untjim1995

It is unacceptable, but the reasons are fairly simple. Both schools have solid head coaches in place and they have nice bullet points to help with recruiting. UTSA can point to big crowds at the Alamodome, their future home schedules, and the SA media coverage down there to get some local kids to stay close by home, plus they beat TX State in their last game. TX State can point to their win over UH in the beginning of the season and their improvement in facilities as a FBS school located in a beautiful part of Texas. Our biggest win was at home over Louisiana-Lafayette on a Tuesday night in front of about 15k, on our way to a 4-8 season. I'm not saying that this is acceptable at all--its just that I can see how those two schools are going after their recruits and I have to say that playing home games against Texas Tech or Oklahoma State in OOC is just a tad better than playing Texas Southern or Idaho at home.

I'm not disagreeing with much of what you posted. I was just opining on why recruits are choosing podunk towns over the wonderful nirvana known as Denton. And I do call BS on the history part not swaying recruits--when you can only show recruits that you have had three winning seasons as a FBS program since we moved back up to 1-A in 1995, and those three years were from 2002-2004 in the Sun Belt, then we fell back down again, recruits damn well care about that. I'm not saying any SBC team SHOULD be better than us, but I'm just trying to find reasons why someone else would choose to go to one of those other schools. I just think this new SBCUSA we are about to join will prove yet again that what we face here, even with 36k students in a "hotbed" of football recruiting, is still a very daunting uphill fight. I guess I'm the Doubting Thomas here, but until we see our program beat these "podunk schools" on a consistent basis, I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that this university and its community that surrounds it have failed miserably at supporting its athletic teams, while being completely supportive of its arts and education programs. The coaches at ALL of the schools we recruit against tell recruits and their families the same thing. The good news is that if Coach Mac is really the guy to change this, like his mentor Hayden Fry did in the 70s, we will know it over the next two seasons. If not, its back to the beginning again.

Don't get me wrong, emmitt. I agree on all of wha tyou just posted. The question is why is Monroe or Lafayette or Jonesboro more appealing to those guys right now? It just seems to me that it goes back to the bigger issues that I posted about above. The university and the city have such a poor reputation among college football fans and media that it also filters down to high school coaches and recruits. Denton is known for music and arts and...apathetic athletic support and losing programs that get no attention from the media. Its also a college town that isn't terribly far away from home for the Metroplex kids--I still think that also plays a part, too. I grew up in FW and I feel like I kind of missed out on a true college experience, even though I was a student manager all the years I was in school at UNT. It was less than a hour away--a lot of weekends and weeknights were spent in the Metroplex, not in Denton. A lot of people think going to UT, A&M, Tech, OU, or OSU are the truest places to go away for the college experience, but think of the people we went to HS with that went to SFA or SWT just because it was further away from home. Combine this matter of fact with poor performance and complete apathy surrounding the program and it becomes more understandable why Jonesboro, Arkansas or Lafayette, LA become more attractive. And I'll bet it won't be long before we see Metroplex recruits heading down to San Marcos, too, for their college football careers.

I truly believe that Berglund will be the difference next year in us winning 6+ games, assuming most variables stay in play between now and next year on a personnel standpoint (health, eligibility, development, etc..) Coach Mac and Chico should have the QB they need next year if he can play to his abilities and not get in any trouble.

Tech is in trouble. They cannot pay for coaches to compete with the upper echleon of the Big XII's powers, nor can they match the cash of TCU or Baylor. Their Athletic Department is probably the worst in the AQs for the big three sports. They have now seen their FB coach leave, their BB coach leave, and they replaced their baseball coach last year after he sucked. Seriously, they are in deep trouble. If they hire Kliff Kingsbury now, who has no head coaching experience and would be leaving behind a great job as the OC at A&M right now with Sumlin and Johnny Football, I suspect that will tell us alot about Tech's appeal. One thing they do have going for them is that they didn't have to pay Tuberville anything as he left Lubbock, so that will help. But there are already rumors out there that Kingsbury is a Leach-guy and won't go there as long as Hance is the President. Wouldn't surprise me to see them go hard after Dana Holgorsen at WVU if they can afford it.

Yeah, let's fire the coach after two seasons and pay out three years of his contract. We are stockpiled with cash!! Sounds like a terrific idea--I bet we could get Saban to replace him, too!!

