untjim1995

Exactly. K-State also had the advantage of playing in the Big Eight back when it may have been the premier conference in football. They could schedule three OOC patsies to build confidence when they already had huge opponents that would come to Manhattan every year. If we followed their plan right now, imagine how much griping we would hear when the OOC games were Texas State, SFA, Ball State, and then 9 SBC games. Yeah, we might win 8 or more games, but the attendance at that schedule wouldn't get us enough to cover the bills. Now, if the university wants to do absorb that shortfall because they think it would be a wise investment for the future, I am all for it. But I just don't ever see this university doing that.

Yes they do. Plus, this is the kind of job that Leach would love. He would get to recruit Texas, play against Tech to put the screws to them, and he would be at a place that is under the radar, so he can be as crazy as he wants to be without a lot of media scrutiny. It wouldn't shock me at all if this is his next head coaching gig.

I love college hoops, probably even a bit more than college football, but even if we were to go 25-5, no one in the area would even give more than a one-time segment to college hoops before March Madness. Maybe the most frustrating thing I deal with as a fan of college basketball is how little the DFW sports media care about that sport. When they talk about it, it is always disparaging. UNT football is the only chance we have to get solid coverage that can translate into more fans and attendance. Its just tough when we finally beat a team that is from a power conference and it literally can't even get listed on the front page of the DMN's colleges website, although those big wins that SMU got over the worst team in America (Memphis) and TCU go over FCS powerhouse Portland State were definitely shown, along with the other Big XII scores. And from I what I read here, the Star-Telegram didn't even mention it, except for a small AP paragraph.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/ Check out this and tell me where the Metroplex's largest university's score and story are located.

If we lose this game, as well as next week against Tulsa, the next home game against Florida Atlantic could be under 20k. The one I fear for attendance numbers is the November 19th home game against WKU. That could be very bad...

Very underrated, sir. Nicely played--Hutch Black Jesey Night was one of the lowest points for our program.

Just imagining what an open letter from Todd Dodge or Darrell Dickey would've said. TD: Come watch us in our Southlake Carroll uniforms take on some school with alums poorer than all the fans who are here from Southlake!! Throw out the records when Florida International and North Texas get together!! (really, please, throw them away...) DD: All right MFers!! My kids know you hate us, my coaches know it, too, so if you keep yelling at us, the OC will physically assault you in the stands in front of everyone. This is the toughest job in America, I know it because I work here EVERYDAY. By the way, come watch our high-powered offense run the ball 90 times this week in our big matchup against Louisiana-Monroe!! Stealth Recruiting is really the best way to recruit...

OK, lets' just imagine for a moment if Coach Mac was our coach back in 2003. Is their anyone who doesn't believe we would have made huge strides as a program with someone in charge that actually liked being here? My simple guess is that we would already be in CUSA or MWC right now if we had a coach like McCarney here that has enthusiasm. On the flip side, if I was Dickey and knew that I was always going to recruit people to Fouts, maybe I would have lost a lot of enthusiasm, too. No matter what, Dickey, nor Dodge after him, were anywhere close to what this university needs as its head coach. Time will tell if McCarney is the right guy, but at least his pedigree, his mentor, and his enthusiasm suggest he will be.

Great picks for the Big East if they can pull it off.

I still think the MWC will wait to take on any new schools until this all settles down, especially with the Bevo 9 and the Big East. If the MWC can get into Texas by getting Baylor, that would be an easy sell to the other programs in the MWC, because of their history. If they could somehow manage to add Texas Tech, that would be the coup for them, but it would Texas leaving them behind in some scenario. I also think that any of the remaining Bevo 9 northern schools would be strong fits for the MWC, like K-State or Iowa State. As far as UNT goes, I will say this again, but it will take a strong conference commissioner to take us in on the merits of the potential we have to offer, being able to see that if North Texas got to play in a conference with our teams that they would see a huge jump in attendance, support, and success. But there is no proof at all that this would definitely happen, which is a tough sell to other schools who remember us from the Big West days or just see us a poor SBC team. It seems obvious to all of us that we would be a great fit, but no one else ever seems to agree with us.

