untjim1995

I think that a home game against a local FCS or close SBC opponent (ULL, Arky State, Texas State) would now be acceptable because the conference schedule has been upgraded very nicely. Obviously, I want better games than that for OOC, but as long as the games are at home, then I am fine with it. What I fear is an added bodybag game on the road, maybe just a little lower than what has already been scheduled. I don't want to see us play @ SEC power and at a Kansas State anymore...

I am going to go ahead and predict a 7OT game with a final of 26-23--this time it will be due to those HIGH FIVES and not abysmal play

I think this is dead-on about all of the SWC leftovers who didn't get into the Big XII. If you were a big UH fan, you saw games in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s against Texas, A&M, Arkansas, Tech, and Baylor every year. That was during a time when Texas, Arkansas, and A&M were top 10 teams often, and Tech and Baylor had programs that had signifianct name value in the state, especially Teaff's Baylor teams. UH went to the Cotton Bowl in 70s and 80s, had a Heisman winner in the late 80s, and had those crazy Run and Shoot teams in the early 90s with Klingler. So when the SWC died, those fans got to see UH play games against Tulane, Southern Miss, Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis, UAB, and East Carolina in CUSA. I can totally understand those fans and Houston media feeling like the rug got pulled out from underneath them, and then seeing the Big 12 take over all of the media and fans attention was probably very tough to swallow. Now, flip flop that entire scenario. Imagine playing powerhouse names for conference games like McNeese State, NIcholls State, NE Louisiana (now Louisiana-Monroe), NW (La) State, Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin, SW Texas State (now Texas State), Boise State (as a new I-A team), Nevada, New Mexico State, Utah State, Idaho, Louisiana-Lafayette, Arkansas State, Troy, Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, South Alabama, Florida International, and Florida Atlantic for 30 years. Then, somehow, the college athletic gods give you the opportunity to play Tulane, UTEP, Rice, Tulsa, La Tech, Southern Miss, East Carolina, Marshall, and UAB in football and basketball. That looks like pure gold compared to the crap we have given to fans for the last three decades as a conference schedule. It may not help sell out Apogee or the Super Pit, but it is a MUCH easier sell to casual fans to come watch a game against these CUSA teams than anything associated with the Belt. East Carolina will get a few thousand more fans than Florida Atlantic did. Marshall will draw more fans than Western Kentucky. Tulsa games always outdrew anything Arkansas State games brought for attendance. Why? Because people have heard of them. We got our asses handed to us by Tulsa, 54-2, in front of a "big" Fouts crowd, but it was because we were playing a home game against someone people knew. A bad Rice team got a "huge crowd at Fouts, even though both teams were terrible that year. That should only get better as we play those guys in conference games, both on the road and at home.

I think UTSA making it in is a big surprise, but I also think it speaks to the reality of just how much TV ratings matter here. San Antonio has a lot of Longhorns, Aggies, and Red Raiders, just like Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston. But the biggest difference is that DFW and Houston have a combined 5 FBS schools in the counties that encompass their metro areas. San Antonio has zero--until now. They are actually in the town, too. San Antonio is a town that really likes to support their events, as well. The San Antonio media just made their city a ton of cash, too. We can poo-poo those attendance figures, but folks much higher up the food chain than this board are absolutely blown away at that average, and to be honest, I am too. If UTA started football up again in a few years and played games at Jerry World, who here thinks that they would get 35k in average attendance playing that same schedule? There's no way and it speaks to the number of options available for sports fans in the Metroplex versus San Antonio. And if they get the Alamo Bowl to add CUSA into their rotation as a bowl participant, that is icing on the cake. To me, I don't care if UTSA is in CUSA or not. I just want to make sure we are. Conference games against UTSA, UTEP, Rice, Tulsa, La Tech, Tulane, Southern Miss, East Carolina, and Marshall can be sold to UNT students, alums, and casual Metroplex fans to invest their time and money into coming out to Apogee to see a game. Plus, having even a few more thousand people show up for your conference games should help with OOC scheduling, meaning that this ridiculous SEC OOC schedule we play now so as to pay our bills, can mercifully end. It has been proven rather convincingly that games against ULL, ULM, FAU, MUTS, Arky State, Troy, and Western Kentucky don't draw enough people out to the stadium. And I don't think it is all that hard to imagine what a home game against South Alabama or Georgia State will look like, attendance-wise, either.

