SleepingGiantsFan

You mean like he made THIS work? http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/sports/50175456-77/wac-byu-albrecht-benson.html.csp I can't talk about specifics but will say generally that "The Project" included pathetic attempts to get SDSU and UNLV to return to the WAC. Putting two and two together, the manner in which Mr. Peanut thought he could persuade SDSU to do that had about as much of a chance as I would of persuading Jennifer Anniston to move into my house and go to work to pay my bills so I could sit on the couch and drink beer and watch sports all day. Could it happen? Sure - but only in an alternate universe.

How badly would you want to? Consider this. TCU left CUSA for the MWC and Horned Frogs posters on the MWC board refer to that other conference as C-DOA. Among other things CUSA includes schools like Tulsa and Rice which have student populations so small they can't possibly compete with schools like UNT in the TV world of the new millennium and it's more and more getting to be TV ratings which drive conference revenue. Aside from Memphis, CUSA is a lousy basketball conference and how many of its football teams are in the top 25 now? And how many CUSA teams have qualified for a BCS bowl? Answer: The same as the number of SBC teams which have played in a BCS bowl.

Just curious. Are you aware that SDSU is in the Mountain West? And that our football team is 7-3 this year? And that our basketball team was #25 in the AP poll before winning at Gonzaga two nights ago where the home team had won 76 out of 81? Or that the Aztecs have beaten UNLV in basketball 5 of the last 8 times they've played, including in the MWC championship game last March on UNLV's home court? Uh, didn't think so. Despite the slight, for reasons I mentioned once before and won't repeat, I think UNT could be a good addition to the MWC. However, in order to do so, you can't afford to make a coaching hire this time anywhere near as atrocious as your last one. Hopefully your AD will listen to Chuck Neinas' recommendation. I understand a few of your posters think you're throwing money away by contracting with that guy, but people like him know things about the candidates that none of us commoners could possibly know.

That they have no chance as long as Mr. Peanut is in charge.

With all the news breaking today about Auburn, one guy UNT definitely won't be hiring is Terry Bowden.

Just for the heck of it I pulled out my trusty Phil Steele's mag last night and read up on you guys. Steele had UNT as one of his most improved teams for 2010 based on 17 returning starters and several close losses last year. He picked UNT to become bowl eligible. So I haven't followed your team closely this year but it sure sounds like before he was shown the door, Todd Dodge was a Total Dud.

Didn't notice you guys had defeated TT. Very, very nice. Congratulations!

Haven't looked closely but didn't notice this elsewhere: http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news?slug=rivals-1152844 I think Dan McCarney would be a very good hire. The guy had a few really good years at the toughest place in the Big 12 to win at.

Sorry for the criticism. As you'll note, I deleted it just as you were posting the above. Agreed that it's inappropriate for a visitor to be saying such things. In hindsight, I can also understand your feelings about all the SDSU stuff. I've never registered on anybody else's board before and am just kinda feeling my way around here.

Here's one more. After canning Tim Brewster, Minnesota ended a 9-game losing streak yesterday by winning at Illinois.

Speaking of recruiting, I just checked Rivals and Scout and it seems you guys have gotten a few pretty good verbals whereas a couple of your conference peers are getting nowhere. That said, ULM is cleaning up. Assuming the kids they have gotten commitments from actually sign in February, they are going to have a class as good as the bottom third of the MWC has been getting. Todd Berry was a terrible head coach at Army and I wasn't all that impressed with him as a game day OC at UNLV the last few years. However, he had an excellent reputation as a recruiter for the Rebels and he's sure showing the same thing at ULM. If you bring in enough studs, even if you are lousy at X's and O's, you're going to win some games just by tossing the ball out there to your guys.

The only thing you say that I question is the implication that quantity is synonymous with quality. That number is immense, particularly considering that with a couple exceptions, nobody can grant more than 25 scholarships per year. I would add that under SDSU's current excellent staff, we're getting our best recruits, including a kid Rivals rates as the seventh best pro style QB in the country, through holding camps the kids attend, not via hosting them to a game. The kids attend those camps, see our facilities (which except for the absence of an on-campus stadium are state of the art), meet the staff and then have a much better idea what playing at SDSU might be like. Granted, holding camps can be a waste of time and money if your facilities are lousy. However, you guys are building a new on-campus stadium. I can't overemphasize how beneficial that can be. So whoever gets named head coach, I would recommend you watch to see whether "camping" becomes a regular occurrence at UNT.

