GrandGreen

North Texas University would be an excellent choice for CUSA. It is in the geographical footprint, would be one of the largest schools in the conference with the best media market and has far more potential than any candidate. But, it will probably never happen. Not because NT does not have a great new football stadium or a baseball team, but because conference affiliation is a political and economic process with athletic competitiveness only a minor consideration. NT has several strikes against it. SMU will most likely always be in opposition as demonstrated in the last addition to CUSA. Private schools may not want anymore state schools in Western CUSA and won't want to be broken up by adding another Western team and shifting Tulane to the Eastern Division. Addition of another Texas school will not be popular with most in CUSA. WKU, MTSU and ULL could all be preferences to NT by CUSA members. WKU and MTSU fix the Eastern Division geography. I think NT's best chance for a regional conference would be based on economic influences with higher travel costs being the main factor. The Western divisions of CUSA and the Belt should be combined to form a conference with the Eastern divisions doing the same. One division would remain CUSA and one the Sun Belt, therefore preserving current NCAA positions. A conference of Tulsa, NT, SMU, Rice, Houston, ULL, ULM, ASU and Tulane makes too much sense to ever happen.

Yes. being one of the most penalized schools by the APR computation in the country, does not deserve any investigation. RV has been strangely silent and really offers little in the way of explanation for a problem that apparently has existed for years. There appears to me a lot more to this issue than has came to light. As incompetent as the NCAA can be, it is hard to believe that NT was hit as hard as it was based on the limited information available. I am not sure how the AD can blame the problem on a HC that at least on an organization chart worked for him. I guess it is like all those years that we had to listen to DD's put down of the University, it was just beyond the AD's control. It would be nice to know for instance were NT really stands at this point. Are all those that left the football program last year for instance, likely to make next year's penalties even more severe. What were NT's APR scores for the last five years. All I'll seen is what appears to be an average. This penalty definitely hurts the University. The football program will be hindered not only by reduced scholarships but by the negative publicity this as created. A positive is that Dodge and staff can recruit and will not take the changes on academic risks that created this problem.

Who do you think NT should get for the third assistant coach position? Most teams other than the super rich fill the last position on their coaching staff with a young and yes less expensive person with growth potential. It makes excellent sense IMO to fill this position with an alumni and in this case maybe the best player every to play at NT. Who do you think will be the best salesman for the university, a honored letterman or a coach with no prior association with the university?

Some seem to think it is OK or imperative that head football coaches get top dollar, but have issues with university presidents making far less money. There is no question which is the most important position, yet some bemoan a college president making $350k and at the same time applaud institutions that are paying head football coaches multi-million dollar salaries. There is no equity in salaries and probably never will be, but frankly college faculty come in at near the bottom of my list for occupations I worry about being under compensated.

Anyone know what is up with Brandi Stanfield? She triple jumped over 44 feet her freshman year and hasn't been close in the last two years. Her best this year is just over 41' in the triple jump and she didn't medal in the Belt meet in either the TJ or LJ. Is it injury problems? Also what happened to Patrick Strong who led NT's cross country team this year but as far as I can tell did not compete in track. Track is a strange sport at the college level with little emphasis on anything but individual performances, but it seems that it is a sport that NT should dominate in the Belt. I am sure ship limits are a major considerations, but there are a lot of events that NT does not even participate in or at a very marginal level. I do applaud NT in having multiple entries in the heptathlon and decathlon, two events that they have largely ignored in the past few years.

NT eliminates host Troy in 13th inning, 4-2. NT to play ULM later today.

It is definitely bad publicity. I always wonder though about these kind of educational digs. Does having academic failures mean that an institution has high or low standards? Most universities these days including SMU are far from difficult. Does SMU having a high graduation rate for athletics mean that they only recruit academically superior athletes or is it simply that they are more successful putting them into specially designed degree plans that are structured to keep athletes eligible. Either way, I guess they have been smarter than NT at this point. Most schools love to brag about how many athletes are on the honor role, I've always though this was a very dubious destination. Athletics at the 1a level in any sport take a tremendous amount of time and dedication. The fact that it seems the majority of athletics end up as honor students these days is more an indictment of the schools academic standards than a testimony to the athletes' classroom abilities.

