untjim1995

So dumb...if you don't like reading posts that are critical of a coach who has shown nothing but suck so far, as well as to a university that supports sports well below its peers by hiring coaches like Benford over and over and over...just ignore them. Hell, I want to be the most wrong poster in the history of the internet about Benford--I didn't like the hire to begin with and said so on this board. If he succeeds here, he will surely be Tech's head coach down the road, just like Johnny Jones and LSU. Because Benford changes players at a slightly faster pace than a hockey team changes lines, I doubt we will have to worry about that anymore--but again, prove me wrong, Benford and RV.

Imagine what it would like if Christian Brothers played us right now on a neutral court? Or if we had to go travel to their place? Brutal Benford'ing would be at play, for sure...

Well, Trilli did bring some talent here...maybe Benford can do the same?

This is just great news, Andrew/Skiver. I'm sure we will see LOTS of improvement next year when we get rid of that hack Tony Mitchell to the scrub NBA.

I don't blame the hype--I blame the person(s) who made the deserved hype become a nightmare. Look, I realize that the players have blame in this, too. So does the guy who chose an assistant with no head coaching experience to lead this "hyped" team. But the head coach has caused this mess--he will get a chance to right the ship, just because we won't buy him out with so many years left on his contract, but I believe that we have jumped ship to the USS Trilli...and we have seen how that has worked out in the past with a unproven assistant that could recruit but couldn't coach X's or O's.

Absoluetly not. But we didn't have a brand new stadium, either during most of those years. Back when I was in college in Denton, we had two coaches get fired in the same year, Jimmy Gales and Dennis Parker. And they were right to be fired, for different reasons. But the reason they got fired wasn't because of w/l records first, but because their contracts expired at the end of the year. It really hurt recruiting for each coach, because they each had to go out and sell these players that they would be here at the end of the season, even though their contracts were expiring. It was further proof that we literally gave about a 25% effort in athletics for decades. Finally, within the last ten years, we have just about half-assed it, which is sadly, "progress". But I agree with UNT90's perspective--if the university and community make it as clear as they can that they just don't care about being a winner at this level, why should we care? It seems to me that it has to do with the simple fact that the university doesn't care ENOUGH about athletics that can bring in money here. The BOR, administration, and community like music and arts and "valued" education, all of which are perfectly fine to support. But those ventures don't cost much to keep up or attend functions that support them. And if that's what they want to continually support and trumpet as the university's window, I suppose that's fine, too. But here's the deal--you lose guys like me. I like sports--I like watching teams I root for in person and on TV and listening to them on the radio. If you give up on your sports programs, especially football and men's basketball, you lose me. Maybe I'm in the minority on this one--I sure feel like as a UNT alum--but I could care less about the fine arts stuff. I'm sure that we have a terrific music department and that our arts department can kick UT's ass all over the canvas...I'm sure that our Green Brigade can just outplay and out march the hell out of Texas Tech's band...and I bet our Education School produces teachers to schools that puts Texas A&M to shame. But just once, I'd love for our football team to beat those schools on the field and I'd love for the basketball team to be ranked and playing deep into the NCAA Tournament while those other schools are at home. Again, maybe that makes me an idiot--it won't be the first time, for sure. But I could care less if the Green Brigade marches in a certain way at halftime--I'm there to watch a game. All they have to do is play the fight song, alma mater, national anthem, and a few other songs to get the corwd going and I'm good. And if the university LEADS with its athletic department by funding it properly and correcting itself when mistakes (like a 2-10 record in Year 3) happen, then you'd see other folks that just never gave UNT Sports a passing glance, come out to see if it was worth their attention. Ironically, the one time we saw this happen was when we fired Dickey and hired Todd Dodge. Dodge's name and reputation were so intriguing that we saw that added attendance and attention come in from all directions, from a media and fan standpoint. So much so, that if he had won here, he would have been hired away so fast to a bigger job, it wouldn't have been funny. Obviously, that didn't happen, but I thought then and still do that it showed that there are fans out there for the Mean Green to "get", whether they are alums or just casual fans. The problem is, though, that the mentality of apathy and angst against UNT Athletics, which still shows up regulalry in NT Daily and DRC columns, is still so thick that I just wonder if we can really ever be a player at the FBS level in football. Keeping a second football coach in a row that would, hypothetically, go 2-10 again, in a third year, (which I don't believe will happen) would tell me that we just aren't serious at all about being a winner. Again, if that's the case, that's the university's prerogative--it just wouldn't include me anymore. I'm not as patient as PMG or as GrayEagle. I have friends that are Longhorns, Aggies, Sooners, Cowboys, Red Raiders, Horned Frogs, and Jayhawks that always ask me how much I can put up with, usually after a stellar 3-9 season that included wins over teams that nobody cares about at all in this state. I can honestly say that I am near the breaking point...this basketball season that has embarrassed me to no end has really set me off about the state of our university and its athletic department. I figure I've got about another year in me to put up with losing before I need to see progress at changing personnel. And at this point in time, with the way things are playing out, we all get the real chance to see just how much the university cares about funding the programs--if a buyout is necessary, we all need to see it happen WHEN it is needed to be done, not like they did with Todd Dodge or Vic Trilli and just waited until they only had to buy out what they deemed as "affordable".