I saw the same at SDSU. Losing can do that. So can such other misguided ideas as the philosophy that nobody on a message board has a valid opinion in comparison to that of an athletic director. ADs are experienced in these things and are privy to information the rest of us aren't, so the argument goes. Well, I don't know the background of your AD but SDSU hired the former AD at Ohio State and Minnesota who once almost bragged about having quit the OSU job because the president ordered him to fire Earl Bruce and he wouldn't do it. Then he seemingly wouldn't fire Ted Tollner at SDSU until alumni brought such pressure that he was pretty much forced to do so. Word from people I know to have credibility is that guy and Ted used to play golf together regularly during the off-season along with an SDSU alumnus who has been the leading sports columnist for the Union-Tribune for years. I have no problem with that except when it results in such an incestuous relationship that the AD and the columnist lose their perspective on the quality of the job the coach is doing. As a result, it's widely believed the AD waited a year too long to fire Ted as his recruiting classes got gradually worse because he put less and less effort into it. Speaking of recruiting, one of the things I think has improved SDSU football is the extent to which interested alumni with contacts with HS coaches, many of whom are SDSU alumni themselves, have reported on our board about how often our coaches are seen looking for talent. I believe Chuck Long was fired after only three years partly because although he said at his introductory press conference that he and his assistants were going to "build a fence" around San Diego county, the coaches of two big public schools reportedly hadn't seen anybody from SDSU in two years! A former Aztec who went to multiple Pro Bowls told me when SDSU was looking to replace Chuck that the key to winning is just as much assistants as it is the head guy. Chuck had enough brains to retain a guy named LeCharls McDaniel from his predecessor's staff who has been at SDSU for years and done a bang up job of recruiting high character inner city African American kids. However, that's about all Chuck did right. For example, he failed to retain LB coach Andy Buh, who everybody knew was great, and instead hired some moron the players reportedly laughed at because of his false intensity. Buh was then hired by Jim Harbaugh at Stanford to be his LB coach and Buh is now the DC at Nevada. In other words, Buh has essentially been promoted twice whereas Chuck was fired and then accepted a demotion to OC at Kansas, a job which he isn't exactly excelling at this year. Sorry to ramble. My point merely is that Chuck Long has proven himself to be an excellent QB coach but a miserable head coach and a mediocre at best coordinator. Maybe Canales isn't another Chuck Long. Maybe he will turn out to be UNT's version of Bob Stoops. However, you're correct about some people apparently being convinced of him being the latter based on simply improving things after replacing your Chuck Long.

Actually five years is pretty much the norm.

This. However there is another way of doing it. That is, you give the coach a 5-year deal with a buyout provision after years 2-4. Such deals are usually graduated, with the amount of the buyout being less each year. It's difficult to get a prospective coach to agree to something like that if you're negotiating for his services against other schools. However, in the case of Canales, since he's apparently got no other suitors, I see no reason why he couldn't just be presented with such a proposal on a take it or leave it basis. If he leaves it, you hire Leavitt, Franchione or one of those guys. (I'm not saying you should do that. Only that I think hiring Canales and guaranteeing him his full contract for five years would be, uh, dumb?)

Although it definitely has been, Brady said he's not interested and I think he's a man of his word. Plus he coached at Michigan and it's pretty well known that's the job he covets. Rich-Rod will be back in 2011 but if he has a bad year, that job will be open and if Hoke wins big time next year, which with the studs he's been recruiting barring injuries he will, he will be a leading candidate for that gig. A lot of Aztecs will be pissed at him for leaving, but not me. The man has been a beacon light out of the darkness of three years of misery under Chuck Long and I'll wish him well. I'll also know that we now have in place a recruitment process which won't trust our AD to handle it himself and screw things up. Guys like Marshall Faulk, Fred Dryer, Brian Sipe and La'Roi Glover are now actively re-associated with the school and they helped the Parker firm out of Florida vet candidates two years ago and I fully expect that process to be replicated when Hoke leaves in order to hire the best possible coach to replace him.

Yes, very strange. The Aztecs dominated about the first seven minutes and the last seven minutes but TCU controlled the rest of the game. I think SDSU had exactly one first down until that last seven minutes, having scored early on a recovery of an Andy Dalton fumble and a dive from a yard out after connecting on a long flea flicker. TCU has as good a defense as I've seen in college ball but SDSU has two wideouts who will be playing on Sundays next year and they burned the Frogs several times for big gains. Two years ago SDSU had the only double-digit loss season in its history. This year we're 7-3 and 11 points from being undefeated. The difference? Coaching, pure and simple.

