KoldBeer

Brewster would be interesting. He was horrible at Minn but a decent name and good recruiter. It'd be a big gamble for TxSt to go with him. I'm sure it'd take $300K to $500K to go there. Can't see them getting Davis and Brewster. That'd be a chunk of change.

CBL - Thanks. I forgot that game got moved.

Rivals says we added an OL http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/recruiting/player-Emeka-Okafor-95732

There are two Saturdays in 2011 when we don't play. It seems like you'd play on every Saturday to get attendance up. Somebody needs to help the Sun Belt with scheduling.

Lyon College 42 Arkansas St 85

The toughest thing about moving up to AQ is that some schools are getting a "pass" because they are already in AQ conference. When the Big 12 was falling apart of some schools were being judged on their own. The four schools in Big 12 North would have had to earn their way into a BCS conference. Iowa St may or may not have been able to do that. But you have other schools like Washington St that gets a spot at the big table because they've been in the Pac-10 forever. If you were going to create a Pac-16 from scratch would you include Washington St in that conference but it almost happened that way. North Texas a ton of work to do to move up in the pecking order. Since we don't have much in the way of tradition, there is a lot of ground to make up in fan and financial support. But a lot can be done in ten years. Look at Boise and TCU. Most important thing to do is win in football and get big crowds for football. Winning in basketball will help build brand equity but football drives the bus. For basketball to help in conference realignment, we'll have to get to the point that we become an at large bid type team.

Full Story... http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5890634 What you shouldn't miss 6. Saturday: Jackson State at North Texas -- My preseason SWAC pick versus my Sun Belt West Division pick. I have the Mean Green in this one. Who's hot: North Texas (7-1) I like the Mean Green nickname, but I love the way they play even more. Last season in the Sun Belt championship game, North Texas beat Troy 66-63. It has carried its winning ways into this season. (more in article...)

WVU would have played for the title in 2007 if they wouldn't have lost to Pitt in the last game of the regular season. A Big East team might play for it someday but it's going require the Big East team going undefeated and everybody else losing at least a game. I don't see a Big East team getting picked ahead of a SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-10 team if they have the same amount of L's.

SLC Trib Link http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/sports/50808891-77/conference-hawaii-football-west.html.csp I think the MWC probably stays at 10 for the time being. Boise St AD said last night that's where he thought they should stop at. Big 10 said last night that they are done with expansion for time being. I think last big move for time being is probably in Big East (do they add UCF?). With WAC down to 5 it will be interesting to see what happens. Does the league dissolve or do they pull more schools up? Under current rules, they just lost autobid to NCAA tourney. I'm sure Benson will issue saying league is in fine shape. They'll probably ask North Texas to join again now. If league falls apart MWC grab Utah St. Idaho and San Jose St are in a world of hurt.

We are slipping in Kenpom and Sagarin ratings. The schedule has been really easy. KU top notch but Tech is 5-4 and Rice is 4-4 (although two of losses are to UT and Arizona). We're down to 172 on Kenpom and 127 in Sagarin Ratings. We are 3rd best in Sun Belt per Kenpom and 2nd best in Sagarin. Good news is that we are winning games and that is all that matters. Sun Belt is bad and West division is weakest of two. We should have that division wrapped up with a week to go in the season. Wednesday will be a real test. I'd guess we are an underdog. It'd be real nice to get another road win.

Part of the reason ticket prices are so high is because the bowl game force schools to buy 10K to 15K tickets per school. The bowl pays out $750K but forces schools to buy $600K in tickets.

It came from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNT_Coliseum Here's a story that tells the real story (match greenjoe's version) http://www.unt.edu/northtexan/archives/f03/cheerextrapit.htm Here's an old SI article about NTSU moving into a new arena. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1088056/index.htm

Kenpom has North Texas winning 75-64 with a 86% chance of winning. UNT is #151 and Southern is #325. Sagarin has North Texas winning by 3 to 5 points (depending which ranking you use). UNT is #131 and Southern is #264. UNT is slipping in both rankings. I think scoring margin is the main culprit. Since these are used for anything it's not an issue. Per CBS RPI is #47.

