untjim1995

I think its real big for the team and our fans. If we win, it will give us all more confidence in Coach Mac and the future of this program getting better. Unfortunately, though, beating Ohio U won't make the local non-DRC media move the needle anymore than Idaho did, just because most of them don't care or don't know if Ohio is any better than Idaho. But, it would be very important for us to, at bare minimum, compete with Ohio for 4 quarters and keep it respectable. A bad loss, I fear, just makes the morale of the fanbase and team feel like its the same verse, different year all over again. I think Ohio is really good and will win this game, especially since its up there. But a close, competitive loss in Athens, Ohio followed by a win over Ball State at home would make me think a 6-wins or better season is in reach. And that gets Coach Mac an extension, which I think is very much deserved if he can get us up to 6 wins or more. Just remember that as awesome as we looked against Idaho, it was still Idaho. There may not be 5 teams in FBS worse than them. We did what he should have done to a bad team that we bought a game with--just like Georgia will feel when they play us in a few weeks. But the schedule ahead has no one else as bad as the Vandals. We are gonna have to keep improving and hope we stay somewhat healthy as the year moves on.

PMG--I totally agree with you on the Big XII's instability. They are clearly the 5th best AQ league right now. They have the smallest footprint of any conference for TV and have the smallest collection of teams (10). Texas A&Ms rise to power has rather violently shaken the state's recruiting to the Aggies way, as well as the media spotlight. Sure, UT will still get theirs, but they are losing battles left and right to A&M right now and OU is being completely locked out of the annual raids on TX HS talent that always went north of the Red River. There is too much money and pride at those two institutions to let this stand for too long. NOw, if A&M falls apart like so many of us imagined it would when they joined the SEC, that would be different. But the Aggies have the coach and the conference that a lot of HS recruits want to play for and in right now. The biggest advantage a school like TCU (and Baylor) has is that Texas' LHN is kryptonite to other conferences right now. But eventually, Texas is going to do one of three things: 1.) Dump the LHN and tell other conferences that they are open for admission--this is how they get into the Big Ten. 2.) Modify the LHN--use it as a regional TV network with a new name and have the Sooners, Cowboys, and Red Raiders move to the Pac-12. They keep their ESPN money from the original contract and move forward. 3.) Keep it and watch Texas football fall back to its 80s and 90s SWC days, where the other powers around them just blow by and leave them in continued mediocrity, but they stay in the Big XII with the other schools. To me, scenario 3 is the least sustainable for long-term success for UT, but the only prayer that Baylor and TCU have to stay as AQ members. The lawsuits from thsoe two schools will be flying fast if UT ever leaves, especially after each school's stadium investments of recent note in Waco and Ft. Worth. But, as long as UT can carry Tech with them, the lawsuits can be overcome. Its why I think sceanrio 2 is most likely, The Big Ten has made it abundantly clear that Tech has no chance of joining that league with its infamous "Tech Problem" email that Jim Delany sent to UT back in 2010. The Pac doesn't want them either, but they will take them to get Texas. Its the same thing with OU--The Pac, the B1G, the SEC all want OU, but they don't want OSU. But those two appear to be legislatively tied together, so they cannot be separated. When the Pac negotiations were getting hot and heavey, I'll never forget when the Pac-12 commissioner came out and said that they were ready to expand, in part because of Texas' LHN and some trust issues. Well, Texas (and Tech) went back home, but the OU president stayed behind and basically said to the Pac-12, "Hey, we are still very interested in joining your league!!", only to have the PAC commissioner bascially say back to them, "We wanted you when we thought we had Texas. We sure aren't taking you and your orange-headed stepbrother (OSU)." And back to Okie Land they went... Texas, right now, is the hot girl that everyone knows is hot, but she is also high-maintenance crazy. And she has a gaggle of friends, some of whom are hot in their own way (OU and KU), one that is her sibling (Tech), and some others of whom are just monied (BU, TCU, and OSU). Yeah, you may get to know her, but as time goes on, her attitude just makes the beauty less attractive, and it makes the others around her appear to be worse, too. To make this UNT related, WHEN the Big XII finally does implode, the bottom run teams of that league are going to be looking for homes to land in, some of whom aren't gonna like being non-AQ anymore. And when it happens, its gonna be seismic--the MWC, AAC, CUSA, and the SBC are going to feel the tidal wave of it all again. And, its my hope that we will (finally) be at a place to be a chooser instead of a beggar when this all happens. My guess is that it will be in less than 5 years. The big schools of the Big XII will find a way around that GOR they signed until 2025 to make the moves they wish to make.

