GrandGreen

Link Tops off a really bad sport weekend for the Green.

No I can't name another team, however I am sure there are many. TD has so far only given two true freshmen much playing time, Vizza and Moseley. He is now starting 3 redshirt fish per your list. By mid-season I would guess most teams have played their freshmen as much or more than TD. Overall this is not an inexperienced team, NT probably had has many returning lettermen this year as any time in history.

In the past, I would've just tossed it off as wishful thinking but, if Todd Dodge can right the North Texas ship, he just might be the catalyst to making this happen. The two keys as I see it are TCU and North Texas. TCU would have to realize that they will NOT be a part of the BCS, nor are they likely to dominate a conference with BYU and Utah. That they would profit more by being a big fish in a smaller pond than being an outsider amongst a group that has stood together for 30 years and caused the breakup of the WAC. North Texas will have to prove that they can actually bolster the conference with competitive teams in all of the sports. We cannot be a hanger-on; we must be a contributor. Right now, we're not that good. Slight disagreement, I don't think NT would a hanger-on and in fact is already on a par with Rice, Tulsa, SMU, UTEP, and Houston. These teams are far from being dominating in anything. TCU would be nice, but they are going to have to fall a long ways before they would even consider such an alignment. Add Arkansas State, ULL, and Tulane and you would have a very nice nine team regional conference.

New coaches at Baylor and SMU will result in much better recruiting for both schools. New coaches always bring in new enthusiasm and both schools will spent a bunch on the replacements. It will be interesting to see the candidates for both schools, both universities have huge challenges.

Jeff Andrews is the high school beat writer for the DRC with about a year of experience and apparently a NT alum. Blogging is just another form of reporting and like any other there are people that are good and bad at it. I actually commend the DRC on adding this type of coverage to NT sports. I think we should give Jeff a pass on yesterday's blog and hope the he gets much better.

Incredible. I think you should identify the person involved, he certainly does not deserve any consideration in this manner and in fact keeping him anonymous only casts a poor light on the rest of the staff. I had hoped this "we against the world" tactic was a thing of the past. Where in the world including the lowest level of high school football would a defense that ranks absolutely last in almost every category not be subject to a lot of criticism. Hopefully the defense is going to build on it's success last night, but one good game against a bad team does not mean that the defense has arrived. My personal opinion is that the learning curb for the defensive coaches has been as great or greater than most of the players. I don't know how many watched the player reporter review after the Arkansas game, it was brutal. Holman, Jackson and Meager showed a lot of class answering reporter's question with the basic theme of how could a college team be as bad as NT. Apparently at least one staff member could learn from the players' "How to take it like a man with class" conduct in that interview.

Appears to be a solid recruit. Cy-Fair is a pre-season national top 30 pick. I guess we can dream about getting her teammate Nneka who is 6'2" 175 and a five star recruit and as stated above a top 10 national recruit.

Not sure were you get anyone wants DD back. DD in effect fired himself and I am not sure NT could have ever recovered if they had let him fulfill the contract so foolishly given him. Not sure what Utah state's season has to do with NT, but they have actually played better than NT to this point. Hawaii beat USU 52 to 37 not 18.

Can't disagree with the comment about the two worst programs in the Belt. But I do wonder if UNT wasn't so slow how much the 500+ yards they gained would be improved. I saw several plays were NT got behind ULL's defense, couldn't be all that slow. I don't think NT has any real fast players on offense other than a healthy Thomas but the wrs have good not great speed. With that field to me all the players looked slow.

http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/scoreboard

I am just glad that NT doesn't play any D2 and we would have to find out. I suppose it would be worse for a 1aa (old designation) to get beat by a Div 2 because the scholarship disparity is even greater that a 1aa playing a 1a. Scholarships allowed, 1a 85, 1aa 63, and DivII 34.

Powerhouse Arkansas beat 1aa Chattanooga 34-15 gaining 393 net yards to Chattanooga's 188. Further illustrating that NT is without competition the worst defensive team in the nation. If losing and giving up 38 points to an awful and crippled win-less ULL team wasn't enough proof. This mades Chattanooga 1-4 for the year with other losses to Jacksonville St., the Citadel, and Carson Newman.

Actually you should weight the stats against an index of starters, second team'ers, etc. on the field for both teams when each QB was on the field. Then create a relevance factor to use to compensate for the point in the game the Qbs were in. Obviously you can't compare statistics when the game is on the line with the game is over, NT does not have even a remote prayer playing time. Then apply functions to account for field position inherited, passes with the wind versus against the wind, crowd noise, etc. Numbers don't lie but it sometimes takes a lot of skill to accurately interpret statistics. My take is that anyone who thinks that the choice of Qb is obviously Vizza must be clairavoyance because I haven't see anything that clearly indicates that decision. Yes, Meager has made mistakes that probably cost NT some wins, but on the other hand; Vizza has made even worst decisions in basically mop up time play.

I wish the focus of this articles and others would stress how obscene it is to spend the kind of money programs like UT spend on sports and what it is doing to true competition. Even the pro leagues know that to keep some competition in their game they have to maintain some balance between teams.

Are you aware that ULL tied Denver at Denver on Friday and Denver only beat ULM 1-0 today? Strange Denver beats Stanford but cannot put away ULL and apparently had trouble with ULM.

Vizza is not the starter for one reason. TD at this time thinks that Meager gives NT a better chance of winning. TD unlike some, has not given up on the season and does not believe that its ok to wait years for positive results. It is amazing that we fans all feel like we can make better decisions than a coach that works with the players everyday and has his future dependent on the results. I would guess that TD is not satisfied with any of his QB's play at this point, but the QB problem pales compared to other issues on this team. Anyone else thing that if Vizza was chosen to be the starter, there would be a lot of fans howling for Tune at this time?