That means that all the turnover of last season has not even hit yet. This could be a major problem. I appreciate the NCAA's intent but like all their rules there always seem to be a lot of exceptions which seem to always go to the rich programs. There is a major flaw in this approach inasmuch as there is nothing to mandate that athletes are actually enrolled in normal college level programs. Take UT for example, there are probably not a handful of football players that could have got into UT under normal entrance requirements, but yet the vast majority seem to be enrolled in programs that they can maintain acceptable academic status. Still have not seen any official comment on this mess, it seems to be me that the AD should be held accountable. This is not a one year problem, based on Simpson"s comments but something that should have been corrected years ago. It appears based the numbers and what could easily be even a worse rating for this year that NT could be in trouble for years and may quickly join the chronic offender group.

There is noway in the world, NT could come close to matching $700,000 with a home game. If you assume a sell out, there would be at most 10,000 end zone tickets and 12,000 side line seats. Assume that it is a premium opponent and NT could charge $40 a sideline, and $15 an end zone ticket. That would be gross ticket revenues of $630,000. Despite the fact that NT has never come remotely close to that much gross ticket revenue, the game would still not compare with a guaranteed $700,000. Remember that $700,000 is for one game. If it were a NT home game, there would either have to be a very large guarantee to the visitor or one or more return games. Most likely for a team that could command that kind of attendance, NT would have to give more than 2 return games but assume that it is a 2 for one deal than the estimated finances would be something close to this: Game at LSU - $700,000 guarantee less expenses $25,000 equal per game net $675,000. Game at NT - Gross tickets receipts $630,000; plus parking, concessions $50,000 less game expenses $30,000 less travel expenses for two return games $50,000 equals a per game net of $200,000.

Apparently, most conferences have arrangements to in effect buy their way into multiple bowl games. I can't fault the Belt too much for not spending money that is not available. It is also amusing that many Belt fans for example think the Belt is entitled to more bowl games, yet there or many of those same fans that want to get rid of CUSU and get a barely eligible name conference opponent for the NO bowl. My concern right now would be more of being sure that the Belt retains the NO Bowl with the contract I think expiring after 2009. IMO, it is by far the best bowl arrangement that the Belt could get.

NT is not only the worse in the area, but by a large margin. I think the fans deserve an explanation of what caused this rating from the AD. If I remember correctly it was not long ago that NT greatly trumpeted their success with this same rating system. I think fans that blame the players for this are missing the mark, Not a one of the recruits forced NT to sign them. Maybe this is a combination of academic reaches from prior coaching staffs and disgruntled players leaving because of changing in coaching philosophies, but a plausible explanation should be forthcoming.

Let see, some complained that NT hired Stephens because they thought NT was cheap. Now when her contract is public, some fans think NT overpaid. Nothing makes sense financially when it comes to any sport at NT with the possible exception of football. Not because football really makes money, but you can make a case for intangible benefits. If you assume that WBB at NT averaged 500 paying fans a game which is a big stretch. That would be gross receipts of $2,500 a game at $5 a ticket. Assume 12 home games and that gives you annual gross receipts of $30,000. There is no way, even with the wildest projections, that WBB can be economically justified at NT. A case can be made however that a better program will benefit NT more than the additional funds expended. Despite other factors, the new women's basketball coach was going to have a comparable salary to the men's coach.

Although there are obviously more points earned, the greater number of participants; the quantity of teams playing a sport has no significance in the "all sports" trophy relative to computing team standings. For example there are 13 teams in the Belt. If all universities compete in a sport, a first place winner is going to gain 1 point over the second place team, 2 over the third place team, etc.; on down to a 12 point gain on the last place team. Winning a 5 team participant team sport would result in the same point gains for the winner over the other 4 teams as defined in the 13 team example, but the winning school would also gain a 5 points on all the schools that did not participate. It is exactly the same result in the standings as if all schools had participated and there was a 7 way tie for sixth place.

Wonder why Strickler has never participated in track. He was one of the best discus throwers in the nation his senior year in High School and that is an extremely weak area on the current track team. As an aside, I noticed that WBB signee Ryan Green from Crowley has already high jumped 5'10 this year which if not the record is close to NT's all time best.