Reading this thread reminds me of why being a UNT fan is so damn hard. We all want success here so bad, but the reality is that our program has pretty much been abysmal for 35 years. Then, even when the coach gets hired and has only won 9 games in his first two years, he gets barbecued by fans who demand that we expect more. Yet, again, our recruiting is usually terrible compared to the teams we all somehow believe we "should" be competitive with--in other words, old SWC schools, who have everything we don't ($$$, media, name recognition). So we have to hope that we can "coach" them up--as mentioned earlier, Patterson got lots of credit for this at TCU, but he was doing that with 2 and 3 star kids that he could fit into his defensive playbook, simliar to Leach at Tech with his offensive strategy. Then we think we should be able to replicate these once-in-5-decades-hire like they've done. Guess what--we did that, with Hayden Fry. Then when a team that we think that we should be way above, like ULM or WKU, starts winning, we think why can't we do that, too? Well, the answer is simple, too--we did--from 2002-2004. Most programs in the MAC, SBC, etc...don't stay anywhere close to the top for any pronounced amount of time, just like we didn't during our "glory years" under Dickey. You get about 2-4 year run as a winning program, then your coaches get hired away, or in our case, just give up because they didn't hired away. Most people who are rational, whether you are a police office or businessman, don't look at the UNT situation right now as good by any definition, but the head coach has already turned us in the right direction from the previous 6 years on the field and off the field, and his PR is better than anyone we have seen in 35 years here. If he doesn't win 6 games next year, than the coach will know that he has one year to get it right or else we will make another change. Then the cycle starts again. And the constant theme will continue to be that we will all post about how we deserve better since we are a big university and our location makes us a sleeping giant and our facilities are better than ever and..yada, yada, yada. Look, you don't have to like Coach Mac or think he is the right guy. He might not be. But, in the big picture, with the way college football is heading, it probably won't matter at this point on if he is or if he isn't. We got started in this business of trying to actually fund a decent program about 10-15 years too late. Coach Mac is the best we can buy right now. Even if Coach Mac wins big next year, just like Northern Illinois has done this year, and we somehow got the non-AQ bid, it isn't changing the fact that we aren't going to be included in the Super 64 or 65, just like it won't help NIU or anyone else in the non-AQ leagues. Absolutely none of that will be Coach McCarney's fault or even RV's fault. And that's the rub--recruits know this because their coaches and families know that the university didn't show any reason for fans or media to care about them for decades. And sustained winning comes from the recruits you pull in to run your system, unless you are that Fry, Leach, or Patterson hire that comes around once every 50 years. Otherwise, history tells us that you fall back in line with results that befit your university's commitment to the sport, at least as compared to others in your peer group. So even if you think Chico is the answer or if the right guy is not here right now, the only chance we have to make any difference in the results we have seen is to find our once-in-a-lifetime coach. Otherwise, with the recruits we do get and the apathy that we deal with from all levels, not much is going to change in Denton, success-wise. The only questions I have at this point in regards to our football future are when does our playing level get pushed back to being lower than the current FBS and who will we see playing at that level with us? Because the hard truth is that there are going to be some schools on that list that never imagined getting dropped down (TCU and Baylor might just be two of them, which would make their current coaches most vulnerable to leaving if/when that occurs, causing both to go back to being what they traditionally have been). McCarney winning 8+ games next year and the following year ain't changing any of those dynamics. As FFR points out, we love this team because it is ours. But it doesn't make it any easier knowing that we really never gave our football team a decent chance to compete as a legitimate FBS school until it is well after the fact. And as we always see at this time of the year, everyone associated with recruiting knows it, too.

That's not really gonna change in the SBCUSA, either.

That's gonna be one expensive breaking of a record for the athletic department--and us fans--to accept.

Kind of like hiring Steve Lavin at St. John's, huh? I bet that killed their recruiting...oh wait? Huh? Fraschilla lives in Dallas and has a cush job at ESPN. He son plays at HPHS. This would have been the only job that fit with any desire he had to still coach. We know he was interested. I talked to him personally about Mitchell--"he's the Real Deal." were his exact words. And I don't believe for one moment that he wouldn't come here if he had been offered the job, even if ESPN paid him more. He will always have that to fall back on, just like Lavin does. But, hey, I'm glad that you seem content that Benford was given his shot to learn to be a head coach with the best collection of basketball talent in school history. It sure looks promising right now!!

