LAZER

About two weeks ago Tobi Padwick, a Denton resident and UT alumni, posted a comment on one of the NT daily stadium articles. I do not remember which one but I posted a link and pasted his comments. Tobi Padwick was calling on the city of Denton to help UNT build the stadium and to do so he wrote a letter to the Mayor Mark Burroughs. The following is another great post by Tobi Padwick which includes the mayor's response. Side note: Homeboy CheckFacts is back I hate that guy........ Nt daily Update on Denton support for UNT's new stadium... As you may recall I am a Denton resident in favor of the city helping UNT, one of our city partners, get your stadium built for the positive financial implications it would have for UNT as well as Denton.I wrote the following letter to Denton's Mayor Mark Burroughs and the City Council... "Dear Mayor Burroughs and council members, I purchased a home in Denton a couple of years ago because I liked the collegiate atmosphere that permeates throughout Denton. I went to school at UT and Denton reminds me quite a bit of Austin back then. It is a progressive community that really profits from having two large public Universities as partners. I think that is a big part of why CNN ranked Denton as #58 on their best places to live list in 2006 and why so many other magazines have a favorable opinion of this City. The music and art loving UNT student body gives Denton a spark of life that other communities just don't have. As a resident of Denton, I am a fan of the University of North Texas as a university and think we should help them whenever helping them is within our means. UNT is currently trying to get a new $60M stadium built to replace the decaying Fouts Feild. Their plan is to have the student body donate $30M via student fees and then try to collect a matching $30M from alumni and donors. The latest poll from the NT daily suggests 3/4 of the UNT student body are firmly behind voting for an athletic fee increade to fund the stadium expansion. The UNT SGA is apparrently on their way to having the issue put before the student body in a vote. If the students approve the fee increase, the remaining $30M would have to come from public donations. It seems that UNT has a commitment for probably at least 3M from alumni and backers and likely a lot more. I think this is where the City of Denton comes in. I think we should do what is required to get construction started on that facility immediately. Some stadiums that have been built in the last 5 years were able to lock in costs by having the money up front. As all materials have to be hauled in and we have seen deisel prices go from $1.45 a gallon to $4.75 in that time period, that amounted to a huge savings in getting those stadiums built. Currently instability in wall street has caused oil prices to drop below $100 a barrel. The fundamentals of world demand suggest this is a temporary phenomenum. If we back UNT's stadium move we could potentially save our University partner millions of dollars. The benefit for UNT Fouts stadium is one of the worst facilities used by a member of the 120 or so universities that play Division I FBS football. It has electrical issues, seating issues, ect. that discourage major universities from playing games in Denton --- retarding the percieved stature of UNT. It is a 20K stadium with a track that has been expanded to 30K by adding end zone seating. The 10,000 end zone seats have to bend around the track which puts fans sitting in those seats half a football feild away from the action and as such are rarely filled --- artificially suppressing fan support levels. I study football stadiums, attendance numbers, and conference realignment as a hobby, so I have some limited insight into this. While success on the feild does help a university move into a higher tier conference with more academically prominent partners, average attendance plays a huge role (academic reputation, research dollars, TV markets, and recruiting impact play roles as well). Attendance numbers are a simple way to guage the financial health of a university's football program. Fouts Feild kills UNT's attendance as only 20K of the seats are good seats and 10K are essentially overflow seats for big games. Looking at the mockups, it appears the stadium UNT is trying to build would probably have fewer than 6 thousand end zone (overflow) seats out of their 35K total capacity. There would be no track around the stadium, meaning that viewers would be much closer to the action. Most of the new stadium's seats would be good sideline seats. Even the end zone seats would be an improvement over Fouts Feild in that it appears they would be right up against end zone. IMO, this is an extremely good stadium plan that is modest in it's asking price and well thought out in terms of seating placement and future expension potential. I think it would likely allow UNT to better leverage their large student enrollment into at least 20-24K attendance for most games and potentially a lot more. Against local and large texas area universities that travel fans, like Tulsa, TCU, SMU, Houston, Baylor, Texas State, Oklahoma State, and even OU and Arkansas you could see sell outs of this new stadium based local excitement over the matchup and the opponent's travelling fans. Many of these universities will not play at Fouts Feild because the facilities are so poor that TV is not an easy option, capacity is too limited, and other concerns. These schools would likely enter into home and home series at the new stadium. One sellout a year would spike UNT's average attendance up to 24-26K or so, which would put UNT's average attendance on par with schools like Colorado State and well ahead of CUSA members Tulsa (~23K), Tulane (~22K), Houston (~20K), SMU (~17K), and