PlummMeanGreen

Thoughts and prayers, Coach McCarney...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjwI9Oz0yl0&feature=related

By the way, a very good movie whose title escapes me. (Anyone know its title)? You know, both school's fans have kicked each other around for awhile now, but deep, deep down and in my heart of hearts the best case scenario would be if both UNT and La Tech received invites. The rivalry aspects of our 2 schools would have already been conceived on BBB.com and GMG.com long, long ago. (Right, HogDawg)? GMG!

With Temple you have the #4 ranked U.S TV market. Hopefully that large TV market thing with the Alliance will be a trend. The Alliance can bring in any number of small to medium size market schools all day long some of whom have decent athletic programs, but they only have 1 more Top 10 U.S. TV market left in their footprint they can add and that would be the North Texas Metroplex . That area of which our school is located would fill a very huge hole almost in the middle of their present Alliance map and add the TV's this consortium still needs to have. Bettter TV market revenues is something I don't think Alliance powers have given up trying to negotiate for albeit some posters on 2 other conference boards have all but swept that very idea under the carpet but that mostly to fit their small to medium market expansion school choice agendas. Another possbile factor with "expand now" is UAB. Blazer football is on thin ice with the UA System Board of Regents and may no be long for the FBS level of NCAA competition or they could remain as a basketballl school. Yet like many of you, I really dislike these "football or basketball only" schools in any conference. IMO, the Alliance powers should say to every school: "It's all or nothing." GMG!

Seriously, I thought this might happen. They would have needed more than 1 day to do all they anticipate doing. GMG!

I am still working on mine if we don't get in this Alliance or CUSA; that is, if they stay separate. Honestly, I think we evenually get in--sooner or later because I'd never understand how they could keep out such a huge footprint as the DFW Metroplex is. I mean come on now, where the heck are they having their Alliance meeting as it is? (Harry, if we get in this go around, please erase this thread--thanks in advance)! Plumm GMG!

CUSA powers of the Alliance needed to be able to tell their 2 school eastern contingency of ECU and Marshall U that they at least made legitimate overtures with officials from Temple U to gauage their interest in the Alliance. Temple U was all but kicked out of the Big East a few years ago so why not show up at a meeting like this happening in Irving today where they are actually wanted? If the Alliance got the #4 and #5 ranked U.S. TV markets in their ranks after today's meeting they would have had a very successful weekend IMO. I'd bet most on this board would certainly agree with that, too. GMG!

Hopefully after this weekend's Alliance meeting we can all move on from every bit of this--and for UNT to move on to a separate CUSA consortium of schools. GMG!

Looks like the "small college from Ruston that could" has at least been hustling with their scheduling. Since the Texas legislature is so into college football as they highly influenced the original Big 12's Texas contingency and since our legislators get all hippety hoppity for their respective alma maters at those state capital water-coolers on Mondays after Game Day Saturdays) so...... .......why don't they just create a bill that says Texas public universities should more than try to schedule each other (even over Texas private universities who have built their programs as they sometimes even coat-tailed off some of our Texas public universities); nevertheless, suggest to all our FBS level Texas public universities that they should really try to schedule each other when they can and keep more Texas monies in......Texas. I know this is a pipe dream of an expensive nature even if it had the chance of happening, but the worst they could tell us if we asked would be a simple no. "If You Had A 40,000 Seat Stadium We Would Schedule You? What a great thing thing it would be to have TAMU at our Taj Mahal (as Gil Brand't called her) of a college football stadium and for a November game in Denton to boot. (Even start asking for future games from TAMU if they can't do it this season). Tell TAMU (and others similar) that we will have a 40,000 seat Apogee (only 9K more seats) if they'll do a 4 game home and home series out there in the future). Apogee Stadium with 40,000 will give us 8,000 more seats than SMU's stadium when we eventually expand her and I would wager that we will be expanding Apogee before SMU expands their Ford. http://blog.chron.co...oad-vs-la-tech/ GMG!

My bad...it should have said "IF" NCAA Drops non-AQ status.

...SMU, UH, Boise, SDSTU, Memphis and ...............UNT?

Can we get Tim McGraw and the UNT Symphony Orchestra back for a command performance to entertain the visiting CUSA contingency? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-ZnjNlgTY

I don't think there is a snowballs chance in hell that Temple U has any interest in the Alliance. In fact, on the CUSA board in a link the Temple U AD said of CUSA['s interest in his school: "This is the first I've head of this." We have to remember just how many stories and rumors grow some pretty strong legs on conference message boards, especially the CUSA board where a few posters from ECU and Marshall act as if they are a "Committee of 2" who will decide anything relating to CUSA's future. GMG!

