Mike Jackson

Really hard to quantify but if things go as expected in the other games. Every normal year you get some unexpected wins a some unexpected losses. I expect a lost against SMU week 2 regardless of what happens in El Paso. So if I am penciling in an L for week 2 starting off the year 0-2 will be horrible. A serious behind the scenes vetting for the next coach starts week 3 of the season. If players feel that then it could snowball. I don’t think we have ever had a more important season opener that will likely impact MULTIPLE season not just 2022. If anyone can think of a season opener since 1995 that had a multiple season impact, please share.

It will be truly an infuriating year if that is accurate. A tread water year with no experienced really good QB (near all conference) coming back. All set up to open AAC play behind the 8 ball at the most critical position.

Thank you for that GMG.com comment winner of the day There is a dilemma for me the swooping eagle looks great everywhere except the helmets. You want to be consistent with the logos you use but the flying worm it just great with this shade of green. I want to see these at least once a year maybe make it a senior day tradition. For the swooping eagle helmets I just think they need a major redesign. Getting all the details down to make it look truly great is hard. They definitely need to work up a helmet with a smaller swooping Eagle. Maybe a few variations and have the current student and MGSF vote and choose one primarily green helmet and one primarily white helmet.

The only reason it is “impressive” is that is in the middle of old money Dallas. I think media types see this especially ones who didn’t grow up in a metro center like DFW are impressed with a modest event for this area. Hell, you impressed with SMU “tailgating”, let me take you Taste of Addison on a day unseasonably cool for late spring or early summer here. Also the clueless with no real grasp of the culture here look at SMU as a Miami or USC in waiting just because of its major metro location. While Miami was playing in a double decker stadium that hosted one of the one of the original bowl games, SMU played in Owby Stadium with less than 25,000 capacity. SMU has never been close to having local fan buy like USC, or Miami have. Also they don’t have a name represntative of their geographic region like those teams do. They don’t have a public serving medical center with branches all over the state like Baylor. To be honest from a branding standpoint it would be better to be named North Texas. 🤷🏽‍♂️ That isn’t a shot because if you hooked them to a lie detector they would agree. The power conferences aren’t looking to add another Vanderbilt, Northwestern, or Wake Forrest. The potential for SMU is not there in its current form. Major changes that they can’t just buy and that many alumni would hate it they did. Those would be 1. Doubling enrollment (almost tripling undergraduate enrollment while at it) 2. Lowering the academic standards for acceptance 3. Lowering the overall cost per academic credit hour significantly It would take several years and very uncomfortable growing pains to implement all this. And once they are achieved the football team would have to have some consistent winning for them to be upgraded in the media pecking order. AND STILL it may not work. Boise State has maximized every opportunity it has had and they are still on the outside looking in. PAC 12 would already be in talks with them as an addition if the decision was based on a program’s effort to get better and remain consistent.

Thank you

Yes just an appearance, guy loves football. The only thing at his age I see him doing related to coaching is low key recruiting/scouting our next head coach. 😉

Sad but it isn't about year 7 it's about 2023 in AAC and being set up to enter the conference with positive momentum in Football. We have lottery ticket odds of that happening especially with Aune the likely starter all season if we have a great one and Seth returns. Replacing a QB or a good team doesn't. Seem to be in Seth's wheelhouse if strengths.

And things have changed big time in politics. I doubt a Texas governor or state level official would again involve himself in such ridiculous and possibly career destructive cover up Shenanigans for less than a couple of million go into his personal account. School pride only goes so far.

Please go to your school's board and tip toe through the land of NIL Oz where a Manning level QB snubs, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, LSU Texas Oklahoma USC, Ohio State, Penn State, Clemson, Florida State, Florida, Tennessee, and 'my fingers are too tired to list more' University and stop slumming in the real world gmg.com. Guardrails will be put up soon or else all the programs below those elite will be in big trouble. I think the day of a freshmen or transfer stepping on campus and then being handed a 5 figure check day 2 will quickly come to an end. Minimally I think NIL will only be available to athletes at the start of their second academic year on the same campus. Or they will be required langauge in any approved NIL deal that continues to pay an athlete even AFTER he transfers from a school but still enrolled and academically eligible. Oz is great until Dorthy comes along and drops a house on you. You would think SMU people would have learned their lesson--- oh my bad I should have said "until Dorthy throws water on you". Now I have to prepare that melting witch gif for when SMU gets busted again. 🤷🏽‍♂️