This sounds so North Texas State-ish, it isn't even funny. When we were NTSU, we made decisions like this, or at least made it so abundantly clear that we hated college athletics that nobody should give us the time of day. I have always wondered what it would have looked like in the 70s when we wanted into the SWC, if Hayden Fry would have had administrative support that was very vocal if they could have overcame the SMU-led blackballing. Because in all seriousness, UT and all the big state institutions were in favor of at least considering us for SWC membership. But he never got any help from those people and he finally gave up, which led to the nightmare that we are trying to wake up from still today. Good luck, MUTS. If any of this is true, and I bet there is some degree of truth to it all, your university's FBS future has been shaken greatly. When the first "culling" of FBS comes around--and it will--the SBCs, MACs, and WACs are going to be gone first. The Alliance schools (CUSA and MWC) will at least have their chance to play at FBS for a longer timeframe. MUTS could (should?) have been in CUSA before La Tech and UTSA. But if there administration has done anything close to what is rumored, you guys wasted a lot of money moving up to FBS back in the day. If I were a MUTS fan, I would hope and pray that UAB gives up FBS football and that you guys could try and move up the food chain then. Because right now, you might as well be NTSU, I mean, umm, MTSU again.

Nice troll post...anyway, I will say that your post is full of sour grapes. Don't worry, more than anyone else in the state, we get it about your current position in the Texas pecking order of college programs. We hated getting blackballed by SMU and the other Texas privates, but there was literally nothing we could do about it, since we weren't located in the heart of the DFW market like SMU and TCU were. Of course, there were even more Longhorns, Aggies, Sooners, Red Raiders, Razorbacks, Bears, etc...in the DFW area, too. It took everyone moving upward for us to get a chance to move up to replace them, but it finally appears to be happening. UTSA will get the benefit of San Antonio's TV sets, just as UH did back in the 70s to get into the SWC and UTEP has done for El Paso's TV sets to get into CUSA. It sucks for you guys because you will see how it truly feels to get blackballed by another "peer" university when you want to move up in conference affiliation. Being in a college town that is "near" Austin/San Antonio like Denton is near DFW will tear your heart out when the SAEN writes stories about UTSA's game against South Alabama while y'all are playing in a big WAC game against Idaho that could vault you into first place. It will crush you that your story is at the bottom of page 12 of the Sunday edition of the Austin American Statesman, when you beat Idaho to be in 1st place in the WAC, but Texas' non-conference win over Louisiana-Monroe gets the rest of the paper's coverage on pages 1-11 and the top of page 12. Trust me when I say this, no one else can understand your plight more than UNT can. I am going to be real honest here--its gonna suck real bad for a long, long time for you. Good luck--your gonna need it for decades to come.

I talked a little about this yesterday, but the DFW media will fawn all over Larry Brown for the next year, at least, and longer if he can keep them somewhat competitive. His name and reputation really resonates with the local media members. I have read numerous times on this board that winning will solve all of our problems, that we will get great media coverage once we start winning. Obviously, we have had the best winning program in the Metroplex for a while, yet our media coverage is at best equal to SMU or TCU, even though we have been much better than either program for the last 6 years. And that has been with SMU in CUSA and TCU in the MWC. Now that SMU gets the Big East opponents to visit Moody Coliseum and TCU gets the Big XII opponents to visit Daniel-Meyer, I expect for their local coverage to really jump up, even if they aren't winning. Meanwhile, we get basically ignored. I guess there really ain't much we can do about it, seeing how the ol' SWC is still royalty in this state, but it has always been obvious to me that "just winning" won't do the trick to get more coverage. It seems that even if we move up to the new Alliance, we will still deal with this media mindset. It doesn't help that college basketball ranks no higher than 6th on the local fans radar (after the big 4 professional sports and college football). When you then factor in that it is the Cowboys, Rangers, Mavs, Texas Longhorns, Texas A&M, other Big XII teams, Dallas Stars, and SMU in the pecking order of DFW media, we will always have the deck stacked against us, I'm afraid.

This started off bad with a Title of "Apogee Ranked 118th out of 124 FBS stadiums." A brand new stadium that is made of brick is the 6th worst? OK, obviously, they meant Fouts. The when you think about that , you realize the whole list is pure crap. Because there is not a prayer that there were 6 places worse than Fouts to watch a football game. Hell, there probably wasn't even one other stadium worse than Fouts for watching a football game. Awful thread...