It is probably the most valid way to reward an all sports trophy. As stated above, every school has an option provided they offer the minimum number of sports to allocate their funds however they see fit. Duh, NT actually benefits from the way the computation is done. If the award was based on an average per sports actually played, not the total points accumulated, NT would actually be further behind. Top 5 based on average: Middle Tennessee 8.35, Denver 8.20. WKU 8.07, UALR 6.65, USA 6.63 with NT coming in sixth with 6.54. The major flaw with these all sports ratings is that they assume all sports are created equal and that football is no more important than volleyball for example. The other major factor is that track is such a major ingredient in the ratings. Men's' indoor, outdoor, and cross country; women's indoor, outdoor, and cross country account for about a third of the ratings. For example, football in terms of impact on the Buba's trophy plays a smaller role than any of the individual track related sports because there are less schools participating in football. NT usually comes in third behind WKU and MTSU but this year NT has dropped with no conference champions at this point and only a couple of seconds. Disappointing years in volleyball, both golf teams, and football have erased progress made by the swimming and tennis teams.

Has anyone who is commenting about Knox, actually seen him play or you simply going by the available stats? Obviously the coaching staff saw something in the player or they would not have signed him to a LOI. By the way a LOI is a contract, a school cannot simply opt to disregard it. Sure, a coach can make it so uncomfortable for a signed player that he knows it is in his best interest not to enroll. Ever wonder about what happened to Trilli's early signees when JJ came a board? Not a wise long term strategy as well as being something that I hope NT does not condone. Many programs gamble on big players developing later and sometimes it works and sometime it doesn't. Think of recent NT signees: Barnett, Masters, Riley, Howerton, etc. NT and most non-power conference teams are not going to get a sniff of an accomplished "big" high school post player, so they take chances. It has been quoted that the Belt is getting bigger and that maybe true, but there have always been a lot of tall players sitting on the end of benches in the Belt. Knox has signed and I will welcome him aboard next year. To speculate on replacing signed players with the available recruit of the day may be fun but it is not something that any program should be involved in. I wonder how many were for Trilli when he did not renew seven ships of players that had played for him as hard as any I've seen at NT the year before. That move too, was to get better players into NT. That was perfectly legal but it was definitely wrong and IMO plagued the program for years.

Stephens comes across as very enthusiastic and confident. Of course so did Vic Trilli. A very bad comparison I hope, but we will not know how good she is until much later. Vic was a good recruiter initially before it was obvious he couldn't out coach your average YMCA coach. I don't think that will happen with Stephens. Even though I think there were much more qualified candidates available, she may have the intangibles that could lead quickly to success. I liked everything she had to say and I think the odds are favorable that she could have NT competing for a Belt championship sooner than most think. This team she inherited is much better than what JJ found when he got here.

Gee, you think we can hide info that is available to anyone with internet access. This is paranoia at it's best, a player that is selected to the high school all star game as well as a state wide all classification team and someone believes that this is proprietary data. Overkill? I would hate to "loose" a player due to loose lips.

I have no idea what your problem with the players' quote was, but I do wonder why you think it is necessary to call a NT player names. I hope all the players are already thinking about winning the KSU game.

With three early signees, this gives NT nine new scholarship players. NT should have at least 5 players returning. Anyone know what the scholarship limit is for women's volleyball.

Well Charles Barkley led the NBA in rebounds at maybe 6'5. Ronnie Morgan, who played for NT had something like 15 rebounds against North Carolina in NT's first appearance in the NCAA tournament, was also probably 6'5 although listed much taller. Bigger maybe better, but how many JUCO first team All Americans has NT signed? With the guards returning next year, Tramiel could be the player that gets NT to the top of the conference.

Actually those teams played in the original pit.

Do you know that TCU has higher academic standards, or you just assuming they do because they are a private school and cost more money? Privates mostly do a good job of masking their requirements, but I think if you actually want to investigate you will find that there is little difference. The vast majority that get into UNT could also get into SMU or TCU assuming financing was not an issue. It is much more difficult to get into UT than SMU, Baylor or TCU. The privates in general do have higher average SAT entry scores than NT, but when you factor in the percentage of students receiving academic based student aid and the undeniable correlation between wealth and pre-college education; you would expect a more significant variation.

Texas changed women's high school basketball to the current 5 player game in 1979. There were no limits on dribbing in the six player game in Texas, but it was played almost exclusively by smaller classification high schools until the 1970's. Actually the game was very fast, with in effect the players playing only half the time. Some women's colleges in the 1960 to 1970's played a hybrid game were two players remained on each side of the court and two players played the full court.

Judging by the WBB coach search, what do you think?