Rice (~15K). Potentially, that could spur those schools to invite UNT into their conference to allow travelling UNT fans to add to their programs' financial health. UNT moving into a conference with strong academic schools like SMU and Rice can only help it's national standing. Even if those schools chose not to invite UNT, the stadium will almost certainly allow UNT to fill their out of conference schedule with schools off of that list, which will help the state and national perception of UNT as well as their home attendance numbers. If that occurs and UNT is winning and averaging that kind of attendance, an invitation from TCU's Mountain West Conference is not out of the question either. BYU, Utah, TCU, Colorado State and the other member schools of the MWC are a much better caliber of athletic and academic schools than UNT's current conference. Additionally, the current stadium drives away many of the better recruits. The proposed stadium would be at least on par with most of the schools UNT competes with for recruits, allowing Coach Todd Dodge a fair chance to succeed. With 3 or 4 more top recruits each year, married to the potent offensive scheme of coach Dodge and the defensive schemes of proven defensive coordinator Gary DeLoach, there is no reason UNT can't again become a winning football program if not a dominant one --- which will also help attendance. The benefits for Denton A sellout game would likely have over 10,000 visiting fans descending on Denton for a weekend. In the short term, that would be a tremendous positive impact to our hotels, resturants, night clubs, and grocery stores. These visiting fans could see UNT's students in bands play at local clubs helping these young musicians expand their fan bases and further their musical dreams. If we do a good job in selling our other offerings, a portion of those people could come back for other Denton offerings like the Jazz festival or the North Texas State Fair or just to see some of these kids play in their bands. I cannot think of anything else that could legitimately deliver that kind of visitor traffic to our city. There is money to be made here and maximizing Denton's potential is your primary job. If you can do that while helping UNT, all the better I say! How this might work. I think the most financially responsible role you could play for your constituency while helping UNT is to simply assist in getting this done in a timely manner. The City could simply back a loan to get the stadium built as soon as possible. (If Texas law allows this.) 1) The City borrows the $60M after securing committments from UNT to pay them back. 2) The City uses the loan to pay all of the construction costs up front, allowing the delivery of materials as soon as possible, hopefully while delivery fuel costs are supressed. 3) The City pays all interest on the loan. (Optional, although I do feel the City should make a financial contribution to this as we WILL profit from it.) 4) UNT pays off the loan as alumni contributions, new stadium revenue, and student fees come in. The City could also additionally contribute some of the costs of the principle of the loan --- part of the potentially outstanding $30M. You obviously have a better pulse on the desires of your constituents, but IMO as a Denton resident and taxpayer, this stadium would help generate city revenue that I as a resident would benefit from, so it only seems fair that we should volunteer to pay at least part of that $30M. If there is community support to take an even larger role and pay some of the principle, could that be paid from sales tax? I have had some difficulty finding the total sales tax revenue taken in by Denton in fiscal year 2007.It looks like Denton and the Denton county transportation authority charge about a 2 cents in sales tax. How much revenue would a quarter or even a half cent sales tax increase create in a 3 year period? Would that be enough to pay for the stadium? Would a plan like this work under Texas law? I hope you will consider these ideas and take action to help UNT in it's effort to reach it's potential. I encourage you to publically and formally meet with the UNT President Gretchen Bataille and Athletic Director Rick Villarreal and tour Fouts Feild and the site of the new stadium in Mean Green Village with the stated intent of providing financial assistance towards this endeavor. I hope you will stand up and ask them what you can do to help this stadium happen. I hope you will do what you can within the confines of Texas law to help this get done. At the end of the day, UNT needs this stadium for it's growth and the City of Denton needs UNT to take this step forward for our future health. Tobi Padwick Denton Resident" I am pleased to announce that Mayor Burroughs has been quite responsive, sending me the following letter: "Great thoughts and very well presented. I have forwarded your letter to our Economic Development Office for comment and/or use. Thank you for this input and perspective. We will consider your points. Mark B." ... I strongly encourage any Denton residents who feel as I do to send Mayor Burroughs and the City council letters encouraging them to take action. Lets encourage the City to do what is possible to help the Student's Stadium along. There are a lot of us who want to see UNT excell. We are a large voting block. Let's be respectful, but make ourselves heard. This is important to the future of Denton. Please join me in writing our city leadership. Lets show them this is something we beleive in our core is essential to Denton's future. mark.burroughs@cityofdenton.com pete.kamp@cityofdenton.com charlye.heggins@cityofdenton.com jack.thomson@cityofdenton.com chris.watts@cityofdenton.com Rudy.Moreno@cityofdenton.com joe.mulroy@cityofdenton.com

