BillySee58

Thanks, guys

Since Seth Littrell got hired, fans on the board have talked about him leaving as soon as he gets the chance. As we have won this year, that talk has heated up as people seem convinced P5 teams are going to be knocking on his door en masse. We are obviously looking at things from a paranoid North Texas fan point of view, and not a P5 fan/donor point of view, where there is much more skepticism and pickiness when it comes to filling a football HC vacancy. I did some research on the G5 coaches who got hired by P5 schools last offseason. Here are all 5 of them, and their resumes as head coaches before they got the P5 HC job they currently hold: Matt Rhule - Led Temple to 3 straight bowl eligible seasons, 2 straight AAC title game appearances, and a 2016 AAC championship. Hired by Baylor. PJ Fleck - Led WMU to 3 straight 8-win seasons including a 13-1 conference champion in 2016. Hired by Minnesota. Willie Taggart - Took WKU from 0-12 in 2009 before he was hired to back to back winning seasons in 2011 and 2012, took USF from 3-9 in 2012 before he was hired to 8 wins in 2015 and 11 wins in 2016. Hired by Oregon. Jeff Brohm - 31-10 with 3 straight 8+ win seasons and back to back CUSA titles. Hired by Purdue. Tom Herman -22-4 with wins over #3 Oklahoma, #3 Louisville, #9 Florida State, and a conference championship. Beat 6 ranked teams in two seasons. Hired by Texas. All of these guys except Taggart won a conference championship, but Taggart won at two FBS stops taking over for fired HCs and he showed a lot of prowess on the recruiting trail. All of these guys had 11 win seasons except Rhule, who had back to back 10 win seasons including a CUSA championship. 3 of these guys (Taggart, Fleck, and Herman) were making national headlines with their successes on the recruiting trail. So that's what P5 schools are looking for. Did the coach show excellence on the recruiting trail? Did the coach win and sustain it? Did the coach win the conference, and if not were they in contention annually? I still maintain that Littrell is another double-digit win season and CUSA championship away from a P5 school being convinced on him. What happens the rest of the year is big. We win out and he expedites that process, or at least would need less out of 2018 than he would if we didn't win out. So again, we're talking about likely a CUSA championship or at least two double-digit win seasons from being hired away. I think we'd all be happy with our program being in that state.

Disclaimer on my star system that I have said for a while now: QB is the least important position when it comes to offer lists coming out of high school being a predictor of success in college. Followed by slot receiver/scat back types, and DBs. Development, accuracy, and fit for the system they play in is so important that offer lists can be misleading at QB. I would much rather have an extremely productive and accurate 5'10"-6' QB with no other offers like a Fine/Kellen Moore/Rakeem Cato/etc than a 6'4" with a few other G5 offers like Greer or Means. Prototypical size but no P5 offers usually means the QB is not accurate, which is a much bigger issue than being short in college. Many/most of the great G5/non power conference QBs of recent lore have not had great offer lists because they were undersized but proved that wasn't a huge hindrance while running shotgun heavy offenses. Scat backs and slot receivers have similar cases often being under recruited because of size but being big/strong is not in their job description, so those guys often overcome light offer lists to be good college players. Same with DBs. But when it comes to outside receivers (Guyton/Bussey), every down backs (Wilson/Smith), offensive linemen, defensive linemen, and linebackers, and actually all-CUSA players and not just role players, offer lists are a much more accurate in predicting where these guys end up.

Got a good feeling about 2019. That's the class that should really see a jump in head to head recruiting battles and caliber of recruits. I expect 2018 to be similar to 2016/2017 in the sense that we wait to snatch up those Jaelon Darden/Greg White/Nick Smith types at the end. The guys who are currently uncommitted and are left with their offers dried up after the early signing period comes and goes. Seems to have worked pretty well. Then 2019 can be a more impressive crop of early commits and signees, coupled with our opportunistic recruiting at the end. That would set us up great long-term.

Vito coming in after a UNT win like

Dan "I'll Do A Backflip When We Get Our First Interception Of The Season, And I Haven't Done A Backflip Since 6th Grade" Mccarney. May his last Rudy's Coaches show live on in lore.

The next time we play them, those players will be gone. No guarantee this program just remains a cheap-shot taking team over the next four years.

Half for Fine. Keep him fresh, get the ball out quick, heavy dose of Andrew Tucker since it's his last regular season game and probably his last chance for significant PT, and get a lot of guys in the game in the second half. But when Fine is in, make damn sure your best line is in and you're doing everything you can to keep him upright.

Oh, it absolutely led to this. I remember going into the 2015 season Mccarney was seemingly untouchable, as was RV. Who knows how many 4-8/5-7 type seasons it would've taken to get Mccarney out? Much better in the long run that the 2015 season was a catastrophe and not just another bad team like 2014.

After years of watching good QBs taking G5/Non-AQ conference teams to double digit win seasons, BCS bowls, and top 25 rankings, we finally got our guy. Guys like Ryan Dinwiddie, Jared Zabransky, and Kellen Moore at Boise, Alex Smith and Brian Johnson at Utah, Colt Brennan, Jordan Lynch, Austin Davis, Rakeem Cato, Brandon Doughty, Case Keenum, and the list goes on. All these guys at other schools and we finally got ours. All because we had a coach who was willing to look past height and realize that a QB with prototypical height who was actually a good QB was going to be hard to find, so getting a great one who was undersized was more likely.

51 more yards for Fine and he sets single-season records for most TD passes and most passing yards.

There's the single-season record for Fine!

Mason is knocking on Mitch's door with that TD pass

I'm not concerned. The way recruiting has been going under this staff, their top signees have typically come right before signing day with guys who used to have impressive offers but saw their dry up. We've gotten guys like Rico Bussey, Nick Smith, Jaelon Darden, Ladarius Hamilton, and Eric Jenkins to name a few. This staff's opportunistic strategy in recruiting, plus their evaluating ability and their developing ability has been able to overcome the lack of head-to-head recruiting wins. I expect more of the same this year, even after a more successful season.

You don't know who writes it?

Don't let a single troll discourage you. You're giving good content, and rational people appreciate it

I don't see a team that can't throw the ball being able to beat this year's squad. 34-24 UNT

Wow. Hadn't even noticed. That's an interesting decision.

I think Dion Novil too

Playing on the road in college basketball is tough. Our guys were bound to learn that the hard way at some point, but I was hoping that would be at Georgia Tech. But yeah, a lot of basketball between now and conference and a lot of time to figure out what lineups work best and who we are going to be able to rely on.

Or maybe Simmons at the 5 and bump everyone else down. Lot of time to figure out what works best and who steps up the most between now and conference.

I thought the same thing at first, but I wouldn't give up on this group being able to do something special down the line. This was the first D1 road game for most of the players on the court. The last time we had a team this young was 2011-2012 and they lost early to UTA on the road by 33, and ended up making the Sun Belt championship game. A lot of room to improve. Dang Double dang. Gonna need Duffy to step up and Mike Miller to come in and give us some quality play off the bench as well. Extremely small consolation, but at least it is early enough in the year where he easily meets the < 30% games played criteria to get a medical redshirt

Wait, really? Did they say that on the radio? Couldn't tell how severe the injury was and didn't see a replay

It's one thing if he could stretch the defense by making 3s, but since he doesn't it makes for a tough defensive matchup with little to no offensive payoff. It'll be interesting to see how much four-guard lineup we use if we get Tikhonenko eligible this season.

9-4 got us some votes in 2013