Yeah, but we still got to pay for non-revenue sports, somehow. I hate it, too, but its part of being a SBC/CUSA/MAC/WAC member to play these games.

No way. Boise State coming here now would be light years ahead of what it was like in the old Big West days--and light years away from us hosting Troy. Fresno State, Nevada, Colorado State, Hawaii, New Mexico, UNLV, and SDSU all have major skins on the wall in the two major sports. There is no way that Arkansas State, Florida International, Florida Atlantic, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisiana-Lafayette, Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, or South Alabama could match up with those MWC schools in gaining the attention of fans.

Our stadium is nice enough to get Indiana here, but the bigger programs still make way more money at home games than to accept a 2 for 1 deal with one of the worst teams in FBS. I will agree 100%, though, on scheduling Iowa over Florida. Replace SEC teams with Big Ten teams. If we ever start winninig again, a team like Iowa could look at a 2 for 1 deal because the wins over a decent UNT team will help their program. Coming to Denton is just too much of a risk, $$$-wise and SOS-wise, right now, for a team like Iowa. Plus, the fact that our beautiful stadium is still a 30k stadium hurts our ability to bring a team like Iowa here.

Long Jim, Part of the problem is that Texas was first with their own national network. They already have more money than God and now they get more. But they could have easily avoided this mess by just saying from the start that no recruits will ever have their HS games on the LHN. It was the one thing that A&M used to finally get away from Texas' shadow into the SEC, a conference they have wanted to be in for 20 years. OU is now complaining loudly about it. This LHN will either drive Texas to independence, eventually, as no superconference will accept it, or they will just create a conference that they will control for programming.

What is scary is to think that CUSA loses UCF, ECU, and Memphis, and then replaces them with MTSU, FIU, and Arkansas State. Then, you get an SBC that looks like this: North Texas, FAU, Troy, ULM, ULL, and South Alabama. If this occurred, it would the only way I would consider joining the WAC.

Of those 100k alums, how many have ever watched a UNT Football game? I think that is the problem. Maybe some of them watched us play A&M or Tech at Texas Stadium, maybe some of them have watched us play Texas, SMU or TCU, and maybe even some of them went to NO Bowls. But the majority of those alums haven't cared to come back to watch a game because they probably didn't watch a game in person when they were here in college. The 1-aa fiasco lost a lot of casual fans, the Big West/SBC return to 1-a created very little interest, and the "We are the cheapest option going" mindset created a community college feel to UNT for too many alums for decades. A lot has changed at UNT, but the alumni and the T-shirt fanbase in DFW of Texas, OU, A&M, Tech, and others will always surpass our influence because of who they play week in/week out and they have done something we have never done--capitalize on big alumni/student numbers. Even UH and UTEP have had success with this. We haven't yet. And of course, if we played in a conference with programs that people have heard of and knew people that attended them would create a huge increase in interest, but no one ever wants us because we have nothing but potential to sell. Right now, if you read the Kansas City or St. Louis papers online, you'll see plenty of comments about not wanting another Texas school in the Big XII because it is harder for the northern schools to recruit against them for Texas HS recruits--this is why TCU will never get in the Big XII (their AD knows this , too, based on his mulitple comments regarding market delivery), nor will any other Texas school, unless UT leaves. Not only do the Texas Big XII schools want to avoid UH, TCU, SMU, etc.., the northern schools don't want them, either, because, essentially, they don't deliver anything to KU, Mizzou, or Iowa State the way Texas or Tech do. If you want to extrapolate this to other conferences, think of how the eastern CUSA schools are adamantly opposed to getting another Texas school in their conference because there are already 4 teams over here. That doesn't even count the current Texas schools in that conference not wanting another team to compete and recruit against UNT as a conference mate. The deals for conferences are all hinged on TV markets and as long as the networks believe that the DFW market is more than covered by other schools, the SBC will continue to be our home.