Southlake takes care of their own, obviously...

I like Coach Mac, but the "progress" we have seen isn't even remotely close enough to being satisfactory. Hell, even Coach Mac will say that. I'm sorry, but I think our OOC scheduling sucks, too. I think that having a 5 game schedule at home every few years is fine, if it means that we host a bigger name at home some years. Houston and Baylor brought more people to a game in Denton than anyone else we have scheduled, ooc or in conference. I think that should tell you something. I can't sell Idaho to other people to take 4-5 hours of their day to come watch a football game nearly as easily as I can Indiana. Just for a moment, imagine how cool it would be to host a team like Iowa or Nebraska or Colorado here. Heck, even a team like BYU or Boise State. The coverage and fan interest would be double what it normally is here, at a bare minimum. Army is a fine OOC opponent and so is SMU, but I just think we should be able to host a team with more name recognition, just like everyone else we play in conference. A lot of people on this board always jump on the "Hey, its the first home game, so we will always get a decent crowd just for that reason alone" argument. That may be true, but its only compared to the chumps we have played after that. I look at Boise State when they got going and watched them schedule FCS games at home and then played home-and-home series at various Pac and MWC schools. Somehow, that managed to work out fairly well for them.

I think the university is actually doing some right here. They have to try something to get more people to buy tickets. Maybe this will work out better than what we have been doing. Like Kram said, its worth a shot...

I'm sorry, but a year like that in year three of any head coach's tenure shouuld get you fired. Hell, Southern Miss just fired a coach for going 0-12 in his first year. If we cannot afford it, then we need to save even more money and just drop this thing down to FCS and compete there. Running a FBS program costs money and if you cannot even pay to compete with a school in Mississippi or Louisiana that's not in the SEC, while being located in the Metroplex, you shouldn't even bother trying to be a FBS program. That might hurt some feelings, but its the truth. You either fund the program propoerly at FBS or you should stop wasting time and money and move back down if that's what you want to be. And if you do go back down, which is basically taking the easy way out, that's a damn shame, because we could do things in a big way here as a football program and as a basketball program if we truly funded this place in an appropriate manner. Ever single time the university has even attempted to act like they care about athletics, people have come out of nowhere to show their support, even when the majority of the university and community bitch and moan about athletics spending (see NT Daily). People will follow the lead of the university in regards to athletics--if you don't care about it, neither will the majority. If you do care about and show it financially, you'd be shocked at how many people would follow the program and donate more time and energy to the entire university.