I will say this about Larry Brown's hire at SMU. In the very near-term, like in the next month, you will see DFW media members falling over themselves to interview him. His reputation is one that media members follow after closely. The Ticket had him on this morning for a while. I'm certain we will see him on the major sports stations over the next few months. Plus, the DMN will fall all over themselves to interview him. Now, ask yourselves what media outlets will do the same thing for Tony Benford and UNT...the DRC and ??? I'd love to believe that the Ticket will interview Benford, too, in the next week, just like they did Larry Brown live this morning. But I won't hold my breath. I do think that SMU is beyond help at this point, even though Larry Brown is a great coach. At 71, he isn't even close to the answer, but they do know how to get exposure over there on the Hilltop. And seeing how low on the totem pole that college basketball is here in the Metroplex, just getting any kind of decent coverage or interest in the program is huge. Ultimately, it will come down to W's and I don't see how SMU can compete in the Big East, but if he gets them competitive enough to get a bid in a non-NCAA postseason bid, the local media will fawn over him for it. Really, Larry Brown can't lose here. If he can't get SMU any better in the next 2-3 years, it won't tarnish his reputation one bit. But if he can just raise them up to .500 (somehow), his name and SMUs cash will get them a bid in the NIT, CBI, or CIT. And all the while, he will get a nice paycheck.

Really? This past year, Murray State was top ten most of the year and lost in the second round of the tournament. When you are a mid-major, you better be GREAT to expect to win a game or two in the tournament. Butler and Gonzaga are the exception to the rule. The seedings are not really made to favor you when you aren't from an AQ conference. To go further, one SBC team made it to the Sweet 16 in the last 15+ years, Western Kentucky in 2008, who was seeded 12th and got mid-major Drake in its first game, then beat 13th seeded San Diego in the second round. The expectation for this season, barring injuries or defections, and assuming that the new coach gels with the current players, should be to win the SBC. If you do that, then win the conference tournament, and get anything above a 14 seed, then you can have a decent-to-good chance of winning a game during March Madness. That's reasonable, assuming ALL of the components of the first sentence of this paragraph hold true, which traditionally hasn't happened here at UNT, even with a stable coaching situation.

I sure hope this works out. I just don't like hiring an assistant from outside the program to be the next head coach. Just too risky--usually, you either get the next up-and-comer who stays with you for a few years or you get Vic Trilli. At this point in time, the program seemed like it was at a point where we could have just promoted from within. This is how Butler, Gonzaga, Xavier, and Murray State made their programs self-sustaining for longer periods of time. I'm sure there are lots of mid-majors that have risen up with a new hire of an outside assistant with no previous head coaching experience before, but I cannot think of any off the top of my head. It seemed like Forrest or Fraschilla made a lot more sense, but I think we all owe it to both RV and Coach Benford to give them support. Here's to hoping that in 20 years, we are watching games played on The Tony Benford Court at the Super Pit!!

FIFY

See, to me, Benford is a huge risk. He has never been a head coach, may be a great recruiter, but we don't know his x's and o's ability. Trilli was an awesome recruiter, but your below average YMCA coach had better gameplans than Trilli did. Plus, if Benford does succeed here, there's no doubt that he would jump at the next opportunity, probably even jump to Tech if BCG fails or falls off the wagon (both have reasonable chances of occurring). Then we are back at square one. Getting a guy like Fraschilla tells your team and your fanbase that we want someone who has skins on the wall and is well-known throughout the Metroplex and across all of college basketball. If we win like we should this year, Fraschilla's ESPN ties will give us great exposure. Those ESPN guys love to promote their own guys who get bakc into coaching--see Steve Lavin and Mark Gottfried for examples. When Dino Gaudio gets a job, which will probably be sooner rather than later, they'll do the same for him, too. Fran makes way more sense.

Earleir this year, my son and I went down to Waco to watch the Kansas-Baylor mismatch. After the game, my son and I went down to the floor to meet and greet some fo the players and I started up a conversation with Fraschilla. He asked where we drove from and I told him that we lived in Prosper, so we usually go over to the Super Pit and watch Tony Mitchell and the Mean Green. His eyes got huge and he shook his head and his exact words were, "tony Mitchell is a STUD...that guy would ahve flet just fine tonight against the players on the floor." Keep in mind that the lineup on the floor for postmen included Thomas Robinson, Jeff Withey, Quincy Acy, and Perry Jones III. That's probably 4 NBA lottery picks (or at least close to it). When Fran's name came up in all of this, that conversation was the first thing I thought about. As far as why he wasn't mentioned in the SMU job, he knows that cupboard is bare and that winning at SMU in the Big East is going to take a miracle. He can go to the NCAAs RIGHT NOW if things go right for him at UNT, as well as in the years to come. That won't happen at either SMU or TCU any time soon. In SMUs case, think decades...