I think the Big XII made it clear to the Liberty Bowl that they needed to take Iowa State. They travel well and the conference will probably help ISU with tickets. La Tech's poor ass didn't have any of those advantages. Plus, I'm sure that the Liberty Bowl was probably thinking that it would make more sense to be friendly with the Big XII now, if for nothing else than to get future considerations from the Big XII. Telling the WAC commissioner that they had a deal and then backing out is akin to a skinny band dude asking a cheerleader to go to Prom, only to find out that a guy on the football team wanted to go to Prom with her, too. In the end, there's just not much the skinny band kid can do other than face the music...

I disagree a little bit. I do think that Vizza would've been awesome in those years, but Riley was always going to be too small and DT wouldn't suddenly have been more accurate. Hell, the offense this year looked exactly like Dickey's offense and DT wasn't able to take advantage of 8 men in the box. And I do think that Hall would've been solid no matter who was his coach. He had moxie and could make accurate throws. If he's on this year's team, they would've won 6 games, at least.

I think that Mack is a great recruiter. I think that any of those guys he turned down, including RG III and Johnny Manziel, weren't as good as what he had already signed or thought he had. The problem down there at Club Med-Austin is that their players are coddled and adored, thus their development falls apart. I'm convinced that Colt McCoy developed the way he did as a freshman because he was a coach's kid and that aided his development. Gilbert was supposed to be all-world, just like Simms was and Chance Mock and David Ash and...The real problem that Texas has is that their recruits all get ranked high because they get recruited by Texas--and their media alums just make a fortune on propping them up. In reality, many of those 4-5* kids they get aren't any better than what A&M, Tech, Baylor, and TCU have been getting. The difference has been that the coaching under Sumlin, Leach, Briles, and Patterson has been much better, which has allowed them to beat Texas (or in A&Ms case, would beat them). Mack has done a very good job at Texas, turning them around in a way that Texas fans hadn't seen since the Royal and Akers years. But 15 years is a long time and the program appears to be on a downside slide that won't be tolerated much longer. The Cotton Bowl between A&M and OU is a no-win deal for Texas. Oklahoma wins and they continue getting top Texas HS recruits to look north of the Red River. A&M wins and they have all of the momentum now with Texas HS recruits. In a weird way, it might actually benefit Texas MORE if OU wins the Cotton Bowl, since they already recruit evenly with them and they lost to them again by 40. If A&M can say that they beat OU on a neutral field after OU prison-raped UT (again) on a neutral field, the Aggies are going to clean up in recruiting. Its gonna look like its 1985 all over again in this state.

One of those QBs listed above doesn't belong in the same sentence as the other two. Just sayin'...

Did any of them replace a coach who won 6 games in 4+ years and had only been a high school coach before taking over? Not trying to be a Mac apologist--flame away if you think I am--but he's already won 9 games, where the previous regimes won 13 games in the 6 years before him. We all want a winner here, but you gotta get a qb that can play and lines that can block or pressure the other team. McCarney's recruiting and development can really be judged as we move forward here. But the 2nd season, at least in my opinion, is his last honeymoon year here--going forward he knows that the expectation is to have winning seasons or he won't be here beyond the 2014 season.

I'm with Harry on this one--I think the AD and Cristobal probably got crossways, most likely from last year's job rumors. I agree that Butch Davis is a great coach, but he comes with a TON of baggage. Probably won't hurt him at FIU, but Cristobal will be a coordinator or head caoch somewhere quickly. These ADs just really make me laugh. Cristobal, single-handedly, built them up from laughingstock to bowl winner, with tons of ties to the Miami area. He has one bad year and he is gone...

ok-I'll play devil's advocate. Under RV--8 straight years of awful football, hiring an unproven assistant basketball coach to lead the best team you've probably had in 40 years, had to depend on student leader to get stadium passed since he was unable to get it done before on the campaign he led. Look, he's been an awesome advocate for UNT--probably as big a cheerleader of the Mean Green as we have ever had on the payroll. Tailgating has been his baby and it has helped things immesely. But, again, sometimes things are just so bad when you take something over that you cannot help but be looked at as a savior. Yes, the BOR tied his hands when he wanted to fire Dickey, but he also gave him two extensions, the last one that caused us to buyout a contract that strapped us tot he point of having to hire a high school coach. He gets major points for keeping Johnny Jones here for as long as he could. But the Stephens hire, Dodge hire, and Benford hire all have the same thing in cmmon: RV hired unproven assistants to run the money sports here and they were awful. Maybe Benford turns it all around and becomes a great coach, but I am not going to hold my breath. And if he does, then Tech will probably hire him away when they get the chance. It just wasn't a good long-term hire, no matter how this all turns out. To reiterate, RV is an awesome guy and huge fan of UNT--but you need the AD to be a good judge of coaching talent here. He's done fine with tailgaiting and improving fundraising here, but that last part is what makes you a national name instead of being a regional name. Right now, we are in danger of going right back to being a regional also-ran again because of the lack of success these money programs have given here at UNT for so long.