I, too, think that we are a 4-6 win team. My guess is 5-7 just based off the schedule and an improved QB in Berglund, especially as the season progresses. IF we have poor QB play nad major injuries on the lines, then I think 2-10 is appropriate. 2-10 or worse gets McCarney fired after the season, but 3-6 wins get him another season. And I think that 7+ wins gets him an extension, as it should. I think Berglund, JImmerson, the OL, and being completely settled in with McCarney's ways for the third year will give us improvement from last year. I think his initial 5-7 season really made people feel like we were further along than we really were, but the 4-8 record from last year in the SBC didn't surprise me too much. If you look at teams that have left conferences, their last year doesn't exactly go well, from a w/l perspective. You aren't exactly the best friends to the conference officials, both on the field and off the field. We have a low bar here, only because we haven't given anyone a reason to believe differently. If it were up to most of us, a 4 win season or less should be fireable at this point, but, sadly, this place doesn't have the $$$ to do this unless it is just a total disaster and you have to buyout a second year. If that happened, though, we are probably hiring an assistant coach who has never been a HC for about half of McCarney's salary. When everyone else around is paying higher amounts for a head coach, that won't exactly give any of us any hope for a big turnaround any time soon, but the budget (or lack thereof) is what it is. Plus, a firing of Coach Mac, if that has to happen, should mean the firing of RV, as well, so I doubt that happens unless the BOR forces it to happen, which again is highly doubtful unless we have an absolutely horrible year with double digit losses. I'll say this. I bleed green. I've been watching UNT sports for 23 years now. But this is all an important time for a lot of people as far as UNT athletics goes. For me, once the university finally figured out a way to get a stadium funded, I figured that this would tell us how serious this place really is about its sports teams. The stadium had to get built or the sport was going to get eliminated here, its that plain and simple. Fouts needed so many generators just to function on a gameday that it wouldn't have even made it for another decade. So, that to me, was our chance to finally say, "ok this is important and we now have great facilities for football and basketball to move forward." Then, we went out and paid for a head coach with previous head coaching experience and was well respected throughout college football. To me, as a fan and alum, this is what I expect from a university of our size and having built a nice stadium for its team to play in. However, the next step in proving that athletics matters to the university and that it will be used properly as a window to the rest of the school is to do the necessary part in funding the program by recognizing WHEN to buyout your mistakes. I don't believe McCarney to be a mistake at all. I expect that this is a moot point. But a 10 loss season in year 3 wouldn't be acceptable anywhere else in the country. If it costs money to rectify that mistake, then do it. If your basketball coach, even in year one, looks like he couldn't coach a YMCA team, then rectify the situation and move on. This is how they do it everywhere else in the country, even our peers in this new CUSBCA. Our new stadium has now proven to not be a reason for attendance or support to be much different than we were at Fouts--its all dependent on the opponent for UNT fans and Denton citizens to care. We can argue on how wrong or right that is, but the point remains simply that it is the way it is. So the only thing that remains to be seen is if a winner can change that now, as compared to the Dickey years of 2001-2004 or even Fry's years of 73-78. But the reality is fairly simple here. If we don't see any marked improvement in football, and it coincides with mens hoops continuing to flounder back to Trilli-esque seasons, and we don't see any changes at any positions at the top because it costs too much to correct the situation, I'm afraid that the university will forever lose more fans again.

LSU did what mostr universities do when they hire a coach--they looked around the nation and found someone eager to move up to coach at that level, after being a successful head coach somewhere else. Does it always work out--no. Kentucky hired Billy Gilllespie and they fell apart. But I'd take that chance versus hiring an assistanat with no previous head coaching experience. Instead, we basically trsuted our best team in decades to be coached by someone who was known to be a great recruiter. Vic Trilli's tenure here apparently was not remembered by those in charge. And, now, we pay for it--for at least two more years. The good news for Benford and RV? Literally, a .500 record would get some of us interested in seeing if he has anything in the year following. Hell, knowing North Texas, we will probably give him an extension for a near .500 record at this point. But all of that kind of talk seems like a pipedream at this point.

You redeemed yourself with this post.