We are all glad, too, so that is something we can all finally agree on from one of your posts. If I were you, I'd end it all on a high note--both on gmg.com and in life...

Actually, it was our homecoming game in 1992 against Northwestern State. We were losing by 3 points, had moved down deep into their red zone, and had just completed a pass, so the clock kept running. He had Mitch Maher spike the ball, but it was 3rd down, so we were forced to kick a FG with about 20 seconds left in the game. Remember, back in those days, you had ties, so he basically decided to kick a FG and settle for a tie. So, as pathetic as it was to settle for a tie at home on your homecoming, we all were amazingly shocked when he then decided to call for an onsides kick on the ensuing kickoff, which the Demons recovered at about their 40 yard line. They then complete a pass over the middle and call timeout with the ball on our 30 yard line after the completion to bring on the kicker, who promptly kicks the field goal and they win by three. It was the moment that everyone knew this guy was in waayyy over his head as a college coach. I still believe that it was the worst minute of college coaching I have ever witnessed in my life. The next year, after another 4-7 year, he got fired, since that was his last year of his contract. Just to put this all in persepctive, a huge crowd at Fouts in his tenure as coach was over 10k, which basically happened at Homecoming each year. I remember playing a home game on a Saturday night against Nicholls State in November. We won 31-3, IIRC, and literally played in front of the band and about 250 people--no lie, we counted about 25 students in the second half of the game. The alumni/parent side was not much better. I remember telling one of my fellow managers that there appeared to be more people in the press box than on the student side, minus the band. I think about these games when things are looking dire in our program, especially when Dodge was roaming the sidelines in his latter years. No matter how bad we have gotten, we could be playing at Fouts again, as a FCS school, playing someone that nobody cares about, with a high school coach that is in way over his head, in front of 250 people. Sure, we have examples of the NMSU or MTSU games on the last weekend of the year after Thanksgiving with unbelievable small crowds, but at least we were FBS, and at least against MUTS, we were at Apogee with a real college coach on the sidelines.

Expenses in these times do matter to a lot of households. A choice often does have to get made. Sure, in Euless where Trinity has been awesome, you'll see lots of people at a game on Friday night. Not in FW, where the high school teams are really bad at football.

ECU is a another great example for us to emulate, as was the old Southern Miss program that is now in the dumps. We can be them or better if we win. Just don't expect any of those other non-CUSA Texas schools to play us anytime soon if that happens, including $MU, who won't blink at any buyout that can be made if we are better than them and win the first few games in our scheduled series.