"The Tech football team could end up being a Top 25 program this fall, so maybe the Bulldogs skip C-USA and go directly to the Big 12 or the ever-expanding Big East. You laugh, but stranger things have happened." Yes,in deed, stranger things have happened, but that would be right at the top of the stranger things have happened list in my 45 plus years of following NCAA sports. Rarely mentioned by the Louisiana media are the Bulldogs still anemic athletic budget which would be toward the bottom of even the Sun Belt Conference. I guess they think that will be over-looked? I don't think so as I believe a school's athletic budget to be one of the Alliance's main criteria of their having any interest toward an expansion school. Just sayin'... GMG!

If I were CUSA I'd immediately put the merger on hold because all the wrong players are bailing (or trying to bail) before it even happens. Not quite sure how many more red flags are needed. It is no secret as to where Britt Banowsky wants to be and it ain't as commish' of CUSA. What a freakin' mess this is becoming. GMG!

This! And I love the big letters, Emmitt. It reminds me of my younger days as a poster but (of course) I would have made those big letters have every shade of green with a generous mix of fonts, too.

When I said coat-tail I mean't those used to be inflated home attendance (but real) numbers back during their SWC days when 15,000 to 20,000 Longhorn, Aggies, Texas Tech (sometimes) Baylor fans would travel to the Cotton Bowl when SMU played home games there, then Texas Stadium, etc, etc, etc. Frank Broyles had the same concern on the SWC's privates "coat-tailing" off the Big Boys of the SWC and was a major reason he took his school out of the league which eventually caused its implosion. One can only imagine if UNT had had as many traveling fans coming to an enlarged Fouts Field (now Apogee) with an honest program with more wins than losses could have gone. It still pains me to say that my era of when we were students was the last one to witness a UNT HFC who left Denton with more wins than losses. That's a long time, folks. Even why we allowed it to go that long bothers me even more and doesn't say much for our leadership as far as athletics was concerned. We really flatter SMU a bit much with all this "why don't yall play us" more than we really should, too, but thru the decades many of us could plead "guilty" of doing that at least once or twice, too. I don't care about their money because I'm not even sure SMU could pay the middle class of Dallas to attend their games on a regular basis and its that class or demographic that will fill their stadium and create the kind of fans they really need. GMG!

There you go and then what is the title of this thread again? Fact is, without Texas public universities (of which UNT pleads guilty of being one of those) for SMU to have most years coat-tailed onto (especially in your SWC days), where would SMU's athletic program be today? Why some of you are talking out of both sides of your mouths is what some of us would wonder about, too, even on this thread. And if not for this upcoming 4 game series, you've most of the time had your wish of our never playing each other. Honestly though, we really think we know (and have for a long time) why SMU is this way toward UNT and BMW's, Polo shirts and daddy's trust fund for Junior doesn't play as much a part of this as many traditionally think but the part that SMU'ers will never admit to is the part of how the UNT System (with now a Law School a few miles from SMU and new Pharmacy School on the horizon) looms in every direction from the SMU campus. Another area that some tunnel-visioned SMU'er will never admit to is how many of their grads thru the decades have received their post umdergrad degrees from UNT's outstanding Masters and Phd's programs. The late great SMU alum Lamar Hunt even found his longtime/lifetime wife (Norma) at UNT so even SMU's most elite have benefitted from UNT in more ways than one GMG!.

Jack, tell me it gets better with age? But for the life of me, I left Rice U out of my original list (which I just corrected). I wish all these schools would form their own alliance and tell that "sea to shining sea" Alliance to take a hike. GMG!

And I'll drink to that! I've worked for and had a few from SMU work for me in the tech school recruiting business and the amazing thing was how damn well we all got along as we could poke fun at our own respective schools, too. I guess just not on the football field of battle, though, eh? Actually, many of us have said that SMU/UNT was a rivalry just waiting to happen but as they say...it takes 2 to Tango. GMG!

