BillySee58

At the end of a 1-11 season we play two QBs who will have eligibility left. Both will be seniors next year. One, Damarcus Smith, goes 3-13 in yet another start where he shows sub-D1 accuracy and failed to really stake claim to a job he had every chance to. The other throws a pick six in his only pass. Second pick six of the year for the third string QB who really has yet to do anything in his career with ample chances. Then you have Means and Chumley who really haven't shown anything or even pushed those QBs that went 1-11. Should the new coach give Dillman, a QB who was actually highly recruited to play QB, a chance? Will the new coach bring in a juco QB? Does he go the grad transfer route or does he opt to play players who will actually have eligibility going forward? Start a true freshman, with most freshman already being committed? It's going to be a tough one. Old staff didn't do the new coach many favors here.

The most successful (really by a wide margin) of Mccarney's unheralded recruits leaves this team at the ire of most UNT fans. Too bad.

Went 3-13

I agree. Littrell has impressed me since I've been researching him. I don't think Meacham would be a bad choice, but I think Littrell has the higher ceiling.

Fair enough. Although I'll say 2 things about that. One is that the upperclassmen Meacham came in and got the most out of their talent were from top 30 classes, and were classes that were much better than TCU had been pulling in for a while. And two is that Patterson and Bill Snyder have definitely proven to be the exceptions from recruiting sites looking back at their own rankings. But I'm not even convinced Meacham would bring in bad classes by any means, or that amazing classes are a necessity. I just think a head coach is still the most important player in recruiting and Meacham's track record as a recruiter doesn't make me as confident he'll win the recruiting battles as some other candidates.

Assembling a good recruiting staff is huge. Luper would be great. But like I said, in the age of lead recruiter and position coaches doing the leg work of the recruiting process I think people forget how important the head coach is. There is not a highly regarded recruiting class in the country that isn't spearheaded by a coach who the commits are very excited to be playing for, above the head coaches of the other schools who are recruiting them. Learn from last staff. There really weren't any individually awful recruiting position coaches. But we weren't winning recruiting battles against impressive programs.

The teams with the most success in recruiting have head coaches who themselves are great recruiters. He signs off on every offer, and any player who has multiple options (the players we should be getting) isn't going to a school where the head coach has yet to forge a good relationship with him. Even if he really likes his lead recruiter, the head coach has to stand out. That has to be true on a wide scale if we're going to sign a bunch of kids with good options.

The coach who is individually a better recruiter and goes out and gets the players/builds the relationships, rather than relying on whatever their resume was before that player knew who they were. If the coach just expects me to want to play for him while another coach is actually busting his tail recruiting me and impressing me, the choice is easy regardless of their past.

I'm not underestimating the mentors and the research they do. The post I was responding said "I think Meacham should be known by recruits in the DFW area at least." The homework you're referring to is more likely to happen once the ball gets rolling and they start being recruited by that school. What I'm saying is a bunch of recruits are not going to go "Dang! UNT hired Doug Meacham! I need to go check them out now." Unless they were being recruited by him prior. He has plenty to pitch, but if he gets hired he's going to have to go out and be the initiator with the vast majority of his targets. Nothing wrong with that, but it will be the case just like it was with Mccarney. A major problem for Mccarney was that he didn't seem to realize that, and did seem to feel a lot of recruits would know who he was right away and be lured in by his previous accomplishments.

Exactly. And they sure as hell didn't know he beat Iowa at Iowa State when they were in kindergarten.

Unless he was recruiting them or they're avid TCU fans, I doubt that. We often overrate just how much about college football these recruits know. Particularly before they actually go through the recruiting process (like the current juniors who will be our new coach's first full-cycle class).

I don't think Meacham is the recruiter we need. I think he's more of guy who is suited to take a team to the next level after they already have the pieces in place, like he did at TCU. From what I've seen, I would be surprised to see him recruit at Dodge's level. He seems like a low floor, low ceiling guy. I'm still not sure what I think about Applewhite. I like that he has had success at G5 schools. I would be shocked if it were Chambers.

assistant AD at Arlington ISD

He works for Arlington Independent School District as the assistant AD

He's driving, which means it's an unofficial visit.