5 years is a very normal contract for a head coach, just for recruiting purposes as previously mentioned. I have no problem with that contract, nor the pay. I just have a major problem with paying that out to an unproven assistant. I liked Fran Fraschilla a lot as a name coach. I would have gone hard after Shields at UALR or Marlin at ULL. I would've at least talked to Scott Cross. All of these guys have one thing in common--they have been successful head coaches. Benford and Trilli were nothing more than unproven assistants at big name schools that are easy to recruit to. Again, I go back to this reality. When you make a hire of this magnitude, in either football or basketball, you had better be right or it screws an athletic department like ours much worse than it does a big AQ school or a cash school like TCU or SMU. I think RV has done a great job as a cheerleader for our teams and for working to make gameday better. But his money sport hires have been mediocre (Coach Mac and Aston--only because she was here for 1 year) to downright awful (Stephens, Dodge, and Benford so far). And if this turns out to be awful, like it has started out, it should be enough to cause a change at the top of the AD. We are stuck with Benford, no matter what happens, for at least two more years after this. But this is, without a doubt, the biggest swing and miss of a head coach hire that UNT has had since they hired Bob Tyler to be the head coach of a program that had Fry's great success and then Jerry Moore's decent teams in 1981. We haven't ever a team since then that was so promising to bring major success to the university like this was supposed to be. It won't surprise me one bit if Johnny Jones becomes our basketball-version of Hayden Fry. Its just so typical of North Texas athletics.

If Berglund can play, we will win at least 6 games next year, assuming health isn't a huge issue. CUSA in 2013 won't be any better than the SBC of 2012. We have one game next year that is unwinnable on the field (big W to the bank account, though) in UGA, but the others are against teams we can compete against. If we don't get to 6 wins, then I'll come off the Coach Mac bandwagon, but I think we will see it come together next year.

And then we lost the best coach we ever had and went into obscurity for the next 35 years. Sonny Dykes--for sure--won't be in Ruston beyond the next few months. And, then, La Tech will probably get to enjoy all of their alums talking about the glorious Dykes years in the upcoming decades. Sadly, we know how this story goes...

I remember that when Mac had Seneca Walace and Sage Rosenfels at Iowa State, he had wide open offenses, even if they still ran the ball a lot. BTW, I still believe that running the ball should be your strength. Its just that when you have a QB who cannot be trusted to make solid throws consistently is just too much of a liability. When I think back to our "glory years in the SBC", Scott Hall might not have been able to throw it much, but when he did, he was accurate. His pass-action plays were usually very effective. Since he left, we have seen Meager, who just didn't have it (even with that amazing game at 1-11 SMU that year) as a starting QB (DT is most like Meager, I think), Vizza, who could've been great here, but his timing was messed up with Dodge's inept system, Riley, who was a gamer, but was just too small to be a QB at this level, and then DT. For every year before this one, the QB wouldn't have made any difference in us being a bowl team or not because we have had so many depth issues, but this is the year that QB play really stood out as being the difference between a bowl season and 4-8. If the DT who played at K-State had shown up for SBC play, then we would've won at least 7 games, in my opinion. That's why Berglund makes me so excited for next season. He COULD be the answer we have been looking for at that position for a long time. Imagine an offense with Jimmerson and Berglund--I think Canales would be able to get back to the wide-open play calling that we saw from him at the end of 2010 with those guys. He needs a QB that can play and a RB that can break away, like he had with Dunbar.