PMG, I appreciate you giving us the numbers to compare UNT and Denton from 40 years ago to today and it is staggering how much that city and county have grown, as well as the number of alums in the Metroplex. The problem, though, is that highlights even more that the overwhelming amount of people connected to this university (students, alumni, faculty, administration, BOR, Denton citizenry, and DFW media) seem to want UNT to either flounder as an athletic program or to have it completely go away. I still believe with all of my heart that if the student vote on Apogee and the athletics fee had been more publicized and gotten more play with the entire student body, then it would've been defeated, just like all of the previous efforts before it did. This place may have done more for athletics in the last deacde than it did for the previous 90 years combined, but its not becasue the majority of the UNT family wanted it to happen. They want music and arts and education first, atheltics last or completely cut. I just don't think you'll ever see the thinking of this NT Daily douche ever go away among the majority of the student body because North Texas and Denton have proven many times over that they prefer for that kind of thinking to prevail. The folks who move here from other places may like college football or college hoops, but the first thing they ever hear from the local citiznery, including the majority of UNT alumni or students is not to bother with it. If these people overwhelmingly hate athletics, then how can we ever expect that to change? Winning may be the cure, but winning in the 70s and in the 00s didn't do it for football attendance or support. Basketball success over the last decade has'nt even helped us achieve an average attendance of even close to 40% of capacity. It just seems to me that this is always going to be a tough road to go down. The town cares more about the Texas Longhorns than they do about North Texas. The Texas Rangers playoff game actually forces the AD to change the kickoff of a game because he KNOWS that the citizenry and student body care waaaayyyy more about them than they do about the NorthTexas Mean Green. Some of you, especially youself and other fans that have followed UNT sports for over 30 years, are amazing to me in your love for this place. I have followed us for the last 23 years. But sometimes, when I look back at all of this, it just makes me wonder how much more patient I'm gonna have to be to see this place produce a winner and fully support it beyond 15-20k in attendance for a top 30 sized school in the country in the middle of a football hotbed.

If Iowa is a money game, then so be it, but you have to admit that we were told that Apogee would bring in opponents of similar stature as Iowa as HOME games. If Iowa is the money game for those years, that's fine and I actually love that because they are more beatable than the ridiculous SEC/Texas/Oklahoma massacre that we have always scheduled as our bodybag game. But if I think of Big Ten opponents that wouldn't be open to a home-and-home series, Iowa doesn't come to mind. Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Penn State, and Ohio State are different animals altogether, but I've seen Iowa play Northern Illinois in Chicago, I've seen Minnesota play at ULL and FAU, and I've seen Indiana come here. Iowa, to me, is more like the B1G teams mentioned in the previous sentence and that's why most of us thought we would see them come here for a game.

I doubt we will ever buyout either of those opponents, especially Florida, even if we were to start winning, since the money from those games pays so much of the bills around here for the AD. I think that most of us thought that Apogee would allow us to at least host a game at home against mid level AQs more often, like Troy has done or ULL and now ULM are doing. I don't mind playing at Florida if it also means that we play someone like South Florida here in Denton. Troy made their way up in the minds of many in the FBS world by hosting and beating ranked teams like Mizzou and Okie State. Those wins, as well as near misses at Georgia, LSU, and Ohio State over the years did more for Troy than any win over a SBC team did. Southern Miss was the same way for many years, too.

The latter part of your post is the reality. Iowa will have gotten a bargain for two home games against a low-level FBS team. The cost to pay for a North Texas to come and play a body bag game is probably about to double, since the supply just got cut big time and the demand will still be there from the Big Five AQs. I actually applaud the Big Ten on this decision. First off, the non-conference game involving an AQ and a FCS team has zero appeal to me. The Appy State Miracle over Michigan won't ever happen again, but I'm ok with that because that literally is the needle in the haystack of typical games like this. Secondly, now that the B1G will have 14 team, they are recognizing that their fans want to play their fellow conference mates as much as possible. Playing 10 games against conference opponents will make your conference season more intriguing, too. I suspect that this is the beginning of the next culling of FBS down to about 80 or so. The MWC would be the one non-AQ that will still get a few bones thrown to them, but the Big East, CUSA, SBC, and MAC are probably going to be get cut off. They will probably have an attendance requirement, capacity, requirement, and conference affiliation to be considered FBS in the next move.