The biggest issue is the reliance on the bodybag game(s) to fund the athletic department. Id love to never play one of those games again, but I recognize that games against SBC/WAC/CUSA teams won't pay the bills alone. That's why I believe completely in playing a bodybag game that actually gives you a chance to avoid embarrassment. Don't play top southern teams in the SEC, Big XII, or ACC. Play the money game later in the year, if at all possible. If not, play Big Ten teams or Pac-12 teams at the beginning of the year. Doing that would be light years better than what we have done and will continue to do for the years to come...

Two other examples of bad hires for personnel were Vic Trilli's run-and-gun replacing Jankovich's system, as well as replacing Darrell Dickey's run-offense with Todd Dodge's spread. Talent didn't match the system and the results were awful.

Nobody has done anything with St.John's resources in the last decade+ and really, with the exception of a couple of years when Artest (Metta World Peace) was there, they haven't done anything since in the last 20+ years. Fran Fraschilla would be a fine coach here. Plus, he absolutely adores Tony Mitchell's game, so we wouldn't have to worry about the new coach pissing off the golden goose!!

Baylor is a funny program to me. When they are bad, which has been almost all their entirety with the exception of Grant Teaff's days and Art Briles' days as head coach, their fans complain alot. Think about the griping we heard from them after the UNLV debacle in 1999 and then after they got pounded in Denton in 2003. But when they win, IMO, there is no fanbase that puffs their chest out more than Baylor's. It really amazes me. I have spoken with several Texas, A&M, TCU, and OU fans who will honestly tell you that Baylor fans are the worst to deal with win they are winning--it just that you don't have to deal with that too much, historically. I mean, if Texas decides to go somewhere else, they are screwed. The Alliance or the Big East would snap them up, but their athletic department's funding would drop like a rock off a cliff. Imagine going from playing games against Texas, OU, Tech, Kansas in hoops, etc... and getting home games against UH, SMU, and Cincinatti. They would get to experience first-hand what TCU, SMU, UH, and Rice got to see when the SWC left them all behind. Maybe thats why they hired Ken Starr as President, so he could sue everybody and prolong the inevitable--he has a track record for doing this.

To me, if UTSA moves up to the Alliance, this is just more proof at how lacksadaisical our leadership was at North Texas for the better part of forever. Basically, we match every advantage that UTSA offers--location and academics, and then trump them with history and on-campus facilites. But, because our leadership looked at athletics so lowly for so long, they gave schools like UTSA the blueprint on how not to run an athletic program. UTSA basically decided that they were going to play football, so they hired a named coach with skins on the wall, figured out to involve local business and local citizenry into the program, and then went out and got their games on a TV outlet (the LHN) that may not be well-known, but it helped the golden goose of the state to boost their fledgling network, which will probably pay great dividends to UTSA down the road with funding and scheduling from their friends in Austin. Literally, even when we look at the move from 1-aa to 1-a back in 1995 and then examine our total stretch of being a present-day FBS program, this is what we did: 1.) Add 10000 aluminum seats that were approximately a mile and a half aways from the field to get over 30000. 2.)Schedule every body bag game opponent possible to fund the ENTIRE athletic department without really trying to tap into the local community for direction or support with any success. 3.) Hire no-name HFCs with absolutely no skins on the wall, who either quickly or eventually fell on their faces. 4.) Join a league with absolutely no one in-state to build a rivalry (create interest) with or play conference games against anyone that people have heard of or care about. If UTSA manages to get into the Alliance, it will be because they did everything right in selling their program to others, while we literally made the wrong choice on every single move involving our football program from 1978 until we finally got our stadium funding approved and then finally hired a coach who had accomplished something before he got here. From Fry to McCarney, from Fouts to Apogee, and from 1-a to 1-aa to 1-a, we created our own situation. UTSA, has been fortunate enough not to make poor decisions, so far. Give them credit for using their davantages to their benefit and making choices that appeal to others (conferences, networks, fans, recruits, etc...). Their leap forward, while amazingly irritating to most of us, is a testament to how an athletic department should be run. Its why they won't have to "pay their dues" for 50 years, unlike another Texas school that we are all very familar with.

Journalists ruined journalism--that's why we have professional bloggers now. We decided opinions were more important than facts a long time ago. Now, we have to tell you what to think, whereas before, you used to have to decide what the facts meant to your opinion.

You like tennis and live in Arkansas...I would be beaten down, also, if my life involved either of those.