Oops. Sorry. Good game today. Congrats!

Yes, Fullmer IS way out of your league. As to others mentioned in the link, Rocky Long is happy as a pig in slop just being the DC at SDSU. He has said he was tired of being the head guy, he's been good friends with Brady Hoke since they worked together at Oregon State many years ago, and every time Hoke's name comes up for another gig, Rocky's name comes up as the leading candidate to replace him. Gary Gibbs? My friend who is a huge Oklahoma fan, being originally from Norman, says he wouldn't hire Gibbs for dog catcher. Willingham and Dorrell? To me it would depend on what kind of staff they could put together since neither has ever worked anywhere in Texas to my knowledge. Same for Paul Pasqualoni, who was an interesting suggestion. That guy's name never seems to come up anywhere but he did a great job at Syracuse before some regression the last few years. On the face of it, I think any of those last three might be a good hire for you if they could put together a staff including several assistants who know some HS and JUCO coaches in your state.

Here's a newspaper report on the Leavitt incident: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/jan/08/genshaft-leavitt-refused-admit-wrongdoing-during-m/sports-colleges-bulls/ I'd be curious to hear his version to decide whether it makes sense. My guess is Chuck Neinas will have that opportunity if he hasn't already. Edit: Wouldn't it also be interesting to hear what Canales has to say since me must have been there too?

When Franchione became one of the announced finalists for the SDSU job two years ago, I was initially aghast. For one thing, I saw the aTm performance you cite and thought he really stunk it up there. However, although he was never my first choice to coach the Aztecs, I eventually decided I could have lived with him. I think if you look carefully at the aTm situation you will see that recruiting had fallen off under RC Slocum. Also in Franchione's final season coming off a 9-win season he was 7-2 going into his game against Kansas, which won the Orange Bowl that year, had a couple huge injuries during the game to his QB and a couple other key players, lost by eight and then everything fell apart the next two weeks at top 10 Oklahoma and Missouri. He nevertheless rallied the troops to upset Texas the next week before losing his bowl game. Not pushing for Coach Fran, just sayin'.

The Mizzou poster says Leavitt never hit the kid. I continue to admit I haven't fully researched it but the video I linked suggests USF's administration conducted an investigation and concluded that he not only did so, he tried to cover it up and for those reasons he was fired. And you're correct that Coach Dale (I believe was his name in Hoosiers) never denied having hit one of his players. So in thinking about it, if your point is that what Leavitt was found culpable of is more serious than what the coach in Hoosiers did, I would agree. Further, my guess would be that alleged duplicity is going to make it difficult for the man to find another job just as was the case in Hoosiers. (BTW, although Hoosiers was based on a true story, that part of it was fictional, as was the size of the school, which although still small had like three times the number of students of the school in the movie.) BTW, since I'm rambling a bit, I'm really surprised that more names haven't arisen on your board. The couple times SDSU went through this in the 00's, rumors were rampant, including occasionally in the press. I recall specifically an article somebody found in the sports page of a small town rag from L.A. County in which "sources" supposedly said one of the five announced finalists to replace Chuck Long had the inside track at the job. Because I had heard from three different insiders at SDSU that we weren't going to hire anybody without head coaching experience and that guy didn't have any, I was pretty sure that was complete BS. I'm somewhat surprised none of you have heard any such things about your gig.

Charlie, this quote was lifted from a UCF article about Neinas: "He currently is president of a consulting firm that assists universities with job searches and analysis of college athletic programs."

You seem to think Neinas is some sort of agent for coaches looking for work. That's incorrect. Rather, he is a consultant for universities looking to hire football coaches and at least as far as I know, what he does is vet candidates. So although I'm sure he knows who Canales is, I don't think he is pushing the man for any jobs. Rather, he is weighing Canales against others who have expressed interest in the job. BTW, I'm assuming that Texas has a public records act similar to California. If so, somebody from your local media or even any Texas taxpayer may be able to obtain Neinas' recommendation from UNT. In the case of Neinas and SDSU, the San Diego Union-Tribune was able to do so once a coach had been hired by SDSU. It is in that manner we fans became aware that our AD had hired Chuck Long rather than Neinas' recommendation, Jimbo Fisher.

Sounds to me like Leavitt is the real world version of Gene Hackman's character in Hoosiers: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4807719 Would Hayden Fry hire somebody like that?