but it just appears that we all had better come to grips with what lies in front of us. 2.)

Those Tech wins were nice for our program in the 90s, but they weren't against a bowl team. Those were Spike Dykes teams, nothing like what Leach eventually built in the mid-to-late 00's. But they were HUGE upsets on every level--betting spread, conference affiliation, media attention--it was all there for UNT. But we neve capitalized on either of them. In 1999, in what has to eb one of the craziest tidbits in UNT history, our two wins were at Texas Tech and a home win over 9-2 Big West Champion Boise State. We lost to everyone else... The type of game you are really wanting to look at in UNT history is the one that is most famous--beating top ten Tennessee on the road. NOthing we have done is on par with that kind of win since then, even the bowl win over Cincy, who was pretty damn good, by the way. A freind of mine who is a sports media member in DFW has always told me that UNT has to do two things in the same year to draw any kind of media and fan attention away fromt he usual suspects in this area--win their conference AND beat someone of note on their schedule from an AQ league that is ranked. Whether it was K-State or LSU last year, UH or Alabama the year before, Clemson in 2011, the games against Texas, OKlahoma, Arkansas, etc...from the past bodybag beatings, we have to either beat them or come ridiculously close AND then win CUSA. Nothing less than both of those will not move the meter on UNT getting decent media coverage here or hopefully seeing the fanbase come out from under the rocks that it has supposedly been hiding behind all of this time.

I was listening to Jack Arute today on the College Sports Radio via Sirius and he just sounded so giddy at the thought of the Big Five moving on. The Big Media is on board here--ESPN and Fox want this to happen, in my opinion, as do most of theose who cover the sport. I think the Big Five split will essentially work itself out to where they won't play anyone outside of their group as soon as future scheduled non-AQ games can be bought out or played. I think they will introduce a playoff system for 8 teams to start that will include the BCS Bowl Games. Then, your Cotton Bowl, the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, etc...will be Power Five Bowls still. It won't hurt the BIg Five programs so much to schedule better in OOC, since a loss early on, wouldn't knock you out of the playoff picture. Therefore, a team like Texas could actually be able to play LSU in OOC without it hurting them, unlike now. Instead of trying to get a BCS Bowl spot, the goal is to get a playoff berth, probably for their conference champions and the other 3-4 teams that finished second in their conference. What I think we be really interesting is to see who the non-AQs who don't get moved up will do for a playoff system. I'm completely onboard with the FCS playoff system over, since it crowns a legitimate champion. Not that the New Orleans Bowl hasn't been fun, but it doesn't really have a future, in my opinion, if the future is playoff oriented. I guess we will see

Not nearly enough...

Both of those teams are well-known for what most univerisites in the state are well-knonw for--having front-runner fanbases. Its funny how far Tech has fallen back from its glory days under Leach--couldn't happen to a better bunch, either. As for SMU, well, even as they have improved under June Jones quite dramatically, to most people in Dallas and the rest of Texas, they are always going to be the team that cheated incessantly and then got left behind when the SWC disbanded. Hard to draw crowds in Dallas, TX when you don't really matter anymore...

Like they didn't do the last time we had a huge division shift in college football, in the early 80s? Congress isn't going to stop this--hell, they will probably encourage it, just to help their big schools in their individual states.

I was there--soaked from the top of my head all the way down to my toes. Can't believe we lost that game still. I remember Riley getting hurt (shocker) and that Tune came in and was asked to make a long throw on 3rd down that got pick-sixed. Then, we come back and have to settle for a FG to go to OT and then figure out every single way to blow that game. That season was so amazingly frustrating--lost so many games that were very winnable (Ohio, FAU, Army, and others). But, in the long run, if we had won even two other games that year, I could've seen RV giving Todd Dodge an extension--thank about that for a second...

Those schools usually have a bad time, historically, anyway. They will be gladly take the $$$ over wins every day of the week, just as they have all done for their entire history. OTOH, they might see a nice pickup in recruiting, as they can tell a kid that they can play at the top level, while they can't if they go to Memphis or Charlotte.

In 2010,Chico had an offense that was geared toward being wide-open from Dodge. That's all they were developed to do for the entirety of Dodge's tenure. He had Lance Dunbar. He had Riley Dodge as the QB, who only knew how to run that offense. And he had receivers that could make plays. Last year, Chico ran an offense that had no receivers worth a hill of beans, a QB that was very subpar, in my opinion, and an Oline and group of running backs that were the strength of the team. I don't blame them for not trying to throw the ball in games with DT. He threw a ball almost into the stands against Troy with the game on the line. He threw an absolute killer of an interception at WKU that led to a loss. He was beyond bad against South Alabama. You can blame that all on Coach Mac, but I'm willing to give him a pass since it was just the 2nd year of this rebuild. Now that we are in Year 3 of Coach Mac, that excuse is gone for me, but I was willing to give him some rope last season. If DT doesn't throw that INT at WKU, we finish 5-7 and everyone feels better about not taking a step back from Year 1 to Year 2. By the way, that step back didn't surprise me at all--I knew that our last season in the SBC was going to be tough, just because we weren't going to get many calls to go our way in conference games. Plus, I'm still absolutely shocked we won 5 games in his first year with the leftovers he inherited from Dodge--basically Dunbar and a few other decent pieces, but absolutely no size whatsoever on either line. I realistically expected us to win about 2-3 games that first year. I highly doubt that DT will be the QB for the full season anyways--he had no choice last year, where he will this upcoming season. Both of them will have receivers that should be better than last year's squad, so that should help open things up. I don't think DT has what it takes to be a QB that can make you a winner, so the sooner he can pass the reins to Berglund, the better off I will feel about the future. If BB is a bust and cannot beat out DT, then this thing is just gonna suck for the next few years and we will end up with a new coach in 2015.

I can't believe I'm gonna post this, but Cougar King is right. UH is in good shape for being included in a future new FBS Division because of their market, size, tradition, and results. I think the teams you listed (except SMU) all have a great shot to be included in that new division. I do disagree about your independence stance. If you get left behind, it will make even more sense not to be independent, because cost and revenue sharing will matter even more when you won't have the stature of being included in the new FBS. I think that some schools, like Tulane, Rice, and SMU might just say that they would rather not have a program if that can't play at that FBS highest level. I could see them drop to Division III if they still want football around. All of this is why Utah and TCU were the absolute biggest winners in conference realignment. They got moved up to the Big Boys Table and get a headstart over the other non-AQs in figuring out a way to stay at the top FBS level. I actually think the MWC/AAC upper echelon of teams might get included, too, just to show that the Big Five aren't colluding for themselves only. I'd expect Boise State, BYU, SDSU, Fresno State, Colorado State, UNLV, Nevada, AFA, Navy, UH, UCF, USF, ECU, UConn, and Cincinnati to be the 15 that get strong consideration to be FBS when this split occurs. If all of those teams get included, you would have 80 teams that are included at that highest level, but that seems higher than I'd expect that level to get to. I would think 72 is the round number that would make sense--6 conferences of 12, or 4 conferences of 18. If 72 is the correct number, that would leave 52 of us behind. Add in some of the bigger FCS schools, and I'm certain you'd see a new division of i-aa that would also be around 72. NOt what any of us really want, but it is what it is.

NO kidding--some of those games in his last two years were so boring, I thought about falling asleep. Talk about give-up. 3rd down and 8 = draw play...

Well, after reading this link, it doesn't appear that my last hope for change is gonna happen at ESPN. http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/9499740/is-college-football-big-five-conferences-split-ncaa