Why did he leave? Will his absence effect the teams play significantly?

I think that Dodge's offense could work much better if he used a TE in the basic formation. We have talented TE's and I think Dodge should give it a try. I like Dodge and I think he is a good coach despite the on field product (which I think is a result of a divided locker room and various other off field issues we do not know about). My only problem with Dodge as a coach is I do not think he has been open enough to changing his offensive game to more fit the college game.

maybe I will come then

just in case anyone was wondering Oldguystudent's rum cake was delicious. I do not know if I am coming out next week the FIU game was to depressing for me. It was nice meeting all of you!!!

You are an idiot I was repeating what Drakes former players said of him. If you ask me they are a pretty good judge of him as a coach. Maybe I am being to sensitive but what the hell does it matter that I work at a restaurant to get me through college, NOT a SINGLE PERSON CAN TRUTHFULLY SAY THAT UNT SPEACIAL TEAMS ARE PERFORMING WELL. Drake is the special teams coach and thus it is his fault.

Here is the picture I was talking about with Dibrell throwing up the claw. Does this look like a guy that has now passion for football? We are not being told the whole story folks. http://rjy.com/new/photos.htm?team=unt&amp...1&iend=229# There is a better picture but I cant find it. This link did not work right........

I agree that Dodge hired some inexperienced coaches such as Mendoza, Ford, and Drake. However, I am okay with Ford he seems to do a decent job. Drake and Mendoza were awful choices as assistant coaches. Mendoza is gone and we now have that problem fixed with Gary Deloach. Deloach will do a great job he just needs a little time. In regards to Drake, HE SHOULD BE FIRED. I work at a restaurant in Grapevine and at the time Dodge was hired, I worked with two SLC football players. They both told me they thought TD was a great coach and would turn NT around. Additionally, they both immediately said Drake was an awful coach and had no idea what he was doing. They said Dodge would get so frustrated with him that he would take over special teams at SLC. They were happy to see Drake leave but they felt bad for us. Ever since I heard that information I have never been able to understand why Dodge brought Drake with him to UNT. Nonetheless, I still belive TD will make the right decisions after this season to turn UNT into a winnig program.