I grew up in Ft. Worth in the 70s and 80s and I remember how bad TCU was. Heck, I remember us beating them at ACS in 1985. But back in 1995, TCU did something genius. They knew that the SWC was about to end, having been left behind by the Big XII teams at Tech, A&M, UT, and Baylor. They were going to join the WAC with SMU and Rice from the SWC, but there was no doubt that they had to come up with something to make up for the loss of future Aggies, Longhorns, Red Raiders, and Bears that had helped boost attendance at their small rpivate school. They created the "Group of 100", who were among the biggest civic and commerce leaders in FW and asked for their help in getting TCU rebranded and making a connection to the town. So they came up with a slogan "Your Hometown Team", marketed heavily toward getting youth to games in the end zone, had businesses buy season tickets to give to their employees and clients, and also advertised even heavier in the FWST (this was funded by some monied alums, IIRC). In those first few WAC years, with Pat Sullivan as their coach, they couldn't draw flies because they were terrible, winning only one game in Sullivan's last year--an end of season win at home over SMU that cost the Ponies a bowl game (HAHA!!). But they did something that we have FINALLY mimicked in that they went out and hired a guy who had proven to be a turnaround artist in Coach Fran, who also brought along a young defensive coach in Gary Patterson. The rest is history. Yes, TCU got 30k for attendance averages for most of the next few years, as they continued to build up the program. Smartly, they scheduled us then for a 2 for 1 deal, knowing we would bring people to ACS and that they would get a win over a I-A team. When we got good, they did like all the others do (Tech, Baylor, and probably SMU in the future), which is abandon scheduling us again until we are useful to them. TCU is a program I would love to style ourselves after, just on a smaller scale, since we don't have the population that FW has, nor do we have a big media outlet (FWST) like they do. But they hired right (I really hope we have too, since I like McCarney a lot), began to win and recruit better players, and switched leagues that made them better for media coverage, competition, and prestige as they kept winning. We could get to 23k in average attendance fairly easily just because of our enrollment and alumni, but the civic interest is what will be the difference between us being where we are and moving up to selling out Apogee is that I'm not sure we will ever see Denton support UNT like FW supported TCU. And as we all know too well, scheduling the Big XII Texas teams in the way that SMU and Rice seem to be able to do at home hasn't been something those teams have generally wanted to do in Denton. Its a big reason why I have long wanted us to go out and play OOC series with teams like BYU and Boise State out west, with Mizzou or Nebraska or Colorado in the midwest since they lost their Texas games once they left the Big XII. We have to do what TCU did, whihc was schedule better. Yes, they always played and even lost to a FCS school, but they always had a bigger name on the OOC schedule that was usually in FW. What I would give for us to beat a ranked OU team like they did or to beat a team like USC in a bowl game like they did that got them going... This type of scheduling is all up to the AD here at UNT to get done. But that is much harder now that this power conferences are playing nine conference games in the future and won't schedule many road games against non-AQs anymore in the future (See recent BCS buster-NIU playing Nebraska 4 times in Lincoln over the next 8 years without a return game or neutral site game.)

TCU's sellout for that Utah game was due to it being a big game, their big success up to that point, and the fact that they had a big city to market them to without much competition. Remember a couple of things about TCU: First, its not very big, but they have a lot of money in Ft. Worth and the citizenry love it being their hometown team, especially their Chamber of Commerce in FW. Secondly, and this cannot be understated, but Denton has GREAT high school football, while FW has the worst football teams of any big city in the state (and its not even close). I'm not sure that FW has had a team go to a state championship game in the last 50 years. Denton loves its high school football and they support it big time, so that takes away from the university just a bit. TCU has no competition for dollars or time from the local HS teams in FW, unlike us. Whether it was old Denton High, Ryan High, or now Guyer High, Denton has a very strong pedigree of high school football success over the last 40 years.

The Pelini's are known for their passion...not for their intelligence.

That stadium screams "Fouts" without the track...

wow...scorched earth is one way to go, I guess, when you lose an argument. Best of luck to the Texans this year!!

Where did the Craig James Killed 5 Hookers meme come from? I've read it over the eyars, but have no idea why it became so popular. BTW, I figured that Tech fans alone probably got Craig James fired off of FSSW--he literally killed their program by leading the charge to getting Leach fired. They lost their genius--he will be their Hayden Fry, mark it down.

You do realize we had the 2nd best winning percentage in the MLB from 1994-2008, right? "Revisionist" history, bud. This is from your post above--who is pulling stats that suit their argument? That's why I posted that it would BE LIKE saying the Cowboys best 20 year period included everything under the sun that eclipsed everything your spare town has ever done, if we are just gonna pick out time periods to make our teams look good. And as far as personal attacks go, I can play, too. You're from Houston, though, so I realize that reading comprehension is hard--you've probably lost a few brain cells from being out in the humidity, eating more fat than a person should ever consume, while swatting away mosquitoes the size of birds. Aren't you the poster that complained a while back about people who live in suburbs being targeted as fans for the university? If so, don't talk to anyone about being low IQ.

I think Ohio wins this one 34-17. I think we still have a lot of work to do to win a game like this on the road. Plus, I don't see DT having the game he did against Idaho this week. He deserves tons of praise for what he did against the Vandals, but Ohio is better than anyone on our schedule not named Georgia.

Like we did to y'all in 2010 at your place in Houston? Wade's only win that year before getting canned was against the Texans in Houston. I remember hearing lots of butthurt out of Oilers fans down in Houston still pissed about how many Cowboys fans were at Reliant. BTW, I will give you one thing--Reliant is a much better place for football than JerrahWorld and its not close.