It isn't about the money invested it is about getting people to buy your product. No one company was better positioned with resources an as a known technology/software brand to challenge the Apple iPhone than Microsoft. They failed horribly. SMU isn't the CFB Microsoft of DFW before the death penalty and definitely not after. Also you can't just buy players or more importantly coaches to get the best out of those players. Otherwise the best veteran coaches like Harbaugh, Kiffin, Lincoln Riley, Matt Rhule, or etc would come to SMU after experiencing head coaching success other places and not just to rehab after getting fired somewhere else. A P5 conference seriously considering SMU is no longer P5 they are G6+. Also someone mentioned ND not getting and conference payout near SMU if they are in the same conference. And UNT is not getting an equal payout from the AAC. Well for the first couple years that might be true. But 3 years in after paying off CUSA UNT and all the teams joining in 2023 should get equal share. Conferences don't work when teams want (Pac 12's USC & UCLA) or are getting unequal shares of the conference TV revenue (Big 12 Texas, OU). Guaranteed the Big 10 nor SEC isn't going away from the equal revenue sharing model. And Norte Dame has no financial reason to join the ACC for football.

I think we all know the answer to the that question. Penn State had a former coach use his association with the football team get access to children to assault them. They got a hard slap on the wrist. 🤷🏽‍♂️

We all know that revenue generated from college football is driving this round of conference realignment. But there are other considerations that can distinguish your athletics department and give your school an edge when the football programs are basically equal. With that in mind, if one the more powerful conferences came calling with an invitation to join with prerequisite that UNT stand up a Gymnastics program (which would be the one tier 1 university with one in the state) and/or baseball program would that be feasible within 4 years? Secondary related question; are there any provisions in the AAC conference agreement that rewards UNT for standing up the programs we don't sponser currently?

I might disagree with but I will still use an anchor man clip. Christina Applegate is the ACC and the dude is the Big 12.

No way in the world ND joining a conference with SMU. Why would they want to split media revenue money with ANY team that was in G5 after TCU and Utah joined the P5. No slight to SMU but no school in a good media revenue situation right now would want their future revenue growth split/interdependent with SMU.

That is why this SMU vs UNT rivarly is so savory to me. Realistic SMU fan know their limitations which is why they blatantly abd desperately flirted with the death penalty and got burned. As soon as UNT started raising it academic profile and undergrad enrollment surged past 25k we've been a legitimate threat to surplant them as the second most prominent FBS program in DFW. TCU for a number reasons feel more like Fort Worth's team than SMU feels like Dallas' team. Once SMU got separated from TCU as a conference rival they should have embraced the rivalry with us. Rivarly excites people and draws in causal alumni fans to be engaged. I pretty sure there are probably a few thousand local alumni who have degrees or significant course work from both schools. I met a couple at games and I am not all that social at games. The best opportunity for both schools to raise their local profile is for both to be good and have meaningful passionate close games with Apogee and Ford Stadiums sold out. If TCU is not an option for one of the richer conferences and there is interest in the DFW market take us both makes more since than just one of us. Let's say the Pac 12 is long term ambitious and willing grow their revenue slowly now for bigger long term payout. Taking current and soon to be Big 12 school out of the equation these are the school I would add and split divisions. SMU, UNT, Colorado State, Air Force, Fresno State, San Diego State. East Division: Arizona, Arizona State, , Colorado, Colorado State, UNT, SMU West: Utah, San Diego State, Fresno State, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, OSU, Washington, WSU

Bingo and even when the money buys them a good little winning run they still aren’t good TV brand nor have the potential to be. The June Jones run and Sonny Dykes leaving is evidence of that. No religious schools in the country are except the flag ship school of their religions BYU & Notre Dame.

While I find conference realignment talk as frustrating as it is entertaining, I think our lack of a unified fanbase voice concerning football leadership decisions here. There is absolutely no defense keeping Seth past 2021. Even the “pissing off big donors” excuse isn’t logical. If the big donors want to retain a head coach at the expense of the long term health of the program then your program might as well go back to FCS. Betting millions against the trend. Betting millions that he will find another Mason Fine (hopefully at least 6’ tall) and win big games. I had big dreams before it became apparent that Seth was coming back for 2022. But it starts and ends with winning here. And I truly believe with just good 4-5 year run of winning 9 regular season games, a conference title, and 2 bowl wins will get the program to the top of G5. NT80 is absolutely right but I fear WB missed his opportunity not to go against the grain and let Seth walk when flirted the KSU with 0 bowl wins, 0 conference titles and no end of season ranking in the top 25. That is what a program serious about football would have done if said head coach was already at the time the highest paid in the conference. He has always been well paid for the very limited success we have seen. No reason to keep giving him raises as other coaches in the conference outclass him. This ain’t Rice with their unique disadvantages.