I still believe that TD will turn this program around. I feel that we would most likely be in the same situation if we would have hired someone else. I do not think these off the field issues have much to do with dodge. Players such as fentriss have left due to injuries. Dodge did not beat up Fentriss to cause the injuries thus it is not his fault. Other players have left because they were not getting playing time such as Marcus King. Again, this is not Dodge's fault he simply had better talent to put on the field. Players have also left such as Evyn Roman because they were simply awful players. Dodge may have bitched at Roman causing him to dislike dodge but that is TD job ( not being satisfied with poor performance). Other players have left that were former Dickey era players and that is just part of a coaching change. Players that were from the dickey era that were okay with the coaching change such as Korey Washington had academic issues. Dodge really can only do so much if the players wont hit the books it is their own fault. Additionally, another player that left was Justin Padron. I think that Padron decided to leave because he was used to playing on a very dominant football team. After our losing season Padron saw his brother being recruited be June Jones and got caught up in the June Jones "high" like the ponies so he jumped ship for SMU. I think Padron thought June would come to SMU and destroy all the teams in CUSA (look how that is working out). The only players that have left that I think Dodge can be somwhat held accountable for are Evan Walker, Kevin Ealy, and Alonzo Horton. Although I think Walker, Ealy, and horton had academic issues, I still blame dodge because he should not have recruited players that cant hack college academics. I also blame Dodge more for Ealy because the dude robbed a taco store after he left UNT. Obviously he did not have very good character. Although I do blame dodge for these three players specifically, as a head coach trying to turn around a program you sometimes have to take chances. Finally, those of you who really believe that Dibrell left because he had no passion for the game and wanted to focus on "oil and gas" are morons. Does anyone else remember the picture of Dibrell scoring a touchdown against Navy while throwing up the claw? Dibrell likes UNT and playing football he would not have quit the team to concentrate on "oil and gas" like the reports say he did (in the middle of your sophomore year in D1 football as a starter). There is much more to this story that is not being told. Reports from the FWST would not have originally said Dibrell was kicked off the team if there was not more to the story. Check the TY sports, they agree............. Open your eyes folks Dibrell did something wrong. Finally, I agree our product on the fild has sucked lately but look at all the talented players we have lost. Give dodge a break......

Originally I wanted TD gone after the game. Now that I have had time to calm down about the Rice game I still believe TD will turn this program around. I think he is a good coach and he definitely has what it takes to be a serious D1 coach. He is not a miracle workers folks give it time. Even the GREAT JUNE JONES ( at least that is what SMU fans think) is having trouble turning that program around. UNT and SMU are both struggling and both coaches will get these teams turned around and make them competitive on a national level.

Is there a radio show tonight? If so, what time and what radio channel? I had problems finding the last radio show for some reason.......

I think as fans we deserve to hear what he has to say. I cant believe he did that..... then again I cant believe a great deal of things related to NT football right now.

Is it wrong to want a new coach already. I know your supposed to give a new coach time but this is just awful. I think he played a big trick on all of us, he is not the answer to NT football. I say this because this is RICE were playing not LSU, not Tulsa, not K state.

I am honestly one of the more spirited students on the campus. I try and sell this program and the new stadium to anyone that will listen. I cannot do it anymore it is absolutely embarrassing. We are looking at a winless season folks. I like to think that I wont give on this team no matter how bad things get, but I just do not think I can do it anymore.

I am shocked about everything. Three interceptions, 1 turnover on a kick, 1 turnover on a punt, 1 near turnover on a punt, No defense, no special teams, and most importantly 77 points. I cannot support Dodge anymore, this is disgusting he needs to go back to high school. WAIT THIS JUST IN 1 more turnover on a punt.

I cannot believe this game. IT IS DISGUSTING

Article in the NTdaily today about the stadium. Nt daily The story is at the top of the page. Additionally, the previous article titled "New football stadium needs $30 mil from donors" has had 64 comments on the. When you go to the NT daily site there is a side box titled "most recently commented" and you can access the article there. However, the greatest thing I noticed on the NT daily site was in the "featured Video" today. Watch the video and right after the reporter says "NTTV's Mattie Garrett explains" there is a quick guest appearance. Coincidence I think not!!!! I think the guest is trying to get into the students heads.

This only applies to student organizations and the university right? I always tear down stupid fliers that I disagree with on campus (especially political ones taped above the urinals in Wooten Hall) and I intend to do so with negative fliers about the stadium unless told otherwise. I am not involved in any organizations that are going to campaign for the stadium. If I get negative stadium flier handed to me I am going to tear up and throw it at the person giving it to me.........

I get chills when I watch that...... I am lame

I know that I have a biased opinion but he really has a point. Denton really benefits from UNT and would benefit even more if the stadium was built. He should enter this in an editorial in the paper so that more denton residents see it.