Can't remember ever quoting myself from an older post but I posted what the Tulsa reporter is alluding to back on November 22, 2011 (and have made a few alterations from that post) Addendum: Tulsa U, Tulane U, Rice U and USM would have to lead the way to make this happen because without them it would all be a moot point and still basically be the, uh, Sun Belt Conference. In a nutshell, this conference really needs to be their idea but some here and at other message boards planting a few seeds one can never know the end result. I hope the Tulsa reporter expands on the upside of such a league in another column and will tweak his membership list some, too. Posted 22 November 2011 - 08:15 PM Obviously, just killing time watching the debates... The Sun Belt Conference as Wright Waters has envisioned it might as well be called the South Belt Conference. Nothing wrong with Wright, but for a non AQ league it really is too far spread out IMHO. Folks, we are not going to make much in TV revenues now or anytime soon, so regionalize into a new conference with a few metro areas in it. I know we lose more in basketball points, but the Big Boy are on the verge of really making us lose more than just points. A consortium of college presidents at some (or all ) of the schools listed below would hire a good "experienced with conference TV packages"" associate commisioner to be this league's new commish' (probably one who is presently employed in an established conference)............. then............. turn him loose. He (she) might then get a consortium of schools in a 4 or 5 state region (Texas, La, NM, Ark, ???). If Wright Waters can get the SBC a bowl game in its 1'st year, I think history can repeat itself in doing that again with a strong, new commissioner. (Maybe one of our new schools already has a bowl in its city or could get a 2'nd bowl a la New Orleans Bowl)? Conference Name? The name "Southwest Conference" is not available and is now housed or headquartered at the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, Waco. YOU NAME THE CONFERENCE AND WHAT CRITERIA THAT EACH SCHOOL IN IT SHOULD FOLLOW WITH FACILITIES, ACCESS TO AIRPORTS, ATTENDANCE STANDARDS, ETC, ETC, ETC The ___________________Conference (1) UTSA (2) NMSU (3) Ark State (4) La Tech (5) U of Louisiana (6) Rice University (7) University of North Texas (8) Tulsa University (9) Tulane University (10) University of Southern Miss I know starting a new league has not been the thing to do of late, but what do non AQ programs have to lose at this point in time or in the near future?

And what makes USM even more of an interesting case study is that their school's endowment coffers are about half of UNT's, much less than most of the other SBC schools and is at the bottom of CUSA's. Not that a school's endowment will make them a juggernaut of an athletic program (I defer to Rice U), but it is somewhat a barometer in many ways of a school's financial situation both present and future. Best to my understanding, though, is that no school's endowment coffers can be used in such areas as a school's athletic program or for facility construction, either. GMG!

It's actually encouraging to hear that TAMU will play SMU at Ford, because that should negate all the usual things one can usually expect to hear from Denton such as "impossible that said Big Time school will schedule North Texas at Apogee Stadium. Of course, SMU may have put some extra money on the table to get the Aggies to Ford Stadium which also (as I understand it) has triple the parking problems we have until the Pedestrain Bridge across I35-E scheduled for completion this summer alleviates much of our parking situation while providng much easier and quicker access to our stadium. Signed: Just another one of those older, antiqued (slowly, fading away) UNT alums whose Native American accent sounds more like Festus of Gunsmoke. GMG!

The schools in past years who recruit Texas more than you'd ever believe are in the Mountain West Conference along with CUSA as expected. Boise State's recruiting haul this time around were largely from Texas and California. Colorado State's HFC right before he was fired expressed a major concern that the Ram's Texas recruiting would suffer without a Texas school no longer in the MWC after TCU left for the Big East/Big 12. GMG!

I'd rather have the TSU Bobcats on our schedule this next Fall over the TSU Tigers only because TSU-SM would bring more fans. As a non-SWC program, North Texas does have about a 40 year head start on TSU-SM & UTSA as far as having been a member of the NCAA's highest level of competition beginning with our integrating the Southwest with All American Abner Haynes along with his Sun Bowl team to the next decade with the Mean Joe Greene crowd leading into the Hayden Fry era in the 70's. North Texas leadership dropped the football big time with the 1-AA business, but we are back on track again I believe with a disciple of Hayden Fry as our head football coach. No, North Texas cannot compare to SMU with their legacy which the SWC gave them actually starting with the Doak Walker era when SMU became a national program, but their own leadership dropped the ball post Doak Walker Era and the Dallas Cowboys entry into the city of Dallas and the NFL in 1960. Most of their success during this era was tainted by PonyGate and few college football fans think that paid football players does not a major college football program make. GMG!