Why wasn’t he “the guy”? Not being the guy is an indication of how the coaches evaluated you. And he has shown nothing that their evaluation of him as just serviceable with relatively low ceiling but higher floor than young guys on the roster.

NIL doesn’t equate to buying a championship. If they even get close the powers that be will make an adjustment. If was just about money we would NEVER been nipping at their heals almost joining same conference with them in 2013 or joining them barring another huge shake up in 2023. They are elitist Highland Park old money team not Dallas’ team or DFWs.

The team that we be in your conference bringing the most fans to your stadium. SMU isn’t embraceable to the common fan in the DFW market. SMU and TCU has benefited from a series of self inflicted wound UNT Athletics has visited upon itself. Since the 1980s we’ve never put together 4 year run of averaging 8-10 wins a year. That is pathetic and doesn’t build dedication fanbase among the hundreds of thousands of local alumni and community with connections to UNT. People need to have faith in a program and that faith be rewarded from time to time to donate. Those rewards are winning big games. That is a huge part of the reason I was done with Seth before last season. You can’t lose watershed moment big home games like the loss to La Tech 2018. And he has consistently lost big games ever since except the “save my job games” that his mediocre record created for himself. We aren’t on par with or surpassing SMU because we make bad decisions like giving him extensions and unwarranted raises.

1 season is not a career. He hasn’t completed more than 55% of his passes in either season. He is pushing 30 and no one is questioning his work ethic. So even going into 2021 he should have played better. I think his football talent just eroded while he was away from the game. QB’s playing behind horrendous OL have valid excuses. Virtually impossible for a QB to have success consistently getting hit, pressured and sacked. I think our OL was mediocre but as I watched a lot of errant passes I wasn’t like “man if only Aune had time” Love him for all his hard work here. Him working his way back to be a serviceable FBS starter is awesome. He might a great coach if he grasps the game mentally at level exponentially better than he plays. A Serviceable at QB at age 29 in FBS should be coming off the bench.

National Championship? 😂🤣. Do they mean that when they named themselves National Champions 1981 & 1982? Or the 1935 championship recorded and detailed in all the reputable cave drawings of that time? SMU today bring nothing but an empty stadium in centrally located in Dallas most Fall Saturdays independent of a game being played there or not. 🤣. More famous for failing at hiding the cheating after being caught than anything else. A conference trying to be third or better to the Big 10 or SEC shouldn’t have any interest in adding SMU other than as a dead last resort to have a round number or rival for Texas Tech, Baylor, or TCU. And I don’t think any of those team particularly would value SMU in their conference. Much like SMU doesn’t value us joining theirs now.

Yes it is a stretch. There are a lot of move 30 plus years old that laid the groundwork for this. Unfortunately since the dissolution of CFA making every school a free agent when it comes to media revenue this was bound to happen. Leagues just don't function well without revenue sharing. The big dogs can't be so greedy they kill the competition income wise and have compelling on the field competition each week. Long story short it is now ESPN and Fox are dictating these changes. They could easily play hardball with conferences and say we are going to pay your "elite" conference well but not at the expense of giving another conference a reasonable contract that still allows them to compete. Y'all can always go pay per view. But we guarantee that income won't be as stable. Also the Vandy's, Purdues, Northwestern's, Washington States and etc will be servely hurt by the financial hit sparsing those rights out. Texas could have slowed all this down big time. And they definitely could have gotten Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, and A&M to stay with more equitable revenue sharing structure in the Big 12. Maybe you lose one of them at worse but they could have replaced any of them.

I don't see how you fit all those rivalry games in, have coherent fair way to determine the conference championship game participants, and play 3 or 4 non-conference games. Something has to give. If you lengthen the season purely for revenue they will have to pay the players. Some of the best players will starting sitting out regular season games 11 through 1# if they aren't getting paid. And at anytime the NFLPA and Owners could agree to lower the minimum draft age. Why let your defacto minor league wear more tread off the incoming talent for nothing? And with an expanded season and playoff CFB will be cutting into part of the TV calendar the NFL had all to themselves. So a move to weaken a competing product while getting less beat up talent makes all the sense in the world. If the USFL holds on that will be more reason to discount essential utility of CFB as a minor league. So I could very easily see a meeting of the minds and CFB told in by the NFL no uncertain terms to "stay in your current calendar or else". All this and the NFL also could take disregard the tradition of letting CFB have Saturday from September to second Saturday in December. They already took Thursday away from CFB. Joel Klatt was selling listeners of 1310 The Ticket a load of crap this afternoon imo. The 4 mega conference scenario.

Not so fast if the playoffs are expanded or they have to schedule semi-final conference games before champion games. The calendar doesn't work. This is a big part of the reason the HBCU conferences don't play in the FCS playoffs overlap classic games.