The following was posted as a comment on the NT daily website and I thought it was interesting. The writers name is Tobi Padwick. NT daily Tobi Padwick posted 9/19/08 @ 12:59 AM CST I am a denton resident and a fan of the business of college athletics. I am greatly encouraged by the way the UNT student body seems to be pushing for the construction of the new stadium. Jacqueline Giroir's letter above shows that today's UNT student really are on board with helping the university improve in ways that often are lost on students at other schools. Kudos to her and all of you. The new stadium will allow the existing fouts feild site to be reclaimed by the university for other uses --- not an insignificant thought as the university is somewhat landlocked. UNT probably has one of the 10 worst stadiums in Division 1. That hurts recruiting a lot. UNT recruits locally against SMU (great facilities and a high profile former NFL head coach in June Jones) and TCU (good facilities and a lot of national success in the last 15 years). The new stadium could give UNT 3-5 more top recruits each year which could deliver a number of wins each year. One thing that I think is left unstated is that UNT made a commitment to Todd Dodge that they would provided him with a new stadium to help him recruit if the high profile Southlake football coach took the UNT job. He did and now UNT really should honor their word. The guy probably had effectively a lifetime contract at southlake that he gave up on good faith. He probably would have been strongly considered for the Baylor and SMU openings if he had turned UNT down. His struggles at UNT have hurt his career prospects more than a little. It would make the University look awful if they once more appeared to be all talk and no action. Whether you like football or not is almost irrelevant. This is about perception of the university on a state and even national level. Getting back to the stadium itself, Fouts feild was a 20K stadium with a track that was expanded to 30K. The stadium has about 10K seats in the end zone set far from the feild, surrounding the track. A number of D1 colleges with similar stadiums have similar attendance problems. Just looking at the two mockups I have seen of UNT's new stadium, it appears the new stadium will have the current mean green village athletic center in one end zone and shorter end zone seating on the opposite end. I would speculate that probably at least 25K of the seats will be on each of the sidelines. This dramatic increase in the number of good seats in the stadium will likely help increase regular attendance at the games. UNT seems to draw 15-20K a game at Fouts, but then again they play in a conference of teams no one in Texas cares about. They have drawn more for other Texas teams... if memory serves they drew 25K for SMU in 2006 and 29K for Baylor in 2003. Even after the game 1 route at Kansas State, UNT drew almost 23K for the home opener vs. nearby Tulsa. With UNT's enrollment, based on it's attendance history, I think in the new stadium UNT would average at least 20-24K... even in the sunbelt. It is a very appropriately sized stadium for UNT's enrollment and historical fan support levels. Your AD has done a fine job in only asking for what is actually needed. The new, larger Stadium would likely help in getting home and home games against likely good draws like SMU, TCU, Tulsa, OSU, Baylor, Houston, and Texas State. Those games could sell out a 35K UNT stadium. Fouts is a tough sell for a lot of those schools, but the new stadium could make those games happen. Even A major BCS schoolthat has a number of alumni in Dallas like Arkansas might consider a home and home with UNT in a new stadium. If spurred by some of these sellout non-confernce games UNT's average attendance reaches the 25-30K range there is a small possibility they could end up in the same conference as SMU and TCU (a higher caliber athletic AND academic conference) and be on the fringe of BCS status. As a citizen of Denton that excites me. UNT with that caliber of football team could bring a lot of media exposure to UNT's music programs. It could be the missing piece to transform Denton into what Austin USED to be before all the yuppie skyscrapers started coming in --- THE place to be in Texas. Along these lines I have a proposal. If you guys vote for the stadium there is still 30M that needs to come from the community (mostly Alumni). I think eventually that money will come, but will it come quickly enough to retain Coach Dodge and honor your university's commitment to him? I think this is where we, the residents of Denton, should come to the aid of out university partner. I think Mayor Mark Burroughs should lead the City of Denton to back a loan to finance any of the remaining $30M that your alumni may not contribute in a timely manner. The City of Denton owes a lot to our partnership with UNT and we have a lot to gain in tax revenue if UNT turns Denton into more of a destination city. I think at minimum, the city can act as co-signer on the outstanding amount. I think, at minimum, we could pay the interest on the loan for up to 8 years while the athletic department collects any outstanding funds via tickets sales and donations. It could be funded by some minor fractional sales tax increase or some such. Or perhaps, if City-wide support is there, maybe the city should just assume a large part