We see things differently, which is just fine, but I don't see how you can watch all of this stuff going on with conference affiliation and think we are going to be ok. These superconferences aren't doing this because it is just the cool thing to do. The money and control they will have is huge. The NCAA knows it, too, which is why they aren't stopping anything. They want to keep their NCAA Tournament, which pays 95% of their bills, so they aren't going to take the chance of seeing a new affiliation of universities get created if they can stop it. ESPN, Fox, and CBS have billions on the line here. They know who brings the ratings week in and week out--it ain't the Sun Belt or CUSA. As far as academics, there are lots of folks in the Pac-7095 that don't want Tech or Okie State, but they know they are tag alongs with UT and OU. You may well remember that issue that the Big Ten had with Texas when they were considering admission last year--the so-called "Tech Problem". That was all about Tech's academic ranking as the #160 school in the USNWR, which is piss poor by AQ standards, absolutely unacceptable to the research-driven B1G. OSU's not much better. The ACC, Pac, and B1G alll have fairly strong academic standards to follow. Only the SEC has fairly relaxed standards on this--and Tech would still be last in the USNWR rankings if they joined the SEC. Now realize Tech ranks higher than the other Texas FBS public universities on that list. This is what I was talking about. You can debate if that is fair or not, but it gets followed fairly closely by the conferences when they are looking at expansion. Tech ain't going to the Pac-whatever if Texas doesn't go--they are an accessory.

Getting those "name" schools here is the key. Sure, LSU and Bama play us down there and give us a million to do it. Getting them to come here and play when Jerry Jones will buy them a game here in the Metroplex is difficult to overcome.

Youre probably right about this, but the $$$ gained more than make up for the losses on the field/court to each of those schools. Right now, they are projecting Pac-16 payouts of over $30 million per school, based off of the revenues that could be made on all of their TV contracts, bowl games, BCS money, etc.. Texas Tech will gladly take that, even if they go 4-8. It beats the hell out of 12-0 and 5-10 million per year as the winner of the MWC.

That really surprises me. I figured they would be a good fit for the SEC, for sure. That's a school that will really get screwed if they get left out. What a joke--WVU isn't superconference worthy, but Washington State is...stupid, just stupid.

Well, basically Baylor, Indiana, and Vandy are great examples of teams that have had records like this for years and their payouts have been more than enough to keep them happy. Baylor is suing everyone becasue of it. They don't want to go 10-2 in CUSA, they want to go 2-10 in the AQ league that pays them millions.

I agree about the scheduling part, but I think it won't be difficult for the big schools to deal with this either. If they get their own playoff system set up, they can play each other all they want in OOC and never worry about not getting knocked out of the championship race.

Also not to get too plitical, but wouldn't it make sense for the government that is so in debt to look at this as an easy way to get some revenue into the coffers of the treasury? The minor leagues of baseball and other pro leagues are all taxed, so this bunch should be no different. Besides, they all will make huge amount of cash that is MUCH HIGHER than what they already get now. They could easily afford it. Plus, traditionally, universities are more in tune with liberal policies--not always--so this shouldn't be difficult to get support from both the general public and the universities, too. Just for full disclosure, I am conservative, so this isn't easy for me to post!! I also agree on the part of this making me sick.

At this point, its probably just too late to even do anything more to get consideration. The new facilities, especially the stadium, are awesome for non-AQ schools, probably better than some AQ schools. But the 64-80 schools that are going to break off here have more tradition, $$$, fan support, and name recognition nationally than we have. Sure, we have enrollment and alumni advantages, but they were never taken advantage of. Academically, we are a Tier 3 school with a woefully small endowment, so no big conference who cares about academics is going to take us on that accord. Our athletic accomplishments for 30+ years is amazingly slim (1-3 in NO Bowls, 0-3 in NCAA Tournament as 15 seeds with all being blowouts, never won a playoff game in the old 1-aa). Neither of these has made us attractive to other conferences. I love our alma mater--it gave me my start in life and will always be a special place to me. But we just got started too late in this game to really be surprised at where we will be playing in the few decades. If the NCAA were a consortium of music and arts schools, we would be a powerhouse--we would be Duke in basketball or Alabama in football. Its what the university and the community wanted forever, probably still do for the most part. If we are at the new FCS-type level again after this is all said and done, I don't know what the support for the football and basketball teams will look like, but I know that they will always be ours. I know that we never supported the school that well during the SLC days, but maybe we will keep up this current level of support if our new conference mates are better known that our old Southland/SBC bunkmates.

Exactly