Here's why I think Utah State will get picked first. I think the MWC wants to keep a presence in Utah, since they have Fresno State already in CA. Plus, SJSU has been mentioned as having serious funding problems, leaving their atletics future in doubt. Utah State also has a solid hoops program to latch on to as well. The San Francisco/San Jose market may have a lot of viewers, but it appears that SJSU shares a lot of the problems we do in sharing a market, just that they share with Stanford and Cal, two teams that are huge out west and get all of the media coverage. If the state of Texas had similar funding problems as CA does right now, is there anyone out there who doesn't think we would have to drop down in football? No one is worried about any of the current Alliance, Pac-12, or Big East schools in CA from having to drop athletics, but that rumor has been strong on SJSU for a while. On another note, it seems almost miraculous that we could possibly move up the food chain conference-wise to me. I really believe that this could be the beginning of something huge here, if we take advantage of it. To me, if we get into the Alliance, we will have cemented our place at FBS for a long time to come. I really believe this is do-or-die time for UNT. If we can't get into this conference affiliation right now, with no other Metroplex team to compete with or get blackballed by, then it really isn't meant to be for us to be any higher on the foodchain than the SBC, in my opinion.

OK, then there is a severe miscommunication situation going on then. We were told that the new stadium would open up opportunities for better home games and to move upward in conference affiliation. Plus, it would limit the number of bodybag games. If it "is all about the money" as you mentioned, then just tell us that in a straight-forward manner. As I have said before, Apogee and the current funding of the program get us about halfway for a legitimate FBS program, which is about double or triple from what we were doing at Fouts with Dickey/Dodge as the coach in the Big West/Sun Belt. And, in the school's defense, we are light years ahead of the 1-aa days. But, we need an upgrade in conference affiliation ASAP and we need to play OOC games against teams that matter, both home and away. Just getting a game against SMU and Tulsa here or there at home is not my idea of a high quality OOC matchup. Granted, Tulsa may be a conference game soon (prayers being sent now), but my point is that we deserve a game against better OOC teams than just SMU every once in a while, like we had this past year. Right now, the schedule for our program for years to come suggests that "it is all about the money" is still in vogue. In my mind, the best way that you can see the proof of this is through the OOC schedule for home games and the list of bodybag games. If we have to play at LSU, Georgia, Florida and Texas in OOC, at least give us a home game against a team like Iowa. Look, I love playing Iowa. They are the perfect OOC game to me. You get $$$ and a chance to beat a decent named team from a big conference that doesn't have the athletes of the SEC/Big XII South powers. We should schedule games against Big Ten schools, Pac-12 schools, and ACC schools that you can hope to compete with. But, I don't view Iowa as a team that you would do a Two-for-none series with, though, when you have Apogee, even if it only seats 30k. Iowa has a lot of alums down here, just like Indiana does. Ohio State, Michigan, and Nebraska all fit that description, but Iowa doesn't. Hell, Michigan State was going to play at Florida Atlantic if their stadium would have been ready. Minnesota has played at FAU and at ULL. Its not asking a lot to get even a 3 for 1 with a team like Iowa, which I still think is too tilted in Iowa's favor. Teams like Purdue, Northwestern, Illinois, Minnesota, etc...would be similar to Iowa, in my opinion. If we can't do better than what we have scheduled OOC in the future, and ESPECIALLY if we don't get into the Alliance, we probably don't deserve to be considered a true FBS school in the future.

If I was the Alliance dictator, I would reach out to Utah State UNT, FIU, and MTSU to compliment the other teams in the Alliance. The state of Utah is growing so you want some membership out west there, then go after the DFW, Nashville, and Miami markets to balance everything out. And, after that is done, I would immediately go to Gonzaga and offer them a place in the conference, since Hawaii is football only. Could you imagine adding Gonzaga to that conference lineup in hoops? THat would by my 20 team conference. Then, if you decided 24 is where to go, I would invite these teams: San Jose State, New Mexico State, La Tech, and Florida Atlantic.

I bet they do like Ohio State did and just name an interim coach for this year. If the guy does great, he will get a contract. If not, the Hogs will wait to see who is available. They'll want to see what Malzahn can do as a head coach at Arky State, as well as looking at Dykes at La Tech or Larry Fedora from Southern Miss. That's not even counting AQ teams that could be a hit this year and their coach could be the next big name our there--Art Briles, for example, or Tommy Tuberville, who would cut off his own arm to get away from Lubbock to get a good SEC job again. Lots of possibilities, but Arkansas will get an experienced guy for the long-term.