of the remaining 30M. I hope that Denton residents who feel as I do --- that we SHOULD be helping UNT grow --- will join me in writing Mayor Burroughs at markb@markburroughs.com and encourage him to see if the city can help. Mayor Burroughs' official city email address is mark.burroughs@cityofdenton.com, so please write him there if you are a Denton resident and agree that the City of Denton should effectively guarantee this stadium gets built if the UNT student body support it. This was his next post Tobi Padwick posted 9/19/08 @ 11:35 AM CST I sent the following letter to the mayor and the Denton council members. I hope anyone who feels as I do will also write them and encourage the City to get involved in funding the new stadium. Their addresses are viewable via the links on left at http://www.cityofdenton.com/pages/councilmembers.cfm ------- Dear Mayor Burroughs and council members, I purchased a home in Denton a couple of years ago because I liked the collegiate atmosphere that permeates throughout Denton. I went to school at UT and Denton reminds me quite a bit of Austin back then. It is a progressive community that really profits from having two large public Universities as partners. I think that is a big part of why CNN ranked Denton as #58 on their best places to live list in 2006 and why so many other magazines have a favorable opinion of this City. The music and art loving UNT student body gives Denton a spark of life that other communities just don't have. As a resident of Denton, I am a fan of the University of North Texas as a university and think we should help them whenever helping them is within our means. UNT is currently trying to get a new $60M stadium built to replace the decaying Fouts Feild. Their plan is to have the student body donate $30M via student fees and then try to collect a matching $30M from alumni and donors. The latest poll from the NT daily suggests 3/4 of the UNT student body are firmly behind voting for an athletic fee increade to fund the stadium expansion. The UNT SGA is apparrently on their way to having the issue put before the student body in a vote. If the students approve the fee increase, the remaining $30M would have to come from public donations. It seems that UNT has a commitment for probably at least 3M from alumni and backers and likely a lot more. I think this is where the City of Denton comes in. I think we should do what is required to get construction started on that facility immediately. Some stadiums that have been built in the last 5 years were able to lock in costs by having the money up front. As all materials have to be hauled in and we have seen deisel prices go from $1.45 a gallon to $4.75 in that time period, that amounted to a huge savings in getting those stadiums built. Currently instability in wall street has caused oil prices to drop below $100 a barrel. The fundamentals of world demand suggest this is a temporary phenomenum. If we back UNT's stadium move we could potentially save our University partner millions of dollars. The benefit for UNT Fouts stadium is one of the worst facilities used by a member of the 120 or so universities that play Division I FBS football. It has electrical issues, seating issues, ect. that discourage major universities from playing games in Denton --- retarding the percieved stature of UNT. It is a 20K stadium with a track that has been expanded to 30K by adding end zone seating. The 10,000 end zone seats have to bend around the track which puts fans sitting in those seats half a football feild away from the action and as such are rarely filled --- artificially suppressing fan support levels. I study football stadiums, attendance numbers, and conference realignment as a hobby, so I have some limited insight into this. While success on the feild does help a university move into a higher tier conference with more academically prominent partners, average attendance plays a huge role (academic reputation, research dollars, TV markets, and recruiting impact play roles as well). Attendance numbers are a simple way to guage the financial health of a university's football program. Fouts Feild kills UNT's attendance as only 20K of the seats are good seats and 10K are essentially overflow seats for big games. Looking at the mockups, it appears the stadium UNT is trying to build would probably have fewer than 6 thousand end zone (overflow) seats out of their 35K total capacity. There would be no track around the stadium, meaning that viewers would be much closer to the action. Most of the new stadium's seats would be good sideline seats. Even the end zone seats would be an improvement over Fouts Feild in that it appears they would be right up against end zone. IMO, this is an extremely good stadium plan that is modest in it's asking price and well thought out in terms of seating placement and future expension potential. I think it would likely allow UNT to better leverage their large student enrollment into at least 20-24K attendance for most games and potentially a lot more. Against local and large texas area universities that travel fans, like Tulsa, TCU, SMU, Houston, Baylor, Texas State, Oklahoma State, and even OU and Arkansas you could see sell outs of this new stadium based local excitement over the matchup and the opponent's travelling fans. Many of these universities will not play at Fouts Feild because the facilities are so poor