UNT90 is dead-on here. And, by the way, we were told that Apogee would bring in teams like Iowa. So far, its best opponent was Houston and its best future opponents are SMU and Army. Hell, the old dump across the highway could still get us games with Army and SMU, even Houston. SMU's future OOC home games include Texas Tech and Baylor at home this year, TCU and A&M the following year, and then then Baylor and us in 2015. That's a great home schedule for OOC. I'm sorry, but when I see freakin' ULM HOSTING Baylor and Wake Forest in the same time that a new stadium in the DFW Metroplex will host Texas Southern, Idaho, and Ball State, I find that ridiculous. I know that most of the Southern Big XII schools play regularly here in the DFW area now, whether its at TCU or SMU or at games in JerryWorld or the Cotton Bowl, but there are other teams that would like to play a game down here. You can't tell me that Kansas, KSU, Iowa State, Mizzou, Colorado, even Nebraska, wouldn't be open to a game down here. That's not even talking about BYU, AFA, Colorado State, New Mexico (worst team in FBS), and Boise State as possible OOC opponents that surely wouldn't turn their noses up at a series in Texas. I still think its amazing that Iowa was allowed to get two home games with us for no return, even if they are looked at as a money game. That's still just ridiculous.

You know, that was just salt to the wound that still hasn't healed from that massacre in Houston. Losing to Texas 77-20 is awful, but at least you get paid well for it. Losing 77-20 to Rice, in my opinion, is the low point of this program since we moved back up to FBS competion in 1995.

I posted this yesterday from a different thread. Amazingly, in less than one day, a student reporter for the NT Daily writes a column that validates the belief that this school has a large amount of people connected to it that still loather athletics. HIs article highlights the real animosity from a large segment of the university that still feels UNT athletics is a waste and is unsupportable. Read the highlighted sentence below, which I posted in response to what has held this university's athletic teams from making much progress over the last 60 years, especially when compared to the schools in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. It doesn't matter if its the early 70s (vote to end football), early 80s (allow the program to go down to 1-aa), late 90s and early 00s (vote down every single attempt to fund a stadium), the student body has steadily shown how little they care about sports here. I'm here to tell you that its dweebs like this guy who will go on to work at the DRC and work to keep up the mainstream thought in Denton that UNT athletics isn't worth it because it hurts our "value" proposition--iow, we can't be as cheap as we want to be here because evil football costs too much. If the university doesn't want to pay to play at the FBS level, then just quit wasting our time. greenminer, on 11 Feb 2013 - 20:54, said: I think those decades were full of the thought that we are first and foremost a fine arts and music school, with a huge focus, as well, on educating teachers. Nothing wrong with any of those, either, but for whatever the reasons, that led to the most of the UNT and Denton community loathing athletics, especially spending anything on them. I'm still convinced that this university's leadership, faculty, alumni, and students care waaaayyyyyy more about the Green Brigade than they do about the Mean Green. The One O'Clock Lab Band matters way more to the university's reputation within those groups previously listed, in my opinion, than the performance of our athletic teams. And I think we love the history of being an affordable college that has been a great place for teachers to attend, instead of cultivating our connection with DFW businesses to an even better level than we have done over the years. Like it or not, business majors, engineering majors, and science majors have the best ability to be your bigger donors down the road, if they have been given a reason to want to give back. I love going to watch a concert at the Murchison Center or to hear about the many Grammys that a musician or band from UNT have earned, but those events and the headlines they produce are limited to thousands less than what a football game or basketball game brings into the university and the city. College Station, Waco, Austin, Lubbock, El Paso, Ft. Worth, Dallas, and Houston have all benefitted from winning college teams at various times over those same 60 years. It may very welll happen in cities like San Antonio and San Marcos, too. But if you look back at our history, we didn't attend games at Fouts when Fry had ranked teams in the 70s. We didn't attend games when Dickey's teams won in the early 00's. We haven't attended games so far at Apogee to see any marked difference from the years at Fouts, even though the new stadium was 20+ years late in being built. The Super Pit has been routinely empty except for about 1/4 to 1/3 of its seats for most of the last 30 years. Denton is a totally different animal to coach in and play in for college athletics than any of those other towns. Not making excuses with that, just seems to be a fact that cannot seemed to be proven untrue, no matter how much we try to convince us that things may change here for this sleeping giant anytime soon.

I think that most fans would take 5 games on their schedule for season tickets if it included a home game against an OOC opponent that was a recognizable name from either an AQ league or a big name from the MWC or Big East. I'd be fine if the Ball State game was in Muncie again, if it meant that instead of Idaho, we opened up at home against a team like Mizzou or Colorado. Just my .02....