Tasty, you are absolutely right. Few if any are calling for TD's head, but to suggest that it is ok to play embarrassing football because it is your first year on the job is ridiculous. Do some not realize that TD chose to appoint two coaches who were not even head high school coaches to be his coordinators? This was a tremendous risk and certainly no-one's but TD's decision. In the long run it may turn out that this develops into a first rate staff, but it certainly open to a lot of criticism. DD had a mediocre defense and an awful offense, TD so far as a mediocre offense and an awful defense. NT as indeed suffered from DD's haphazard indifferent recruiting, but I don't think that there is any team in the Belt that has substantially more talent. In fact, the NT defense should be one of the better Belt squads. It is strange IMO that TD's offense has performed much better than the defense when there seemed to be much better experienced talent returning on the defensive side and not nearly the radical change in schemes that the offense has enacted. I still think there is a good chance that NT turns it around shortly, but a lost next week would be devastating.

If RV is serious about demanding a break out season for Slinker or she is out, why would he allow her to commit the University to ships? This girl may turn out to be a great signee, but she was not even a member of the twelve member first team all district team last year. I am sure that Slinker has a very difficult time recruiting under the circumstances but why allow her to take chances on border line recruits in the early signing period?

I am one of I thought few who predicted that NT would challenge for the Belt crown this year. Most seemed to think this would be a rebuilding year and NT would win 3 to 5 games. What has changed? I am still not counting NT out of the NO Bowl race. I projected NT to be 1 and 2 at this time. NT could have easily beat both FAU and SMU if not for some very costly turnovers. NT has significantly improved every week, I don't understand a lot of the fatalism I am seeing here, NT can still have a winning record and win the Belt. It will be tough with both ASU and Troy on the road but if the team continues to progress, why not? And what is all this garbage about TD having to have his own players to be successful. TD has gone out of his way to demonstrate that is not his mindset. Hasn't anyone noticed that none of TD recruits are getting a lot of playing time? Yes, they are freshmen but I thought in particular that the wrs would be used much more. TD is starting all DD recruits at wrs despite there being only a few on ship.

I thought NT make some very good second half defensive adjustments. It seems to me in the first half that FAU picked up every 3rd and long and their receivers dropping passes stopped most of their drives. Other than the one long pass play in the second half, NT's defense played much better. The biggest problem for the defense was a very poor pass rush. On that long td, the FAU QB took forever and no NT players even got close. Unfortunately, FAU adjustments were better and NT could do nothing offensively in the second half.

The second string QB is usually the most popular player on the team. Meager made some poor decisions but frankly I did not see a lot of open receivers. It is interesting that some of the fans critize Meager for both passing into coverage, but also for scrambing and not making a throw when noone is open. FAU played great defense against the TD offense, and adjustments are going to have to be made by the team because I suspect they are going to see a lot of the same defense until they learn to attack it. Those that think that FAU defense was open to the long pass must have been watching another game. FAU defense was set up to stop the long pass and invited the run.

How much better is the Belt? I don't doubt that the Belt continues to improve, but one factor that needs to be considered is the effect of the schedule. I am sure most noticed that the Belt's big victories last week were all played at home. Has there ever been another weekend were two BCS teams and a CUSA team played at Belt sites. I do think there would be a substantially greater number of wins if the ratio of home to away games improves for lower rated conference members.

Where do you think Rivals, Scout, etc. get their information? There is a ton of misrepresentations in the recruiting process. Most players are shorter, slower and have less interest from recruiters than they represent. That being said, if TD's early signees are a good indication of the final class than NT has greatly improved recruiting. TD's first real recruiting class will be easily the best since Fry.

Why would you want NT to not play the so called juggernauts? Outside of the money angle, this helps you in recruiting, exposure, and gives you a very good indication of were your program is. I don't have a problem with it and would in fact support one game a year against this type of program and in fact think this years schedule is not that bad. NT is an 1a university and should play a representative schedule. Obviously, economics is the key component of playing these games. I am not sure I've ever heard of RV stating that he would not play money games, but only that he wanted to limit them. NT is very limited with the amount they can earn from a home game. Excluding the end zone there are only 20,000 seats to be sold. If you assume that at least 6,000 of these must be allocated to students, then you have 14,000 to sell. To be frank, student attendance is great but adds little to the bottom line as they have already paid through student fees. If you assume that all available seats are sold at $20 then you have total receipts of only $280,000 compared to a guarantee of $500,000. NT would also make some from concessions and parking but would also have expenses from hosting the game. There would also be travel expenses associated with the guarantee game. Incorporating these expenses into the equation, some may assume that in fact the home game is very close to matching the guarantee. Not true, not even close. The reason is that to get the home game NT has either got to play a return game or pay a guarantee. If it is a home and away series than in effect the amount received for the home game is for two games not one. So the max for two games is approximately $280,000 less travel expenses to the away game. If you are paying a guarantee game then NT's gross would be reduced by that guarantee. It would be very difficult if not impossible to get any 1a team to play at Fouts without a return game unless NT wanted to guarantee more than their total ticket revenue for the game. In summary, money games are a fact of life for most programs that do not share in huge conference revenues, or support by very large private donations. Unfortunately, even a new stadium does little to change this reality. In fact, it may make it much worse if it is financed by debt that much be repaid through NT athletic funds.