that TV is not an easy option, capacity is too limited, and other concerns. These schools would likely enter into home and home series at the new stadium. One sellout a year would spike UNT's average attendance up to 24-26K or so, which would put UNT's average attendance on par with schools like Colorado State and well ahead of CUSA members Tulsa (~23K), Tulane (~22K), Houston (~20K), SMU (~17K), and Rice (~15K). Potentially, that could spur those schools to invite UNT into their conference to allow travelling UNT fans to add to their programs' financial health. UNT moving into a conference with strong academic schools like SMU and Rice can only help it's national standing. Even if those schools chose not to invite UNT, the stadium will almost certainly allow UNT to fill their out of conference schedule with schools off of that list, which will help the state and national perception of UNT as well as their home attendance numbers. If that occurs and UNT is winning and averaging that kind of attendance, an invitation from TCU's Mountain West Conference is not out of the question either. BYU, Utah, TCU, Colorado State and the other member schools of the MWC are a much better caliber of athletic and academic schools than UNT's current conference. Additionally, the current stadium drives away many of the better recruits. The proposed stadium would be at least on par with most of the schools UNT competes with for recruits, allowing Coach Todd Dodge a fair chance to succeed. With 3 or 4 more top recruits each year, married to the potent offensive scheme of coach Dodge and the defensive schemes of proven defensive coordinator Gary DeLoach, there is no reason UNT can't again become a winning football program if not a dominant one --- which will also help attendance. The benefits for Denton A sellout game would likely have over 10,000 visiting fans descending on Denton for a weekend. In the short term, that would be a tremendous positive impact to our hotels, resturants, night clubs, and grocery stores. These visiting fans could see UNT's students in bands play at local clubs helping these young musicians expand their fan bases and further their musical dreams. If we do a good job in selling our other offerings, a portion of those people could come back for other Denton offerings like the Jazz festival or the North Texas State Fair or just to see some of these kids play in their bands. I cannot think of anything else that could legitimately deliver that kind of visitor traffic to our city. There is money to be made here and maximizing Denton's potential is your primary job. If you can do that while helping UNT, all the better I say! How this might work. I think the most financially responsible role you could play for your constituency while helping UNT is to simply assist in getting this done in a timely manner. The City could simply back a loan to get the stadium built as soon as possible. (If Texas law allows this.) 1) The City borrows the $60M after securing committments from UNT to pay them back. 2) The City uses the loan to pay all of the construction costs up front, allowing the delivery of materials as soon as possible, hopefully while delivery fuel costs are supressed. 3) The City pays all interest on the loan. (Optional, although I do feel the City should make a financial contribution to this as we WILL profit from it.) 4) UNT pays off the loan as alumni contributions, new stadium revenue, and student fees come in. The City could also additionally contribute some of the costs of the principle of the loan --- part of the potentially outstanding $30M. You obviously have a better pulse on the desires of your constituents, but IMO as a Denton resident and taxpayer, this stadium would help generate city revenue that I as a resident would benefit from, so it only seems fair that we should volunteer to pay at least part of that $30M. If there is community support to take an even larger role and pay some of the principle, could that be paid from sales tax? I have had some difficulty finding the total sales tax revenue taken in by Denton in fiscal year 2007.It looks like Denton and the Denton county transportation authority charge about a 2 cents in sales tax. How much revenue would a quarter or even a half cent sales tax increase create in a 3 year period? Would that be enough to pay for the stadium? Would a plan like this work under Texas law? I hope you will consider these ideas and take action to help UNT in it's effort to reach it's potential. I encourage you to publically and formally meet with the UNT President Gretchen Bataille and Athletic Director Rick Villarreal and tour Fouts Feild and the site of the new stadium in Mean Green Village with the stated intent of providing financial assistance towards this endeavor. I hope you will stand up and ask them what you can do to help this stadium happen. I hope you will do what you can within the confines of Texas law to help this get done. At the end of the day, UNT needs this stadium for it's growth and the City of Denton needs UNT to take this step forward for our future health. Tobi Padwick Denton Resident

The FIU defense looks really good.

It is the beginning of the third quarter and the score is 10 to 0 South Florida. South Florida is RANKED! It is televised on ESPN U....

Texas Tech has a team. A good friend of mine is on the team

when is the game? Is the game televised?