Dickey got fired because he didn't win enough games to make attendance better than 15k. HIs demeanor was poor, obviously, but if he had won more games in his last two years, he'd probably would have gotten at least two more years. Hell, he probably would still be here. No one outside of the diehards here on gmg.com ever cared about winning against SBC teams, while basically giving up in OOC games. Sure, he beat a mediocre Tech team once and beat an awful Baylor once during OOC games, and that bowl win over Cincy was a great win, but in the same breath, the attitude for the big $$$ games was just sad, and other OOC games were just pathetic. His simple gameplan was very effective against SBC teams, but it was easy to defeat if you had talent, which the rest of the SBC basically started getting by 2005. Dodge seemed like the right guy at the time because of his success at Southlake Carroll and his tenure here before becoming a HC in high school. No one can believe it now, but back when he got hired, 99% of this board was onboard and very excited. The attendance bump we saw during his time was the most ironic of all, since his teams were so bad. Attendance at Fouts was definitely better, even if we won just a game or two each year. As he found out, getting those suburban rich kids here in Denton was a bad fit, just as bad as hiring his HS assistants here. Good guy (the anti-Dickey), but very Vic Trilli-like in performance. To me, Coach Mac is light years better than either of these two, even if he does eventually get fired. His problem right now is talent--nothing less than that. He'll get two more years to turn it around, unless he pulls a Dodge Year and just wins 2 or less. Remember, Dodge won 2 games in Year 3 and got a 4th year. Dickey won 3 games in Year 3 and got a 4th year. We don't have the cash to buy anyone out--if we have to do that, we will get that unknown assistant that doesn't cost much, but that hasn't ever worked here yet. I suspect that Coach Mac knows all of this and that his recruiting will go heavy on JUCOs for the lines. To be honest, it might be the only way to improve recruiting, since its becoming obvious that getting ENOUGH major Texas HS talent here is just not that easy. His future here is dependent on having a competent QB and a better DLine. I truly believe that if Berglund can throw the football like most believe he could coming out of HS, this will change a lot for next year. I actually think next year will be a 6 win or better year--and I'm the guy who thought we would only win 3 games last year and around 4 or 5 this year, so I'm not exactly a homer. But I believe that Mac will see the fruits of his labor here, starting next year.

I think the NCAA will cower down to those institutions so that they can keep the basketball and College World Series under the NCAA umbrella, which is their real money makers. Hell, that's what they have been doing for decades anyway. Now, if those big AQ schools did break off from the NCAA, I could see them also taking along the basketball-only schools of the East and Midwest, too, to create their own March Madness, which would basically look like the NCAA Tournament replacing the NIT as the major hoops playoff back in the 50s. I could also see them creating a system to pay players (legally), since those schools would have all the money from the TV deals. There would be lots of lawsuits, but I think the big powers would have the legislative and judicial powers to make it happen.

Who here doesn't think that SMU would do the same thing if we got invited to play them in that Heart of Dallas Bowl--or whatever its called...This thing just runs so deep. At least a school like SMU has the cash to not care, but last time I checked, La Tech ain't exactly rolling in the dough. Its just funny how there are schools in this country that stick their noses up against local teams near them. Then, I look at Rice and UH and how well they have coexisted all these years. Whether its LaTech-ULM, SMU-UNT, UTEP-NMSU, or any other combo that fits this description, its just crazy that this kind of thinking still exists in these economic times. I think its silly that a school like Arkansas won't play the only other FBS school in its state every year or the MIssissippi schools not ever playing USM on any regular basis, but at least I understand the difference in the AQ vs non-AQ status there. These others just don't make much sense to me.

OK, here's the deal with Louisville. Yes, they may have had a commuter image and never got much interest from any major conferences for a long time, but their basketball brand has always been strong. When you win a couple of national championships in hoops, you get sellouts and make lots of cash. You then do something almost unheard of, which is parlay that success in one sport and throw it toward the sport that can catapult your athletic program. They hired a coach with a national championship ring as the head guy--Howard Schnellenberger. He build them up and they actually become so good that they get a Fiesta Bowl bid and kill Alabama. From that point, Louisville has become a name program in both sports. They beat Florida State in football during Bowden's glory years on national TV. They went and hired a coach for their declining hoops program that had won a national championship, Rick Pitino. Now, Louisville brings in a lot of revenue to their university from athletics. They became a program in all sports that people wanted to play and were comfortable being associated with. The ACC was very smart to make this change--yeah, they lose to DC market, but I will venture to guess that the DC market has a lot of UVa and VaTech fans there to more than make up for that. Plus, it helps solidify their league so that the major southern football powers won't jump ship to the Big XII. Good move and I will root for them. They are kind of like the Boise State of the AQs--just keep winning, make others pay attention to you, become attractive enough for better conferences, and move upward while still winning.