I'm callinlg the Rangers your Daddy because you are now stuck in our division. Unlike before, when your owner made a deal to the new owner to sell the team on the condition that they move to the AL West, further alienating your dwindling fanbase. That's not even mentioning the fact that most of your fanbase can't even WACTH your team play if they don't have Comcast. But the new owner is making tons of cash!! That's awesome!! You're the UT of MLB--make more money than anyone, underachieve at a high rate!! Surprisingly low in sports IQ is supporting Houston sports teams in an argument against ours. Not another sole in the country that would agree with you outside of the Toilet to the South. Nice of you to pick out your best 15 year stretch of history, though, to support your argument for the Astros. That'd be like me telling you that from 1977 thru 2006, the Cowboys won 4 Super Bowls, went to another one, and also went to the NFC Championship Game in that stretch 9 times. 6 pro champions and 12 championship apperances versus 2* MJ-less NBA titles and 3 titles appearances.//End of Thread

I don't see it working out too well for us up there, but I just expect us to compete with Ohio for 4 quarters. They are where we want to be as an AQ program right now--one that is very competitive in their conference, goes to bowl games, and is not to be overlooked. Ohio made the decision that we eventually made with Coach Mac, to go and get a coach with skins on the wall as their head coach, instead of some unproven college assistant or, gulp, a high school coach. Their program is going in the right direction now and I pray ours will mirror theirs very soon. I think the Ball State game at home will represent our best chance at getting a 2nd OOC win. I think we are ready to compete with a team like Ball State for 4 quarters at HOME. I'm not convinced that we are ready to do that against a quality opponent on the road.

Coming from a fan of the team that is in the running for being among the worst ten teams of all time in MLB history--again--is nice. Your team is 45-93 and is only 35 games behind your Daddy in the AL West standings. If you had been in AL West the last two years it would've been the same, since you guys won a whopping 56 and 55 games. And its funny that you guys talk revisionist history. Y'all act like the Astros have been awesome for the majority of their history and the Rangers just got good recently. LEts look back over the last 25 years. The Astros have 14 winning seasons in the last 25 years, with one NL pennant (and an embarrasing sweep in the WS by Chicago) and one other NLCS appearance. The Rangers, who you guys always say just got our "lifetime" fans back in 2009, have 13 winning seasons, with 2 AL pennants (4 wins in the WS) in our two ALCS appearances. We won't even talk Texans/Oilers vs Cowboys, even with the recent improvement of your squad versus the ineptness of the Jerrah-led Cowboys. Hell, even Tony Romo has accomplished just as much as your Texans by advancing to the Divisonal Round of the Playoffs in the absolute worst stretch of history that Cowboys fans have suffered through. Think about that for a moment. In the franchise's worst stretch in its history, its still accomplished as much as the Texans have in their "glory" years. And except for the Luv Ya' Blue Oilers in 1978 and 1979, Houston has never even sniffed a Super Bowl apperance. Nice football history you have down there.

You were stupid enough to name your baseball stadium after the biggest fraud of an energy company that caused more heartache than any other company in history in Enron, so congrats on having a stadium downtown that has a train in it...because nothing says great baseball like a freaking train.

Little Danny Snyder--just as bad as a football owner as Jerrah, but without any titles or NFC championship appearances. And who roots for a team called the REDSKINS in 2013? I mean, really, is their even one other team out their that is more insensitive with their mascot than Washington? I'm gonna laugh so hard when the PC of DC finally catches up to them and they have to become the Washington Red Storm!! RG III won't last 6 games this year before he gets injured--again. The NFC East goes to either the Cowboys or Giants.