Which is why I said "currently"

This. I see no reason we can't get players at least kind of close to what Chad Morris was getting last class after getting hired. Maybe not quite that level, but that was a huge, huge jump from what June Jones had going. If we get a good recruiting coach he should be able to sign a class with players whose offer lists are collectively better than any Mccarney class outside of 2014. Because that's really not saying much. I'm not expecting an all-star class filled with difference makers. I'm jut looking for a good solid crop of guys who all have at least 2 other FBS offers, and 2-4 difference makers who can become all-conference guys by year 3 or 4 of the new coach.

Yeah, last I checked Johnson got beat out by my old teammate Trey Enterline. Yes, Buyers will be back. The three gone will be Banogu, Bean and Lynn. Buyers will be back. Unfortunately I'll be in Austin. Let me know what you think. Martin's OC Chad Rives had done an amazing job and needs a HC job. Probably my favorite coach ever. Hope they pull it off.

Well, they said expect a P5 coordinator. Major technically is not one, currently.

Haha, thanks man. Happy Thanksgiving to you and everyone else!

1. Even if we purged the roster of scholarship walkons, we could still only sign 25 this class. We will get to sign 25, and we're set to have about 26 scholarship seniors next season, so the new coach will get to sign a full 25 in each of his first two classes without getting rid of any of the scholarship walkons. 2. By my count we have 12 players who came to this program as walkons and are currently on scholarship (Ced Fernandes, Daniel Khan, Andy Flusche, Kaydon Kirby, Garrett Gunter, Tony Johnson, Blake Macek, Eric Keena, Kenny Buyers, Blake Bean, Michael Banogu, Jarrod Lynn). Of those 12, 3 of those guys will be gone when the clock hits 0:00 on Saturday, so that'll leave 9 walkons on scholarship inherited by the new coach. 3. Of those 9, 6 will be seniors next season in the new coaches first year, while Andy Flusche will be a junior and Ced Fernandes and Daniel Khan will be a redshirt sophomores. These players are not going to be taking up many spots on this roster for very long, and they won't prohibit the new coach from signing full classes. 4. There's only so much the new coach can do to make us good in year 1. Getting rid of these guys while still not being able to sign more players as a result won't do us any good. By year 2, year 3, and on you'll see the guys on the field will be mainly signees by the new coach, as well as some good scholarship signees from the 2014 and 2015 class like Tee Goree, Chris Miles, Jeff Wilson, Rod Young, etc. If the new coach takes care of recruiting we won't have to worry about seeing non-CUSA caliber players playing crucial snaps for us. Just gonna take some time. Unless it's a bad hire. Then it'll take a real long time.

We get 25 scholarships per class, regardless. We also have a cap of 85 scholarships per team, so you hypothetically couldn't sign the full 25 if you had 70 returning scholarship players, because that would put you 10 over the limit of 85. So now we're down to around 77 or 78 scholarship players, with about 15 or 16 scholarship seniors (haven't crunched the numbers in a while). So we're about 7 or 8 scholarships under the limit for the team, and will have about 15 or 16 opening up after the seniors play their last game against UTEP. So that means about 22-24 open scholarships available. You can almost guarantee we'll have quite a few more players quit or transfer by the time the current high school seniors are enrolling and kicking in their scholarships. Basically this is just another scholarship opening up for what will be an inevitably full class.

DT Demikal Harrison can be removed. He announced he will transfer at semester's end

If they're already on scholarship, probably not. If they aren't on scholarship there's no need to get rid of walkons. Just sign a bunch of legitimate FBS recruits who actually have a good amount of other offers and those players will be the ones on the field in short time.

Just like any mid-season coach firing, you select an interim from the current coaching staff and let the people in charge (hopefully not RV this time) get a new coach for next year. We're not firing him to turn this current year around. We'd be firing him to try and get this program turned back around.