From the above mentioned FAQ Who will the Mean Green play at home in 2011? The home slate for the Mean Green will include games against Conference USA opponent Houston, Big 10 opponent Indiana, and four Sun Belt Conference teams to be announced this spring. http://www.meangreensports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=1800&ATCLID=205038615

I doubt it would be full merger. I'm thinking two separate conferences that share TV deal, etc. The champions from both leagues would face each other for BCS bid. Of course, PAC-10 and Big 12 talked about doing something like this and then Pac-10 decided to try to take half of Big 12. Who the heck knows what's going on these days? By the way, this would be bad for North Texas if we didn't get into MWC or CUSA. It'd create more separation b/t MWC and CUSA and other conferences.

If we don't win this by double digits, I'll start to get worried.

I'm a Kansas fan and Self wants an 8 to 9 player rotation. Right now KU is playing a lot of players but I assume he'll tighten the rotation up as the season goes along. Roy Williams liked a larger rotation (at least at Kansas). In the NCAA, bench isn't an issue because the TV timeouts are longer. I think we'd all like a couple of more guys for North Texas but I don't know where we're going to get it. That's why we have to keep the recruiting up. At this point, we have to roll with what we've got. With regards to White, I haven't watched as many games as people on this board, but from what I've seen he's a great player. I don't care what happens at the next level (lots of great undersized players don't make it to next level), but he can play on my team any day. I trust him with the ball at the end of the game.

The Orlando paper has a story talking about the MWC and CUSA merging in some form to get a BCS bid. My guess would be the champions of both would play each other and the winner would get a BCS bid. I hope North Texas didn't wait too long to get its stuff together. We really need to find a way to get into one of these conferences. Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference could potentially collaborate to earn their own automatic Bowl Championship Series bid. Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky said in an exclusive interview with the Orlando Sentinel that he continues to talk with Mountain West Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson about a variety of potential collaboration options. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-mountain-west-conference-usa-merge20101201,0,4754403.story

USU up by 6 with 6 minutes to go. Looks like Sun Belt is going to go 0-7 tonight. There were some tough games but it looks like only ASU and Denver showed up tonight.

By that time you should be able to take the train all the way from Denton (you'll have to get off the DCTA train and onto the DART train). I think the Denton/Lewisville train is supposed to be complete in June.

I'm sure he'll land on his feet but he wouldn't have been any better off staying at Fort Hays St (Div II school in KS). They fired their head coach so he'd been looking for work even if he didn't come to UNT. At least now he has a year of being a Div 1 assistant under his belt.

You're right about Duke. There's a ESPN article on loudest arena. Duke holds 9,314. Top 5 places were 1. Kansas 2. Duke 3. Kentucky 4. New Mexico 5. Florida. It says this about Duke..."All it needs is more court-adjacent students." At Duke student seating is 1,500 (for comparison KU and UK are 4,000). It lists one of the three key factors for noise is a committed student section (no surprise). Also mentions student seating location: "But the most thunderous undergrads won't do much good if they're stuck in the rafters while boosters schmooze politely courtside. Not only does Kansas welcome a high percentage of campus kids, it keeps them close to the action, too." I think the article is an insider but here's the link: http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/preview2010/insider/news/story?id=5761254

I don't know about the rest of the country, but in Big 12 arena students don't get the entire lower 10 rows. At Kansas they get the behind both baskets and a couple of sections behind the bench. Mizzou used to have almost all the student section in the upper deck (only a small part on the lower bowl was students). I don't remember Tech having students on the baselines. Duke is the only school I can think of that has students baseline to baseline. But that stadium only holds 6,000 so I don't know if they could stick the students somewhere else. Every schools I've seen, the students want better seats and alumni don't want to give up good seats. I guess it's a sign of progress that we're discussing this now.

According to Kenpom, it's going to be a long night. Best shot to win is La-La and it's only a 31% chance.

Looking at box score, we were minus 10 in turnover category. We were high at 15 and UTA only had 5. We were careless with the ball or was UTA forcing the TO's. That number needs to even out a little. Glad to get the win, but I keep feeling this team can play better (which is fine since we've only played 6 games or whatever).