Houston sucks. Their football team is good now--finally--but even then they cannot get past the second round of the playoffs. Let's not forget that your town lost an NFL franchise that is pretty much known for the Biggest Choke Job in the History of Pro Football, the debacle to the Bills in 1993. Your baseball team has made it to one World Series where you won exactly zero games. And your basketball team won two NBA Championships when Michael Jordan decided to play baseball for two years. When he came back, the Rockets were back to normal. DFW has 12 championship appearances and 6 titles in the three major sports. Houston has 5 championship apperances and 2* titles in the three major sports. And if your city wasn't so spare, we could talk hockey, which Dallas has 1 Stanley Cup and 1 other Western Conference Championship, but your "world city" doesn't even have an NHL team, so its a moot point. Let's also not forget the All-time Greatest NCAA Championship Game, as voted by several media outlets, that involves a certain university from said town (UH) losing an absolutely unlosable game to one of the biggest Cinderellas of alltime in NC State. Nice sports city you guys have there. Its right up there with humidity, mosquitoes, and fat people, all of which you guys score very high on every year. Congrats!!

Wow, that home OOC schedule is just awful. When SFA is your marquee home game in OOC, you aren't exactly going to see the turnstiles turn at the Super Pit. I guess the AD is banking on the CUSA home games being better draws than the old SBC teams, so that it evens out in the end.

I love the dark green uniforms and the white helmet, and obviously, the flying worm is awesome. I'd love to see these uniforms come out once per year, going forward, at Homecoming for sure. I, too, am not a fan of the current shade of green, nor do I like the North Texas on the green helmet. I still think the SOW or the interlocking NT on a white helmet with a dark green jersey is the look we should strive for...which means it will never happen.

That will never happen. Only non-AQs that could go unbeaten and get in are either BYU or Boise State, just because of name recognition to the public. Even they would have to have unbeaten years while everyone else lost at least one game in the top 4. I'm seriously at the point where I am fine with the AQs taking their toys and going home. The non-AQs should band together to force much higher payouts on series with these NFL-lite programs, so either 1-1 series or you can play us for a million dollars or more for one game at your behemoth stadium. 2 for 1 gets the non-AQ at least $750K. I also think that a playoff system for non-AQs would be much easier to implement--those lower-level bowls are all owned by ESPN anyway. Give ESPN our playoff system for the month of December, when most of the non-AQs play bowls anyway, and we can have a whole month to enjoy the publicity that would come from having no other college competition for football. The AQs are going to have to always include the bowl games in their situation, whether they have a playoff or not, just because of money. Those bowl committees aren't gonna let go of their games just for the sake of a playoff system. They payout too much money because they make so much money. You can cede the last week of December and first week of January to the NFL-lites and let them continue to play each other, as they do now, but their bowl games have been in ratings decline for a while now. Sure, the Big Bowls will always be great, and if they are used as a part of their playoff system, they'll continue to do well. But, its my belief that the non-AQs are going to get left behind anyway, and when we do, we are going to have to figure out what we are going to do to get revenue and attention. The FCS-style playoff system, playing when the AQs aren't, would give college football fans something to watch and create interest from. The problem with the current FCS playoff system is solely due to the fact that nobody knows any of those teams, for the most part. If most of your non-AQs are left behind, they aren't suddenly going to lose their name recognition. UNT playing SMU in a playoff game (heck, even a conference game!!) would get some interest around here, especially if it was played when the Aggies, Longhorns, Sooners, etc..weren't playing. I wish that a schism wouldn't happen, that UNT will get to stay as FBS, that we will all get an equal chance, that cats and dogs will finally get along, and that there will never be a hungry person in the world again. But none of those are likely to happen in the future. As Kirk Herbstreit said on ESPN this past weekend, the Big AQs have sent out the first shots at separating eventually from the NCAA. When that happens, the AQs will be able to function in a completely different fashion than they currently do, from paying players legally to letting kids play for them without having to go to class. I, for one, know UNT will never be able to handle the former and would never settle, thankfully, for the latter.

Our kicking game was just as big a reason that we lost at home against Troy as DT's poor play was. We didn't have to kick any FGs against Idaho, but I suspect that this week, those opportunities for points are going to involve FGs. If we cannot make those, especially on the road, we won't win more than a few more games, IMHO. I will say this, though. DT played great, Chancellor proved to be a playmaker (again), and the defense looked good in the opener. We have two games on the schedule that we all should expect that UNT should win--this was one of them, along with UTSA later this year. I think that it is a good signthat we took care of business against a really bad team at home in a dominating fashion. To me, that shows progress. Last year, Texas Southern and South Alabama respresented those two automatic wins, but those games were oddly closer than they should have been. This Idaho game was pretty much over by the 2nd quarter.