I think those decades were full of the thought that we are first and foremost a fine arts and music school, with a huge focus, as well, on educating teachers. Nothing wrong with any of those, either, but for whatever the reasons, that led to the most of the UNT and Denton community loathing athletics, especially spending anything on them. I'm still convinced that this university's leadership, faculty, alumni, and students care waaaayyyyyy more about the Green Brigade than they do about the Mean Green. The One O'Clock Lab Band matters way more to the university's reputation within those groups previously listed, in my opinion, than the performance of our athletic teams. And I think we love the history of being an affordable college that has been a great place for teachers to attend, instead of cultivating our connection with DFW businesses to an even better level than we have done over the years. Like it or not, business majors, engineering majors, and science majors have the best ability to be your bigger donors down the road, if they have been given a reason to want to give back. I love going to watch a concert at the Murchison Center or to hear about the many Grammys that a musician or band from UNT have earned, but those events and the headlines they produce are limited to thousands less than what a football game or basketball game brings into the university and the city. College Station, Waco, Austin, Lubbock, El Paso, Ft. Worth, Dallas, and Houston have all benefitted from winning college teams at various times over those same 60 years. It may very welll happen in cities like San Antonio and San Marcos, too. But if you look back at our history, we didn't attend games at Fouts when Fry had ranked teams in the 70s. We didn't attend games when Dickey's teams won in the early 00's. We haven't attended games so far at Apogee to see any marked difference from the years at Fouts, even though the new stadium was 20+ years late in being built. The Super Pit has been routinely empty except for about 1/4 to 1/3 of its seats for most of the last 30 years. Denton is a totally different animal to coach in and play in for college athletics than any of those other towns. Not making excuses with that, just seems to be a fact that cannot seemed to be proven untrue, no matter how much we try to convince us that things may change here for this sleeping giant anytime soon.

FIFY

I go back to this a lot, but I just wonder how much this university really cares about being a winner in athletics. Sure, we have seen them put unprecedented resources toward the football prgorma in the last decade, with the new stadium finally getting built and the increased payroll for our current head coach and staff, but we don't seem to have a huge passion for winning here. The administration and BOR seem like they want to throw a few bones our way just to give lip service to this department, but I still think that athletics isn't even in the top ten of items that they care much about. We seem to be fine with the idea of keeping coaches and ADs on the payroll for as long as they can before the contract has to be eaten or cancelled. At any other FBS school in Texas right now, show me where an AD would keep his job with the on-field performance of the money sports (football, mens and womens hoops) that we have given to our fans. The mens hoops team have been good at some stretches, but even with that, we have two NCAA berths and two first round beatings, as well as the ultimate rarity, a hired-away coach from UNT because of success. The womens team has had one decent season that also got the coach hired at UT, which had more to do with her connections down there, plus her overall success as a coach. But with all of that, it includes three head coaches in football (including the worst ever in school history) that have combined to produce a total record of 22 wins and 73 losses in the one sport that pays the bills. It now includes one of the worst hires (saying something here) in UNT history as the current men's basketball coach, as well as the worst hire in the history of the women's program. Even UTEP wouldn't put up with that kind of ridiculousness in their program, and they are the one non-SWC team that we have shared the state with for many decades. Maybe UTSA and Texas State will be more like us than the others, but I wouldn't bet the farm on that. I'm sure they are more committed to making this work at a high level, at least one higher than we have tried to reach since Fry left here in the late 70s. The recruiting is just a symptom to the bigger illness--the apathy has the program on life support, and it is obviously known by those outside of Denton that we recruit against, as well as to those we are trying to recruit to both play here or to send their kids to play here. We will know soon enough, but it just may be that those 1-aa years are just too much to overcome right now. And there are no other teams to compare us to on this front--that moved down to the lower level for over a decade, then moved back up without having a true plan in place to achieve success. Literally, no one has done this to their fans or community like we did. And what's worse is that so many people in that community, both within the university and within the city, were just fine with having the university's athletic program wallow at that level.

Its not a big deal if we win. Seriously, $400k sounds like a lot more than it really is in the world of college football, even at our non-AQ level.