UNTDoubleAlum

I always kinda wonder...what other ways do people get their names on buildings at their alma mater if they aren’t rich. Like, I want my name on a UNT building, but I’m not a member of the bourgeoisie. If I rescue a bunch of kids from a burning school bus in the name of UNT, will that do it, or is the only recipe cold, hard, cash?

I hope the university uses this as an opportunity to show us that they have zero tolerance for cruelty toward animals and kick him off the team.

I do have a graduate degree from A&M to go along with my two undergrad degrees from UNT. I think A&M has a fantastic game day atmosphere, and Kyle Field is one of college football’s best venues. That being said, I’m pretty excited to go to Kyle Field as the enemy, dressed in green.

After I got my degree, I had to wander in the wilderness of Amarillo and Kansas City, which coincidentally occurred during the Benford era. But living in Denton again has allowed me to make a lot more games now.

Hard for teams to stop you when you’re both good and consistent at the 3 point line. I mean, I know that’s a super obvious basketball statement, but it’s still fun to say about your own team.

15 is a ton, although this season clearly had enough standout moments to fill the list. I’m just gonna go with my top couple. 1. I got to be on the field briefly during a game this year. That had never happened before and was a great memory. 2. Got to hang out with my wife a ton doing one of my favorite activities, watching UNT Football. 3. Managed to go to every UNT home game. This was my first year living in Denton since 2013 and hadn’t been to a home game in years due to living in Amarillo and Kansas City. 4. The North! Texas! cheer at the LA Tech game. Best atmosphere I’ve ever experienced at a college football game, and I’ve been to a lot. 5. Managed to get a couple of friends and family to come to some UNT games, which is usually tough.

I really love everything you said here. I also think that we go about this the wrong way. We see an article from the hated NT Daily and think “Those nerds and their new art building. Leave our stuff alone!” But honestly, they’re right. Colleges have to spend too much on sports because the system perpetuates spending too much on sports. The conversation we should be having is “You’re right. How do we solve this in a way that changes the system so UNT can keep competing at sports?”

Thanks for reading my long post. I agree with you that I want to see UNT compete in the system. I love UNT. I met my wife there. I met a ton of lifelong friends there. I want any of my future kids to go there. I want to go somewhere and be around UNT and a good Football game is the best way to do that. But while I want UNT to succeed in spite of a rigged system, I’d much rather we, as a society, find a way to tear that system down. If we could find a statutory or regulatory way to cap the spending at the top end of the college athletics spectrum, I bet we could save a lot of money in the process.

While I do agree with (likely) almost all of you that this article has some issues, I do think it can serve as a useful starting point for a conversation into what colleges pay into athletics. There’s no getting around paying good money for good facilities. Facilities that players want to play in, facilities that alumni want to come to. If colleges want to spend on better facilities, with a plan to pay them off, it doesn’t vex me much. But even as a big UNT fan, even as a big Football fan, it is often hard to defend a coach’s salary against an actual educator, which is presumably what college is about. The thing is, if you want to change the system, trying to burn it down at UNT isn’t the answer. The system that UNT struggles to compete in, having a good, sustainable sports program, isn’t a system that UNT built. If you think that universities spend too much money on sports (which hey, I’ll even often agree with), you gotta go fight Texas, and Alabama, and every other huge school with that decided to pay their coach multiple millions of dollars, whose boosters and admin know that pouring huge amounts of money into a program will often earn and sustain success. The market was set long before tried to get a seat at the big boy table. If Nick Saban wasn’t paid 11 million dollars (2017), Seth Littrell wouldn’t command 1 million dollars. Like most bad things in college Football (the money, the inequity in potential, the haves and the have-nots) you have to start tearing down at the problem at the top.

In a tragic plot twist, we went from hopes of a bowl I could have had personally attended, to one that I won’t even be able to watch on TV real time because of prior plans. 😑

As someone who just got the 26th off from work against all odds, I’d really like to be rewarded with the First Responder Bowl. Also, something fun about getting on the train in Denton and be able to go all the way to the bowl.

I have degrees from UNT and a degree from A&M. It was a good day.

I really hope so. Having lived in KC for 2.5 years, I’ve done both KU Football and Basketball games. Beautiful school, fantastic town, really involved alumni. I’d really like to see the Jayhawks get back on track Football-wise. Plus they have a fun scoring tradition where they “wave the wheat”, but it kinda just looks like everyone is doing their best inflatable tube man impression, which is a hoot.

Ooof. My soul hurts.

The level of announcer homerism is kinda grating at this point. It might just because I’m grumpy, I guess.